Our lettuce transplants are getting bigger every day, snappy radish roots are turning red under the soil, and the peas are starting to vine. It’s time for Salad Days at the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden! Shakespeare called a person’s youth “salad days” for a reason: these are the sweetest days of the year, when everything seems possible. Especially a delicious salad! We’re in our last week of this wonderful program, which ends on Friday, June 5.
To learn more about all the crops in our plots, dig in with the staff in the Family Garden. We’re excited about our first harvest of the season and celebrating salads in all sorts of ways. Visitors can create a paper plate salad to learn more about plant parts as we make art. Measure and mix the dried herbs you need to take home a salad dressing to finish and enjoy at home. Explore the garden with a scavenger hunt learning more about the plant parts that make up a salad.
Patricia Gonzalez is an NYBG Visitor Services Attendant and avid wildlife photographer.
This Red-tailed Hawk was found lurking in the Wetlands during my lunch break on April 26 of this year. I noticed him while walking along the Wetlands trail—he was staring intently at some nearby squirrels. A number of visitors caught sight of him as well and we all began snapping away with our cameras.
At that point I had to leave him to get back to my post; whether or not he made one of those squirrels his snack, I don’t know.
Red-tailed Hawk (Buteo jamaicensis) – Photo by Patricia Gonzalez
The Garden is open for regular hours (10 a.m.–6 p.m.) with plenty of long weekend events and activities to take advantage of, including our latest exhibition—FRIDA KAHLO: Art, Garden, Life.
La Cantina in the Leon Levy Visitor Center – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Every week during the school year, more than 1,200 young children participate in specially designed school programs developed and taught at the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden (ECAG). And that number swells to about 1,600 during New York City’s school testing weeks in April when more students stream into ECAG’s gardens and facilities because upper grades are taking tests.
“During the spring we see a big uptick in the number of school field trips. Our facility can serve over 2,000 students per week, allowing us to deliver programming to more children than any other children’s venue within NYBG,” says Fran Agnone, Coordinator of the Adventure Garden.
As the snowdrops fade, daffodils explode in a burst of yellow across the landscape. Tulips begin to emerge, peeking through recently planted violas, and magnolia buds crack open. These all provide a lavish display, but in the midst of this let us take a moment to appreciate the sustained beauty of our hellebores. Since snow still covered much of the garden in late winter, our considerable collection of Helleborus species and hybrids have been consistently blooming in shades of pink, white, deep purple, green, and yellow. They really deserve a place in your garden, too.
While there are many species in the genus Helleborus, recent hybridization has produced a wide range of colorful, easy to grow plants. Helleborus × hybridus cultivars are best grown in partial shade in evenly moist, well-drained soil. In this climate blooms emerge on new growth in late winter, and can persist through spring. Large sepals take the place of petals as the colorful portion of the flower, and flowers nod at the top of 12- to 15-inch stalks. New leaves emerge around this time, which grow into an excellent glossy evergreen ground cover. Old leaves can be removed in the spring for aesthetic reasons, but care should be taken not to damage the new growth.
And while you’re here, take advantage of the weather by soaking in the sun while delighting in the budding cherry blossoms, blooming magnolias, and breathtaking rhododendrons. Programs abound to help guide your weekend activities, so read on, and see what piques your interest!
Todd Forrest is the NYBG’s Arthur Ross Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections. He leads all horticulture programs and activities across the Garden’s 250-acre National Historic Landmark landscape, including 50 gardens and plant collections outside and under glass, the old-growth Thain Family Forest, and living exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
The Rock Garden in early spring
Everyone in our area is well aware that climatologists have determined that this winter brought some of the coldest temperatures ever recorded in New York. The professional horticulturists who care for The New York Botanical Garden don’t need official weather data to confirm our suspicions that spring is coming later this year than it has in recent memory. All we need to do is walk through the Botanical Garden to see what our magnolias, daffodils, then flowering cherries and other spring-flowering favorites are doing at the moment. Gardeners’ (and plants’) internal clocks are set according to plant phenology—the timing of natural events such as flowering, fruiting, and leafing out—and all indications are that spring is overdue.
As staff members of one of the world’s great scientific and educational institutions, we have access to a suite of resources we can use to confirm (or deny) our suspicions. Since 2002 Volunteer Citizen Scientists have walked regularly through the Botanical Garden and noted carefully if certain plants are flowering, fruiting, leafing out, or dropping their leaves. The data from these “phenology walks” tell us that on average over the past decade, our native red maple, which is one of the most common street trees in New York and my favorite harbinger of spring, has been in peak flower around the middle of March. As of today, the flowers on the red maples in our Native Plant Garden and Thain Family Forest are just starting to open.
While spring might still feel several long weeks away, the first cheerful blooms of the season have already made their debut in the Rock Garden! We’ve been hard at work cleaning beds, raking leaves, and removing the last of the winter debris in order to open the garden as soon as possible for everyone to enjoy. And now we’re ready.
The very first heralds of spring, the winter aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) are still in bloom where they were covered until the last snow to melt, and along with our other early bloomers like snowdrops (Galanthus nivalis), snow crocus (Crocus tommasinianus), and winter cyclamen (Cyclamen coum), they’re still putting on a great display. This past week they’ve also been joined by even more early bulbs—netted iris hybrids such as Iris ‘Pauline’, ‘Harmony’, and ‘Katharine Hodgkin’; alpine squills (Scilla bifolia); spring snowflake (Leucojum vernum); and glory of the snow (Chionodoxa sardensis).
Our lettuce transplants are getting bigger every day, snappy radish roots are turning red under the soil, and the peas are starting to vine. It’s time for Salad Days at the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden! Shakespeare called a person’s youth “salad days” for a reason: these are the sweetest days of the year, when everything seems possible. Especially a delicious salad! We’re in our last week of this wonderful program, which ends on Friday, June 5.
