Inside The New York Botanical Garden
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Posted in Around the Garden on October 11 2013, by Ann Rafalko
For many, this weekend is a three-day weekend and we’ll be open on Monday to help you pass the extra day in one of New York City’s most beautiful natural spaces. That means an extra day of fall fun for everyone!
Fill your weekend with spooky fun in the Haunted Pumpkin Garden and the cultural immersion of Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden. Our two fall exhibitions come with a plethora of fun activities including pumpkin carving demonstrations, taiko drumming, wildlife encounters, and tours. And don’t miss the opening of Close: The Photography of Allan Pollok-Morris, going live in the Ross Gallery this weekend.
Start your Columbus Day weekend off right by joining our free Saturday bird walk around the grounds. It’s migration time, so you never know who you’ll spot in addition to our regular flock of raptors, turkeys, little brown jobbers, and colorful characters.
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Posted in Around the Garden on October 4 2013, by Ann Rafalko
The weather forecast for this weekend looks equally as wonderful as our slate of weekend activities. Blue skies and golden sunshine pair perfectly with Japanese chrysanthemums, pumpkin carving demonstrations, bird walks, and garden tours. It just doesn’t get better than early October in New York City! So get outside and soak up this perfect weather in the Garden!
Children of all ages can join a bird walk (Saturday only), get pumpkin carving tips, thrill to the sounds of Japanese taiko drumming, and learn about the bugs and creepy creatures of Halloween. Adults hunting for horticultural knowledge will love our Bulb Basics demonstration in the Home Gardening Center, ikebana demonstrations in the Conservatory Courtyard, in-depth tours of Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden in the Conservatory, and an expert-led tour of the Native Plant Garden.
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Posted in Around the Garden, Exhibitions on October 3 2013, by Ann Rafalko
You probably know (or at least think you know) all about bonsai, the Japanese art of growing, tending, and shaping miniature trees in trays. But do you know about kiku? Where bonsai is small, kiku is large. Where bonsai is about long life, kiku is about ephemerality. Where bonsai is about a minimal aesthetic, kiku is about color, pattern, and profusion.
Or at least that is how we interpret this tradition of shaping and tending chrysanthemums in Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden, opening Saturday in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Many of these huge chrysanthemum “sculptures” begin as one single stem, despite looking like brilliant tapestries of many flowering plants woven together. They are tended for months on end to bloom for just a few weeks. There is no way for us to extend kiku beyond their natural lifespan, so to see them in their full glory, you have got to act fast!
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Posted in Around the Garden on May 24 2013, by Ann Rafalko
It’s summer! Or is it? Given the unpredictable weather of the past few weeks, I guess it comes as little surprise that several days of hazy, hot, and humid afternoons would end with spring reasserting herself just as we hit the three day, “unofficial start of summer” weekend. But don’t let that put a damper on your long weekend plans! We’ve got plenty of warmth, color, and activities to help you relax going into the new season.
In the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Wild Medicine: Healing Plants Around the World continues to delight with a one-two punch of geeky knowledge and Renaissance beauty. Enjoy tasting stations featuring delicious and healthy treats made from chocolate, tropical fruits, and soothing tea around the Conservatory Courtyard Pools where the hardy waterlilies are again in bloom. You can also spend time with Philip Haas’ amazing Four Seasons, monumental sculptural renderings of the surreal paintings of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, “rendered in trompe l’oeil vegetables, flowers and other horticulture.”
Outside of the Conservatory, there’s plenty that’s beautiful and in bloom around our 250 acres. Favorite subjects of the Garden’s photography enthusiasts, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden and the herbaceous peonies are back in bloom, and a plethora of other gardens are also looking fine.
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Posted in Around the Garden on May 13 2013, by Ann Rafalko
In case you haven’t heard: The cicadas are coming! The cicadas are coming! To New York City at least, where they haven’t been seen, en masse, since 1996. Cicadas of the Brood II type hibernate underground for 17 years, waiting for the soil to warm to a balmy 64°F before emerging in the millions to mate. Then, they disappear again for another 17 years. We haven’t seen, or heard, them yet at the Garden, but there have been scattered sightings throughout the greater New York City area.
And it turns out, cicadas have not only a sense of rhythm, but also a sense of timing and will have emerged in time for the World Science Festival! We’ll be celebrating with a special Festival program on June 1, Cicada Serenades: Music, Mating, and Meaning. The panel will be moderated by ABC News’ Good Morning America co-anchor Dan Harris, and will feature musician, philosopher, and author David Rothenberg (recently featured on WNYC’s SoundCheck); environmental scientist John Cooley; professor and neurobiologist Ronald Hoy; and author, biologist, and professor Marlene Zuk. Discussion of the cicada’s song, mating rituals, and scientific importance will be punctuated by a “musical performance between the bugs and their human collaborators.”
