Preparation for a Year of Beauty

Posted in Gardens and Collections, People on November 20 2008, by Plant Talk

Next year marks the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York. The New York Botanical Garden will be part of the statewide celebration, bringing a touch of Holland to the Bronx with a Dutch bulb flower show in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory in the spring and a four-season display, including bulbs, along Seasonal Walk. Here we take a look at the planning for Seasonal Walk, which today is celebrated with a ceremonial planting with the designers and HRH Princess Margriet of the Netherlands, among others.

Karen Daubmann is Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays.

Our mission was clear but nevertheless daunting: Design a garden that will look luscious from April to November 2009 and one that has Dutch overtones to fit with the Henry Hudson quadricentennial festivities.

The planning team mulled these thoughts and came up with an ideal solution. And so, with support from the International Flower Bulb Center, the Botanical Garden commissioned world-renowned garden designer Piet Oudolf, a Netherlands native known for his “new wave planting” style, who has paired up with Jacqueline van der Kloet, also from the Netherlands, who is known for her finesse with flower bulb design.

The location for the planting is along Seasonal Walk, two garden beds—one measuring 184 feet by 10 feet and the other 86 feet by 6 feet—nestled between the Conservatory Lawn and the Home Gardening Center. Garden installation began earlier this month and has continued through today’s ceremonial planting.

Since receiving the designs in July our horticultural staff has been busily growing and ordering the mixture of plants for this border. A complex spreadsheet controlled the frenzied process and kept track of sources, sizes, quantities, and inventoried amounts. The planting is an intense mix of favorites and new cultivars, including grasses, perennials and bulbs. In fact, several of the plants are Piet’s own introductions such as Echinacea ‘Fatal Attraction’, Geum ‘Flames of Passion’, and Salvia ‘Evaline’. We have planted 3,389 perennials and 12,100 spring-flowering bulbs. Next spring, we will plant and force 14,500 summer-flowering bulbs, which will add color to the border through the heat of summer.

The project has been exciting to work on. Each plant has been carefully researched and sourced. We tried our hardest to refrain from using substitutes, but in some cases Piet had selected cultivars not yet readily available in the United States.

Be inspired by our design team by reading about them in The New York Times and Chicago Tribune and by coming to see Seasonal Walk.