Inside The New York Botanical Garden

The New York Botanical Garden

Morning Eye Candy: King of the Garden

Posted in Photography on August 11 2011, by Ann Rafalko

Some plants have such boastful names. If you’re calling a plant as humble as the bean ‘King of the Garden’ it had best be a great bean!

Phaseolus lunatus ‘King of the Garden’ (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

July Photo Contest Winners – Things are Cookin’ for August!

Posted in Around the Garden on August 10 2011, by Rustin Dwyer

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).

Head below the jump to see the rest of this month's winners.

The Greenmarket Today

Posted in Around the Garden on August 10 2011, by Ann Rafalko

It’s a beautiful day to buy seasonal, farm-fresh produce from our fantastic vendors at the Botanical Garden Greenmarket. The Greenmarket is open today until 3 p.m. Come by to pick up eggplants, cantaloupe, peaches, cherries, and blackberries and visit Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra before it closes on August 21!

Gajeski Produce has bunches of sunflowers to decorate your dinner table, corn, zucchini, cucumbers, squash, and field grown tomatoes in all colors. Greens also abound– lettuce, broccoli, and scallions along with fresh herbs basil and cilantro. Don’t forget to pick up some eggs they brought fresh from Feather Ridge Farm.

Migliorelli Farm has carrots, beets, radishes, fennel, and turnips–good kitchen standards to stock up on. More interesting greens like dandelion, collards, escarole, fennel, kale, chard, mustard, and bok choy are available, too. Apples and corn are beginning to become a regular presence.

Local honey can be purchased from The Little Bake Shop. Pies of all sorts-cherry, blueberry, apple, and raspberry in the Linzer tart and other sweets are perfect for sharing.

Bread Alone has sourdough, multigrain, and foccacia breads ready for sandwich fillings. Raisin nut, ciabatta, and peasant rolls are a compliment to any meal. Muffins, tarts, danishes, cookies, and scones make for nice treats.

Red Jacket Orchard has delicious sweet red cherries, small apricots, sugar plums, apples, jams, and ice cold refreshing juices.

You can learn more about Greenmarket, part of the Council on the Environment of New York City–one of the largest open-air farmers market programs in the United States–at their booth. Taste what’s fresh at the weekly cooking demonstrations–this week features blackberry-basil syrup.

Morning Eye Candy: A New Family in the Family Garden

Posted in Photography on August 10 2011, by Ann Rafalko

This mama duck decided that one of the beds in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden would be a perfect place to start a new family, so she built a nest right in the middle of one!

Mama Duck says “Quack!” (photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen)

Morning Eye Candy: On a Curve

Posted in Photography on August 9 2011, by Ann Rafalko

The dramatic curves of the genus Lilium.

Photos by Ivo M. Vermeulen

From the Library: The Floral Flyer

Posted in Around the Garden on August 8 2011, by Mertz Library

The Floral Flyer ran on weekends and holidays at The New York Botanical Garden from May 1949 until the early 1970s, when it was taken out of service. The Flyer is a precursor to the Tram available to today’s Garden visitors. Current tram operation began in the early 1990s and it is available daily.

An announcement about The Floral Flyer first appears in the April 1949 issue of The Journal of The New York Botanical Garden:

“OPERATION of a three-car tractor train around the grounds of the New York Botanical Garden is scheduled to begin in May, provided the roadway now nearing completion over the new bridge across the Bronx River is ready for use by that time. The train, which is similar to those borrowed from the Zoo for tours of the grounds during Garden Week in May 1945, is the gift of Mrs. Harold Irving Pratt, who played a prominent part in the plans for the Botanical Garden’s 50th Anniversary celebration at that time. It is to be named the Floral Flyer.

“Each of the three cars will hold 16 passengers. While the train’s schedule and route have not yet been determined, it is expected that it will go to the Conservatory, along the road through the woods to the new bridge in the vicinity of the Rose Garden, north from the Rose Garden along the gorge of the Bronx River, skirting the Hemlock Forest, the collections of deciduous trees, and the magnolias, then turning westward over the boulder bridge and south to the Museum building.”

Mrs. Pratt herself christened The Floral Flyer on May 26 using a watering can filled with daylilies “as emblematic of the New York Botanical Garden’s scientific and horticultural accomplishments.”

The Flyer made more than one thousand round-trips over the Memorial Day weekend, in 1949. The fare that first summer for non-members was twenty cents for a twenty-minute, gas-powered ride. The cost of a modern day tram ride is included in the price of All-Garden Pass or Membership.