Hundreds, thousands, millions of daffodils. (That’s the goal, anyway!) These sunny-faced beauties are blooming en masse throughout the Garden, lighting up Daffodil Hill, Daffodil Valley, and so many spaces in between, turning our 250 acres in New York City into the quintessential spring landscape.
The best way to experience it, of course, is with a glass of wine in hand—red, white, whatever your taste, we’ll have something to pique your palette this coming weekend, April 23 & 24. Our Daffodil & Wine Weekend is a great opportunity to take in the beauty of early spring, not to mention the good-and-getting-better weather.
While you’re here, purchase a wine sampling glass for a few dollars and visit a fleet of attending New York State vintners offering local wine tastings, winemaking demonstrations, and other presentations on their craft.
What a beautiful Friday! And the weather promises to remain gorgeous throughout the weekend, which is terrific news for our Spring Wine Festival! This is the first event in our Spring Festival Series and it promises to be a palate-pleasing journey for everyone. Gourmet food samples paired with delicious wines from our participating vendors will be served near the Native Plant Garden, and guests can then enjoy the aromas and sensations of spring with a tour of this cutting-edge, 3.5-acre installation presenting a dramatic 230-foot-long water feature as its centerpiece.
Along with live acoustic music by Milton near the Reflecting Pool, the Native Plant Garden Education Pavilion will host a full series of winemaking and wine pairing workshops conducted by visiting vendors and NYBG experts. Click through for the full list of topics as well as the rest of this weekend’s program schedule!
When I feel like going on a culinary adventure, I’ll often travel to the Polish markets in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint. It’s one of the few places that I can find one of my favorite items, a drink or syrup made from chokeberries (Aronia melanocarpa). You simply dilute the syrup with mineral water to create a refreshing beverage with a robust berry flavor reminiscent of black currants—minus the bitter edge.
European markets tend to offer a wealth of products like this, many of them made from herbs and berries that you won’t often find in the mainstream North American marketplace. They herald back to a time when people lived off the land and were more intimately connected with their natural environment.
We often assess native plants in terms of their ornamental value, but rarely view them in terms of their culinary value, even though there is a long and colorful history of foraging and using native species in our kitchens. For the most part, these traditions have since been isolated to local communities and small groups of enthusiasts.
Try and name a few important crops, just off the top of your head. Were grapes or hops found anywhere on that list? They probably weren’t the first plants to come to mind, but there’s almost no doubt whatsoever: they’re two of the most constant influences on culture throughout our history. Beer and wine have been the indulgence of choice for entire civilizations, from Pharaohs to Caesars and up through our modern society.
As part of our Botany of Indulgence classroom series (see: chocolate), Donald McClelland brings his homebrewing know-how to our Midtown classrooms for an in-depth chat on the art and science of fermentation, pegging perfect flavors, and the equipment needed to start your own cask or keg at home. His experience is soundly based on personal necessity (and the life of a student, of course).
Hundreds, thousands, millions of daffodils. (That’s the goal, anyway!) These sunny-faced beauties are blooming en masse throughout the Garden, lighting up Daffodil Hill, Daffodil Valley, and so many spaces in between, turning our 250 acres in New York City into the quintessential spring landscape.
