Plan Your Weekend: Bulbs the Focus in Family Garden

Posted in Programs and Events on May 15 2009, by Plant Talk

Plant Edible Bulbs, Weave Onion-Dyed Cloth, and More

Annie Novak is coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.

Here’s a sight not often seen at the Howell Family Garden: Toby Adams, Manager, holding back tears.

Truth be told, I didn’t see it either. One morning I wandered into the Family Garden by following the tasty smell of soup. Alas, it was not lunchtime. I learned instead, that in preparation for Bulbs Unearthed, part of the Dig, Plant, Grow! program at the Howell Family Garden, Toby and staff the previous afternoon had peeled several hundred onions in an act that must have made several grown men cry. Then they boiled the skins into a Macbethian brew of yellow and green dyes. Into this concoction went strips of cloth. After a brewing period, the fabric was set to dry in the sun. The end result of all that labor? Beautiful honey-colored material ready to be woven into bracelets by our visitors.

Our craft successes with onions so far have been most popular with folks with braiding experience. “More often than not, it’s the little girl teaching the father to braid,” staffer Junior Schoulton reports. Visitors not so adept at braiding, however, are welcomed to help our gardeners plant scallions or to use colored pencils to capture on paper the last tulip blooms fading from the meadow.

If all that isn’t enough, from 2 to 5 p.m. on June 6 and 7 staff from the Wyckoff Farmhouse Museum in Brooklyn will share traditional Dutch crafts with our visitors, such as they did this past weekend. The reception was enthusiastic: snacking on freshly churned butter with oregano, attempting to roll wooden hoops across the lawn, and decorating ceramic tiles were just a few of the activities the Wyckoff staff provided. Shirley, who happily operated the butter churn with the help of several visitors, confirmed the general enthusiasm. “The kids are loving it. Mostly it’s the parents who say, ‘That’s all there is to it? I’m going to make my own butter!’” Additional activities the Wyckoff staff will offer in June are apple pressing and ink-making as well as lessons in using quill pens.

Although it’s a bummer to lose our tulip blossoms to the warming weather and heavy rain, I’ve noticed flowering onions’ purple tops puckering up by the pond. These gorgeous alliums allow the bulbs’ showy season to go out with a bang. My favorite bulb trick? Saving the giant alliums’ blooms to dry as Independence Day flower-fireworks!

Bulbs Unearthed will be featured in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. through June 7.

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