Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Posted in Photography on June 6 2014, by Lansing Moore
How about some color after a rainy day? The Painted Sage is painting the Perennial Garden bright shades of pink and purple.
Salvia viridis var. comata ‘Marble Arch Blue’ and ‘Marble Arch Rose’ – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Photography on June 4 2014, by Lansing Moore
The stunning Therese Bugnet rose is in full bloom in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. Ever wonder about the people for whom your favorite plant species are named? Well, this cultivar is actually named after the sister of the man who introduced it, Georges Bugnet. This Canadian writer and plant aficionado bred this rose to endure harsh winters, making it quite a hardy plant indeed! Our friend Therese here is only one of hundreds of varieties that you can enjoy this weekend at the Rose Garden Celebration!
Rosa ‘Therese-Bugnet’ in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
Posted in Around the Garden, Mario Batali's Edible Garden on June 2 2014, by Lansing Moore
Encouraging families to eat better and live healthier lives is a matter of reconnecting people, especially city-dwellers, with where their favorite fresh fruits and veggies come from and how much better they taste when grown with local care. NYBG has long offered such programs to let kids see their greens at all stages of growth before they end up on their plates, and to meet the growing demand for garden-based educational programs we launched the Edible Academy initiative.
While our array of educational and family programs, including Mario Batali’s Kitchen Gardens, continue to make a difference in the community, the ultimate aim of the Edible Academy is to double the number of those we serve through the opening of a three-acre, state-of-the-art complex on the Garden grounds. Including an amphitheater, children’s garden, and educational greenhouse, the Edible Academy is our vision of the bright future for family nutrition and educational outdoor fun. And, once again, our friends at Whole Foods Market are helping to make that vision real.
Posted in Programs and Events on May 30 2014, by Lansing Moore
For all the picnics, festivals, and fun activities, it can be easy to forget that the Garden is also a place of rigorous research and scholarship. What, after all, does the “B” stand for in “NYBG”? Come find out this weekend at our Annual Science Open House! The Garden’s top science staff will be leading expert tours that go behind the scenes of one of the country’s premier plant research entities.
Enjoy a guided tour of the Steere Herbarium, the largest herbarium in the Western Hemisphere—and among the four largest in the world—with 7.3 million preserved plant specimens! Begin a collection of your own with our hands-on collecting demos, including fungi and plant collecting demonstrations from the inimitable Roy Halling and Donald McClelland, respectively. Meet the scientists studying DNA and genomes in a tour of the state-of-the-art Pfizer Plant Research Laboratory. You’ll look at the Garden grounds and all of nature in a new light! Bring the family and encourage a love of science in your little ones.
Read on for a comprehensive run-down of our Science Open House programming, as well as the schedule of our regular Groundbreakers activities.
Posted in Programs and Events on May 29 2014, by Lansing Moore
This summer is flying by in a blaze of blooming colors! June begins in just a few days, so don’t blink or you’ll miss the season for your favorite buds, including that flower that never goes out of style—the rose.
There is no better place to appreciate the sublime variety and beauty of roses than in the Garden’s own Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, a landmark 1916 design by Beatrix Farrand. So join us next weekend for the Rose Garden Celebration on June 7 and 8 to admire over 670 varieties of rose at the height of their natural color, in high style. Refreshments, live entertainment, activities, and rosarians offering their expertise will all form part of this festive tribute to one of the greatest gems on the Garden’s grounds. Read on for more details!
Posted in Programs and Events on May 23 2014, by Lansing Moore
Happy Friday! It’s a particularly happy one because it’s almost Memorial Day. That means we have three days of exciting activities for all ages lined up to help you celebrate the official beginning of summer at the Garden with a well-deserved long weekend.
This weekend is the time to revel in the lyricism of past masters with this Saturday’s Groundbreakers Poetry Reading, an enlightening journey to a past century through the words of Edna St. Vincent Millay—words you can also see adorning the grounds in our Groundbreakers Poetry Walk. None other than renowned feminist poet Eavan Boland will be in attendance to recite these classic poems. Meanwhile, the little ones can celebrate Memorial Day with the uplifting music of John Philip Sousa and make some tunes of their own during SousaKazooza! It’s just one of a whole roster of new family programs we have lined up for summer—and it all begins this weekend at the Garden!
