What’s Beautiful Now: Orange Crush

Posted in What's Beautiful Now on October 25 2012, by Matt Newman

We gush over green for so much of the year that a quick break from the norm is more than welcome. So this week, I’m shifting focus for something a little more in line with the exuberance of the Halloween season, a hue that our resident photographer, Ivo Vermeulen, is all too willing to champion–at least if his favorite pair of garish pants has anything to say about it. I’d show you a picture but I’m under the impression we had to put a ban in writing to keep him from blinding visitors (though it certainly doesn’t stifle this Dutchman’s nationalism). In any case, it’s tough to live year-round in the northeast and not have at least the shadow of a soft spot for the fiery orange of autumn.

The changes around the NYBG are not always subtle. The tulip trees have slipped into their lemon yellows, and the boughs fringing the Forest follow suit with a citrus spectrum of their own. In the Home Gardening Center, neon orange chrysanthemums carry the torch for the flowers. It won’t be long now before we’re walking the Garden trails beneath an entirely different canopy, one splashed with all the painted warmth that winter tends to be so stingy with. But for now, we’ll take in all this early orange wonder while the weather’s still playing nice enough to leave our galoshes and down coats stuffed in the closet.

[Not a valid template]

We expect to see a flood of reds, golds, and everything in between rolling in through next week and reaching a fever peak early in November. We’ll have more on the fall leaf schedule as the season moves along, but until then, Ray Villafane‘s posse of orange pumpkin zombies is holding down the fort through October 31, right alongside our Spooky Nighttime Adventures going on October 26 through 28. Paired with what’s already happening around our 250 acres, there’s more than enough autumn brilliance to spread around.