Late spring brings a richness to the Garden grounds in anticipation of the arrival of summer, with a cascade of flowers among the herbaceous peonies opposite the Conservatory, and the marching blooms of the ornamental onions popping up all along the Daylily Walk. The Native Plant Garden, too, is a spectacle you shouldn’t miss—reds, yellows, and greens fill this verdant landscape and create a utopia for local wildlife.
We’re proud to present the newly named ‘The Divine Miss M’ in honor of Bette Midler on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of her 1979 breakout film, The Rose. You can find this “totally decadent” bloom here in our Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden beginning on Rose Garden Weekend, Saturday & Sunday, June 1 & 2. Learn more about this special new rose in this video!
As part of #plantlove at NYBG, we’re talking with people from all over the Garden about what inspires their passion for plants. Today, meet Kadeesha Williams, Community Horticulturist and Urban Agriculturist with Bronx Green-Up at NYBG.
I’m lucky to have grown up surrounded by plants. My parents come from farming backgrounds in South Carolina, so it was natural to raise their own food when they moved to NYC. I often think of my family’s community garden, Taqwa Community Farm here in the Bronx, as the place where I first had my experiences with plants. It isn’t, though.
When I was three or four, my father and grandfather kept a garden in our backyard, and I remember how lush it always was. There was a rose of Sharon bush that grew to the size of a small tree, two Persian silk trees, and forsythia along the fence. In the middle they grew tomatoes, cucumbers, collard greens, and cabbage. I felt tiny walking through that garden, like a fairy princess in a magical forest. I dream about that place often, even as an adult, because of how it shaped the world I desire. I don’t think I’ve ever shaken that dream, and I want to share the experience with everyone.
Being in a garden should remind us of how small we are, and that is a beautiful thing.
The Azalea Garden is filled with spring color for our Mother’s Day Weekend Garden Party! Here, see some of Senior Curator of Woody Plants and Landscape Project Manager Deanna Curtis’s favorite semi-evergreen varieties in bloom, along with other surprises you can find in this unmissable spring collection.
As part of #plantlove at NYBG, we’re talking with people from all over the Garden about what inspires their passion for plants. Today, meet Daryl Beyers, Adult Education Gardening Program Coordinator and instructor at The New York Botanical Garden.
I grew up with a love-hate relationship with plants. I loved all the trees and flowers surrounding my childhood home but hated the three acres of lawn my father made me mow on the weekends. This consideration of plants as either inspiration or chore formed the horticultural ethic of my university studies in landscape design and my early professional practice in gardens. Then, while teaching my first gardening course at NYBG nearly a decade ago, I unearthed another plant-people relationship: “To grow a plant is to know a plant.”
The fierce curiosity of my students to learn and understand the how and why of gardening showed me how and why we all connect with plants. Our #plantlove manifests in many ways, such as through the care and attention given to a houseplant, the calming influence of a groves of trees, or the exuberance of walking through wildflowers. Every plant has its charm, but as they charm us we charm them too, into forms and functions that shape where and how we live. That’s what gardening is.
If you’ve never thought of taking up composting before, or you simply never thought it was possible while living in a New York City apartment, the NYC Compost Project hosted by NYBG is here to help.
Whether it’s the eagerly anticipated waves of azalea blooms, the beauty and perfume of the lilacs, or the crowds of colorful warblers that migrate through the Garden, May is a particularly picturesque month at NYBG. And there’s plenty to do beyond admire the scenery. Lilac Weekend kicks off tomorrow with activities, live music, and the return of our Plein-Air Invitational, followed by the games, music, and food of our Mother’s Day Weekend Garden Party. Soon after, Spring Uncorked brings the region’s best wineries back to the Garden for drinks and fun in our 250 acres. If you’ve been waiting to visit, consider this your signal!
As part of #plantlove at NYBG, we’re talking with people from all over the Garden about what inspires their passion for plants and our environment. Today, meet Fabian Michelangeli, Curator in the Institute of Systematic Botany at NYBG.
I grew up outside Caracas, Venezuela, on the campus of a research institute where my dad is a researcher. All three of my maternal great uncles were systematists or taxonomists of some type, so it’s no surprise that I ended up working in biology. I always knew that this is what I would do, as I’ve always loved evolution and adaptations to new environments, and learning how organisms cope with that. Plants are a great system to answer questions about evolution and adaptation.
I’ve gone collecting from areas at sea level to those at 13,000 feet above; places where you collect from your car, to places that require a week’s hike, or many days by boat. I’d rather be cold and wet in my tent than sitting at my computer. For my undergraduate thesis, I did an ecological study on the top of a mountain in southern Venezuela, by myself for a week while focusing on small mats of vegetation that grow on rocks. That, to me, is still one of the best weeks of my life, 25 years later.
Be here now! The beauty of spring is swinging for the fences throughout our 250 acres, and we’ve got five highlights in particular that you won’t want to miss in this season of rapid color and change.
Daffodil Hill is a must-see, as are the flowering trees—like cherries and magnolias. Our first spring in the new Edible Academy is a great opportunity for families to get their hands dirty in the vegetable gardens, and as you explore, don’t forget to keep an eye out for migratory birds in this time of renewal.
As part of #plantlove at NYBG, we’re talking with people from all over the Garden about what inspires their passion for plants and our environment. Today, meet Jessica Tobon, Outreach & Education Coordinator for the NYC Compost Project at NYBG.
I love growing plants, learning their names, and watching them change day by day, a passion I discovered back in 2012. After graduating with a business degree, I found myself going through overwhelming family troubles, and my professors recommended I take a chance on something new. Soon after, I completed a six-week landscape architecture program at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. My new career path was clear, and I continued learning about plants while earning a Horticulture Certificate at NYBG, as well as a Master Composter Certificate with the NYC Compost Project. As a plant lover, it’s important for me to help close the cycle between plant cultivation and decomposition. Today I train Bronx volunteers and residents to compost their plant waste, and hopefully help inspire people to become plant lovers themselves.
