Meet Diana Conklin, one of NYBG’s Adult Education instructors teaching a variety of botanical craft classes for the holidays.
Holiday wreath-making expert Diana Conklin was born and raised on a potato farm along the east end of Long Island–that was before the area was taken over by vineyards! And coming from a farming background, Diana’s love of all things botanical is deeply ingrained.
Her studio, Everlastings by Diana, remains on the family farm in one of their barns. There she specializes in creating stunning dried flower arrangements, many of which are displayed at local craft galleries and events.
“I look forward to bringing our kids someday, and telling them the story of how their daddy proposed to their mommy.”
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From now until December 17, our visitors will be sharing their fondest memories from 20 years of the Holiday Train Show–some of them touching, some comical, and every one of them cherished. Come back to Plant Talk each day for a new story, which you can see after the jump along with a feature on one of the many replica New York City landmarks on display in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory–the Guggenheim Museum, Yankee Stadium, the Empire State Building and more.
As a bonus, read on to find out how you can win a Family Four-Pack of Holiday Train Show tickets for yourself!
The Holiday Train Show is in full swing under the glass of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and we’ve even got a few new faces in this year’s display! Can anyone recognize this long-gone New York original? (I’ll give you a hint: back when the Dodgers baseball club was still a part of NYC, it took its name in honor of these rail regulars.)
For many around the country, the upcoming weekend is a vacation in itself. The schedule usually involves such winning events as stuffing yourself silly for Thanksgiving; living off gourmet leftovers for the better part of a week; and forgetting about workaday hassles for a rare four-day weekend. (To everyone having to work on Black Friday, you have every ounce of sympathy we can muster.) The Thanksgiving Day Parade is what really brings home the nostalgia for some, and others the Sunday football. But as for me, it has to be the post-feast nap–that tryptophan is serious business.
Still, not everyone loves the idea of spending the entire holiday weekend cooped up in the house, playing host to a family that just wants to get out and do something. And that makes the coming days the perfect time to visit the Holiday Train Show, fresh off its grand opening on November 19 and picking up steam as we head into the winter months.
For the first time in the Holiday Train Show’s 20-year history, you too can learn how to create architectural replicas from natural materials, just like the landmarks featured in our Conservatory displays.
Join Madeline Yanni, The New York Botanical Garden’s expert floral and crafts designer on December 17 for a special, hands-on class. Madeline will help you explore various architectural styles and crafting techniques, after which you can choose from an assortment of dried botanicals, like seed pods, bark, and branches, to make your own model. You’ll need to bring lunch, as well as a box large enough to put your models in.
A few weeks ago, I was displaying some grasses and sedges for a home gardening demonstration when a woman asked me what the difference is between the two. Naturally, there are anatomical and sometimes cultural differences (always generalizations) between these similar plants, however, they are often categorized together and thought of as the same. To help clarify the differences, we will begin with a useful mnemonic:
Sedges have edges, Rushes are round, Grasses have nodes from the top to the ground.
Grasses and bamboos are in the Graminaceae family, sedges are in the Cyperaceae family, and rushes are in the Juncaceae family. When you look at a grass or sedge, what you see are the stems, leaves, and flowers. And in the case of this explanation, the stems are referred to as culms.
The Ladies’ Border is a unique element here at The New York Botanical Garden, a ribbon of lavish growth snugged in alongside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory like a well-kept secret. Walking along its narrow pathway, you pick up on a quiet sense of privacy afforded by the tall plants and trees on either side, thriving camellias and low-slung mountain pines blotting out the world beyond to bring the space into focus.
Part of that has to do with the location itself; the Ladies’ Border exists as a chance for the NYBG’s gardeners to make use of their own daring creativity, owing to the spot’s placement between the Conservatory and a rising berm on the opposing side. Together these buffers cradle a sanctuary with its own subtle microclimate, protected from the elements and always slightly warmer than its surroundings–enough so that non-native plants can occasionally thrive here in New York. This is where we find Hesperantha coccinea, blooming and vivid in spite of the weather.
Holiday wreath-making expert Diana Conklin was born and raised on a potato farm along the east end of Long Island–that was before the area was taken over by vineyards! And coming from a farming background, Diana’s love of all things botanical is deeply ingrained.
