This Week in the Family Garden: Scarecrows Return

Posted in Programs and Events on October 3 2012, by Matt Newman

Walking around the NYBG on this misty Wednesday afternoon, you can already make out hints of Halloween creeping into the Garden. The jack o’ lanterns peeking out from atop the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden archway are a dead giveaway. And this weekend, Annie Novak and the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden do them one better by welcoming an age-old tradition back to our vegetable plots. Leave the chicken wire at home, skip the raised beds, and grab a burlap sack: the scarecrows are slinking in!

As of Saturday and Sunday, the Family Garden’s vegetables see the silhouettes of autumn’s most iconic bird-shooing bodyguards, and we need your kids to help put them together. We’ll supply the poles, twine, floppy hats and straw, just so long as they bring their creativity. And that imagination easily carries over to our other activities for the weekend, like making corn husk dolls and exploring the nine restaurant kitchen gardens of Mario Batali’s Edible Garden.

We’re sure to have plenty of other spooky adventures playing out in the Family Garden as October rolls on, but this is a rare chance to take part in our yearly scarecrow shindig, so be there on the 6, 7, or 8 to help piece together our straw men!

The Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden is open daily from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. (including Monday, October 8, in celebration of Columbus Day). Join us for Scarecrow Weekend on Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, or attend our fall fruit cooking demonstrations at 2 and 4 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday.