Christmas has always been a DIY holiday. Who hasn’t strung cranberries and popcorn on thread to use as a homemade garland? Or maybe you’ve used an old hanger from they dry cleaner as a frame for a wreath of pine boughs scavenged from the woods or dusted pine cones in sparkling glitter for a pretty candlelit party buffet?
Know someone who would love to take a class at The New York Botanical Garden? Adult education gift certificates make a fantastic Christmas gift for the gardener or crafter in your life.
When not writing about the latest trends and best specialty foods, she can be found cultivating her organic garden at home, cooking in her newly renovated kitchen, or making handmade pottery to use while serving up her culinary creations. Denise’s varied interests make for a fun and varied list of her “Favorite Things” for holiday gift giving.
Sara Kate Gillingham-Ryan, is more than the founding editor of the home cooking website The Kitchn. She is a cooking inspiration. The Kitchn was born out of Apartment Therapy, a website started by Sara Kate’s husband Maxwell whose stated mission is to “Save the world, one room at a time.”
In The Kitchn, (mission: Inspiring cooks, nourishing homes), experienced cooks and newbies alike swap recipes, tips, tricks, and tales in a chatty, well edited and lovingly curated forum shaped by Sara Kate and her devoted team. But Sara Kate’s world doesn’t revolve entirely around the kitchen. She’s also a passionate home gardener, a fact that comes out in Sara Kate’s list of her “Favorite Things” for holiday gift giving.
Hannah Elliott, lifestyle writer and blogger for Forbes, has one of the more enviable beats we can imagine; she is tasked with writing about cars, fashion, luxury, and books in a way that doesn’t make “the muscle-heads hate the fashionistas in the process.”
If anyone can do it, Hannah can (Sample tweet: Do not buy the R8 Spyder if you’re shy or unfriendly. People love this car & want to know all about it, all the time. Huge attention getter). She’s stylish without being style conscious, intelligent without being nerdy, and can hang at the test track with even the most die hard gearheads.
And as might be expected, this breadth of interests and versatility of understanding surfaces in Hannah’s list of her “Favorite Things” for holiday gifts from the Shop in the Garden.
Laura Fenton is one crafty lady! We first ran across her work when she wrote about the giant pumpkins for AOL’s home and garden blog ShelterPop. We immediately loved her sense of humor (we thought about charging rent inside the pumpkins, too), and the more we looked, we realized we also loved her sensibility. Laura loves cooking and crafting with in-season, locally sourced veggies, fruits, and flowers (just like we do).
So, when we had the chance to ask her about her “Favorite Things” for holiday gift giving, we knew it would be a lovely, inspiring list full of hidden gems from the Shop in the Garden. See for yourself!
That’s sound logic, right? If you go by the decorations at the mall, its been the holidays for moths, so who even knows? In any case, we don’t want to overwhelm you before we’ve bought our turkeys yet either, but the arrival of a few truckloads of giant evergreens is always an occasion.
Earlier this week, The Garden received a special delivery of nine Abies fraseri all the way from NW North Carolina. Better known as the Frasier fir, these trees are popular choices during the holidays for their ability to retain needles long after being cut. The largest, which has been placed in the fountain by the visitor’s center measures a whopping 25 feet high. The eight other trees, which are all about 10-15 feet each, will surround the fountain as well.
Now that the trees have been placed, the next step is decorate them with approximately 400 strands of lights (that’s 20,000 bulbs!) in time for our annual tree lighting ceremony. (stay tuned for more details on that!)
Much as you would expect from the editor of a website called Fashionista, Lauren Sherman is a stylish young woman. But, unlike some of her fashion news peers, Lauren steers clear of dressing in all black (most days) and gratuitous trends, opting instead for an eclectic, self-confident mix of girly and masculine that comes off as classically feminine.
It’s a sensibility–inspired by much-loved trips to Europe with her technology-blogger fiancé and time spent living in London–that carries through to her “Favorite Things,” a list of gracious, classic gift picks from the Shop in the Garden.
Olga Massov, creator of the popular cooking blog Sassy Radish, is a true triple threat: She’s a talented writer, photographer, and cook. Olga, a finance geek by day, writes about recipes and cooking in a way that makes you want to sit down with her and have a cup of coffee while working out what to cook for dinner. Her stories are sweet and lovely; her recipes simple, seasonal, and delicious.
When we began our “Favorite Things” campaign for the Shop in the Garden, we knew we wanted to see what Olga would pick. And just like her blog, Olga’s list of holiday gifts for friends and family is warm, genuine, and delicious.
It seems hard to believe, but the holidays really are just around the corner. We love the holidays here at The New York Botanical Garden. The holidays mean the return of one of New York City’s most cherished family traditions,The Holiday Train Show in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. It also means the arrival of beautiful new goodies at the Shop in the Garden, and on the Shop’s website. The selection of gifts in the Shop this holiday season is all about favorites, but they’re not just ours. We’re inviting some of the Garden’s most stylish, culinarily-minded, crafty, and green-thumbed friends to share a few of their favorite things with you!
So, take a spin around the Shop, whether in person while you’re visiting the giant pumpkins this weekend, or virtually. And if you happen to spot something that you’d like to call your favorite, you can use the “Tell A Friend” feature to give Santa a gentle hint.
So watch this space to see what some of your favorite bloggers will be giving as gifts this holiday season!
In the meantime, here are a few of my favorite things.
The NY Times, TV, and Even the New York Lottery Charmed
Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media.
The Holiday Train Show at The New York Botanical Garden has been a magical must-see for more than 1 million visitors over the past 17 years. Edward Rothstein of The New York Times called it “exhilarating,” marveling at “the wonders of this annual show” that presents “New York through a looking glass.”
David Hartman, popular television personality, produced and narrated a charming documentary about the Holiday Train Show, revealing how the structures are made from natural materials and displayed to the delight of visitors of all ages. The documentary aired last year 528 times across the country on 285 PBS stations.
In case you missed it, below is a clip of the show. You can catch the entire program tonight, December 11, at 10:30 p.m. on Channel Thirteen/WNET-TV. It will air again several times during December on PBS, including on WLIW-TV; check the online schedule. If you’re looking for a stocking stuffer or holiday gift for a loved one (or for yourself), the documentary is available on DVD at Shop in the Garden
After viewing the clip, you’ll see why the Holiday Train Show has been a sought-after location for singular New York events. That tradition again rang true last week when the New York Lottery awarded more than $17 million to two winners before replicas of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and others and to the delight of a festive crowd of visitors young and old that erupted into spontaneous congratulatory applause.
There have been other occasions over the years when Holiday Train Show visitors received an additional unexpected treat, including a marriage proposal between New York City police officers that was nationally broadcast on the Today show and a mayoral press conference that touted the wonders of the holiday season in New York. Amid the glow of twinkling lights in the Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the Holiday Train Show proved the perfect magical setting for these memorable events.
Make your own memories by coming to see the Holiday Train Show in person, through January 11, 2009. Tickets are available for purchase on the Garden’s Web site. See for yourselves what Mr. Rothstein in his review described as “this phantasmagorical landscape, which at twilight comes alive with illumination.”
Christmas has always been a DIY holiday. Who hasn’t strung cranberries and popcorn on thread to use as a homemade garland? Or maybe you’ve used an old hanger from they dry cleaner as a frame for a wreath of pine boughs scavenged from the woods or dusted pine cones in sparkling glitter for a pretty candlelit party buffet?