Click through for more details on all the ways you can enjoy the world of Groundbreakers, and explore a glittering era of America’s past this Memorial Day Weekend.
Posted in Programs and Events on May 22 2014, by Lansing Moore
Gardening is both an art and a science. While our new Groundbreakers exhibition examines the art of landscape architecture and ornamental plantings, next week’s Annual Science Open House will dive headfirst into the cutting-edge research and history of innovation that distinguishes NYBG. It’s amazing to witness the variety of work that goes on at the Garden, much of which goes unseen by visitors who come to admire the serene landscape. Join expert tour guides next week on an exclusive peek behind the scenes of the real “groundbreaking” work that goes on right here in New York.
The Open House kicks off next Thursday, May 29, with our not-to-be-missed evening hosted by bestselling authors Elizabeth Gilbert and Amy Stewart. Click through for complete details on all four days of scientific exploration!
Posted in Programs and Events on May 21 2014, by Lansing Moore
The centerpiece of the new Groundbreakers exhibit is naturally the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and its interpretation of The Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Maine, but the exhibit continues throughout the Garden grounds. There is much to enjoy outdoors under the bright May sun, and the Groundbreakers Poetry Walk offers moments of reflection to those who stroll through the Perennial Garden and beyond. Occasionally, as on this Saturday, May 24, we set aside some time for a live reading with one of poetry’s greats—one such as Eavan Boland.
This year’s poetry displays honor the spirit of Groundbreaking women from the early 20th Century with the works of Edna St. Vincent Millay, the third woman to ever win the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Her eloquent writing captures the beauty of nature while evoking the cultural triumphs of the era she lived in alongside the Groundbreakers celebrated in the exhibit. Millay was a fascinating figure and poetry aficionados and history buffs alike will not want to miss out on this Saturday’s Groundbreakers Poetry Reading. Click through for details about Millay’s life, and more on this exciting poetry event!
Posted in Exhibitions on May 16 2014, by Lansing Moore
Beginning tomorrow, we throw open the gates to America’s grand estates in Groundbreakers: Great American Gardens and the Women Who Designed Them. This show examines early 20th-century America’s boom in garden culture, with groundbreaking women leading the charge in the fields of landscape architecture, design, and photography.
The centerpiece of this exciting exhibit—a must for aficionados of historic homes and gardens—is Mrs. Rockefeller’s Garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. This interpretation of the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Garden in Maine evokes one of the most stunning properties designed by Beatrix Farrand, one of the Groundbreakers examined in the show. Farrand, along with Marian Coffin and Ellen Shipman, represents a pivotal moment in history, from the end of the Gilded Age to the height of the Jazz Age. Their lives, times, and careers will be the subject of exhibition components throughout the Garden grounds.
For a taste of what’s in store, check out Edward Rothstein’s latest write-up of our brand new summer exhibition in The New York Times. Read on for the full list of this weekend’s programs surrounding Groundbreakers, including all-new children’s activities and plenty of musical interludes!
Posted in Programs and Events on May 14 2014, by Lansing Moore
Only two more weeks until Elizabeth Gilbert and Amy Stewart come to the Garden for what promises to be one of the most engaging and inspiring evenings of the summer—and we can hardly wait! On May 29, attendees will enjoy a private viewing of the Garden’s triennial exhibit of botanical art, Weird, Wild, & Wonderful in the Ross Gallery. 46 works in a variety of media from a talented selection of contemporary botanical artists display nature’s most unusual plants as you’ve never seen them before.
Specialty cocktails will be available for purchase during the viewing, crafted by none other than Amy Stewart herself, the celebrated author of The Drunken Botanist, a bestselling guide to the plants at the root—as it were—of our favorite drinks. Truly an indispensable gardening tool. The recipes for this evening include the “Kind-hearted Monster,” inspired by Asuka Hishiki’s outstanding illustration of Solanum lycopersicum—or heirloom tomato—featured in the exhibit.