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Posted in Around the Garden on May 10 2013, by Ann Rafalko
Mother’s Day is Sunday. Do not forget! Still searching for plans? We can help with our weekend-long Mother’s Day Garden Party in our brand new Native Plant Garden and surrounding gardens!
The Native Plant Garden–which opened last weekend–is a spectacular, 3.5 acre showcase of the beautiful and diverse native plants of northeastern North America, and it is the perfect place to celebrate your mom with fun and games, music and dancing, picnicking, photographers, expert tours, workshops, family activities, and more.
The family fun includes bird and butterfly walks, watercolor painting, a professional photographer’s booth where you can get a beautiful family portrait, lawn games and picnicking on Daffodil Hill (complete with food carts and free samples), music perfect for dancing from the Banjo Rascals, and on Sunday, a family concert presentation of Jack and the Beanstalk by the Bronx Arts Ensemble.
After enjoying the festivities, take mom for a stroll around our 250-acres where you will be dazzled by all the beautiful blooms. The Azalea Garden is as close to peak bloom as you can get, like stepping into a pink and red kaleidoscope! The tree peony and lilac collections–both located near the newly reopened Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden–continue to perfume the air with amazing aroma, and in the Home Gardening Center you can tiptoe among the tulips until your heart’s content. The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is verdant and green with vegetables and flowers popping up all over. Feel free to lend a hand, dig around, plant a little, and play in the dirt here. Everyone’s encouraged to give gardening a try in this one-acre veggie wonderland!
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Posted in Photography on May 8 2013, by Ann Rafalko
When the breeze blows just right, the scent of the lilacs mingles with the scent of the tree peonies, and it smells like magic.
Posted in Adult Education on May 6 2013, by Lansing Moore
In partnership with the Sarah Lawrence Writing Institute, The New York Botanical Garden is pleased to co-sponsor a unique class lead by author Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, a prolific writer, essayist, and poet. This unique class, “Messages of Late Spring: A Two-Day Writing Workshop” on May 18 and 19 will make use of the unique landscape of the Botanical Garden.
Wilde-Menozzi will lead students throughout Garden grounds, including the Thain Family Forest, Azalea Garden, and the newly opened Native Plant Garden to encourage students to ask questions like, “What are the messages of spring, ‘the cruelest month,’ and yet, what does the message of transformation elicit How can it be put into words?”
Wilde-Menozzi is the author most recently of two books. The first, The Other Side of the Tiber, is a memoir of her many years spent living in Italy. That experience also serves as the backdrop for her second new book, Toscanelli’s Ray, a novel set in Florence.
She shared her thoughts on writing, nature, and a life spent abroad.
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Posted in Photography on May 4 2013, by Ann Rafalko
It just doesn’t get any better than this! The new Native Plant Garden is open and the weather is perfect for celebrating. Join us!
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Posted in Around the Garden on May 3 2013, by Ann Rafalko
After many years and hundreds of thousand of plants, we’re opening our newest garden to the public, the Native Plant Garden! The Native Plant Garden is a spectacular, 3.5 acre showcase of the beautiful and diverse native plants of northeastern North America, and we’re celebrating all weekend with fun, festivities, music, wine, food, expert tours, workshops, family activities, and more.
Tours will focus on the diversity of plants to be found in the garden and the birds that are already calling it home. Everyone is encouraged to borrow a palette and watercolors and let the Native Plant Garden inspire you or your children to create a masterpiece en plein air. Enjoy folk tunes and bluegrass from the very popular Milton. Shop for native plants and learn from the experts in a series of demos and author book signings.
There’s so much to do in the Native Plant Garden you might be inclined to just stay there and enjoy this beautiful new landscape, but you would be missing out on a wealth of other stunning vistas! Though there are only a few blooms, the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden is once again open for the season, and just above it you will find blooming tree peonies and fragrant stands of lilac. In the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens have just been planted, and every child is encouraged to plant and play in the rest of the garden beds. In Cherry Valley a few tenacious blooms hold on, while tulips are everywhere in the Perennial Garden, Home Gardening Center, and along Seasonal Walk. In the Herb Garden you will be greeted by a “theater” of adorable and fascinating auricula primroses. The Azalea Garden is just beginning to glow in rosy hues of magenta, shocking pink, and seashell blush. Along Daffodil Hill the daffs are fading a bit, only to be outshone by gorgeous (and fragrant) crabapples. Basically, everywhere you turn there’s another stunning vista!
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