The summer session of the Children’s Gardening program–where kids aged 5-12 work in pairs to cultivate and tend their own garden plot–is in full swing, and the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is a hive of activity, bursting at the seams with produce and happy kids.
If the kids in your family want to get in on the gardening action, you can join in during Dig! Plant! Grow! which takes place daily (except on Mondays when the Garden is usually closed), beginning at 1:30 p.m. Digging, weeding, and harvesting aren’t the only activities going on in the Family Garden (read one visitor’s appreciation); there’s also cooking, Mario Batali’s Edible Garden, and tons of exploring to be done as well! And there are bees and bunnies. Oh, and it’s also really pretty!
Be sure to stop by on your next trip to the Garden, and while you’re here, snap a few photos to enter into the August NYBG-IGPOTY photo contest, “Kids in the Garden” featuring special Mario Batali prizes!
It’s the second month of our photo contest, and a hearty congratulations to Barbara Reiner for winning our second monthly NYBG-IGPOTY photography contest. The NYBG photo judges had a tough time picking the winner this month, but in the end felt that Barbara’s rose triptych just edged out cindy {k}’s scene among the tulips for this month’s theme “American Beauty.” Barbara will receive a NYBG gift pack, which includes two All-Garden Passes, a $25 credit towards the Adult Education class of her choice, a catalog for the Library exhibition Historical Views: Tourists at the Alhambra, and the catalog from Hirschfeld’s Broadway Scrapbook. We’re also still working on getting copies of the photography book, Better Plant and Garden Photography, written by IGPOTY founder Philip Smith, over from the U.K. as well. Congratulations Barabara! Please send us an email with your contact information through this form (select website from the pull-down menu).
Mario Batali’s Edible Garden in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden features the celebrity chef’s favorite ingredients. In Batali’s Berry Patch; the Otto Pizza Garden; and the Babbo Beets, Beans, Garlic, and Greens Garden, kids and families can learn all about the benefits of vegetable gardening and using fresh produce in daily meals. We asked the chefs at Mario Batali’s restaurants to give us some insight into how they love using the ingredients being grown at the Garden. First up, Anthony Sasso Chef de Cuisine at Casa Mono tells us how he likes to use strawberries (as featured in Batali’s Berry Patch), and Chiogga beets (as featured in the Babbo Beets, Beans Garlic and Greens Garden) in a simple summer salad.
In New York, we get pretty excited about the first culinary signs of the season. Winter, spring, summer, and fall are pretty well defined in the Northeast. So as soon as a fruit or vegetable makes its debut at the local farmers market, chefs are instantly motivated to come up with new ideas and get their hands on what’s in season before anyone else. In the spring, after long cold months of winter squash and mushrooms and potatoes (brown, brown, and brown), that means we get to look forward to ramps, asparagus, snap peas, and anything else green!
Similarly, there are a few things that offer hints that summer has arrived (besides ice cream trucks on every corner), like strawberries. Strawberries have a way of popping up (especially the wild ones) after the first few consecutive days of really warm weather. In New York, that means towards the middle or end of June. And I think I speak for most chefs when I say that we have a hard time coming up with unique ways to use them creatively in savory dishes. Strawberries are sweet and tart, beautiful to look at, juicy, and small enough to use whole, yet they are usually given to the pastry kitchen to be used as a topping for sundaes, as a condiment to shortcake, or cooked down with sugar until they become jammy for cheesecake. I have used them before by pureeing the fruit into a sauce to dress poultry, or simply mixing them with balsamic and sherry vinegar as an accompaniment to our house-made charcuterie.
So when you taste the two together, the match is pretty surprising. The beets are firm and rich and the juicy strawberries lend great sweetness. We pair them with a thickened Greek-style yogurt spiced up with Shiso (Perilla) leaves and garnish it all with summer squash blossoms and basil leaves. A trip to the garden can turn into the perfect summer lunch.
