The New York Botanical Garden has been named one of 10 recipients of the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Science Service, the highest honor for museums and libraries in the United States. The annual award, made by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) since 1994, recognizes institutions for outstanding social, educational, environmental, or economic contributions to their communities. The Botanical Garden will receive the National Medal at a ceremony held later in Washington, D.C., and a $10,000 award in recognition of its extraordinary contributions.
Rustin Dwyer is Visual Media Production Specialist at The New York Botanical Garden.
Thanksgiving is almost upon us and that means one thing at The New York Botanical Garden: The Holiday Train Show is coming!
The artists and craftsmen from Applied Imagination made their annual journey from Kentucky to set up and decorate an array amazing botanical creations and model trains. Right now, they’re busy inside the recently renovated Enid A. Haupt Conservatory They’re putting the finishing touches on in time for opening day this Saturday!
Join director of exhibitions Karen Daubmann for a quick tour of the making of the Holiday Train Show.
Poet Seminarian Finds Spirituality, Inspiration in Nature
Spencer Reece is one of three poets who will read classic favorites as well as their own work during A Season in Poetry, at the Garden on November 20, co-sponsored by the Poetry Society of America. Photo by Ruth Salvatore
I have never been to The New York Botanical Garden; I look forward to being there Saturday for A Season in Poetry. Nature inspires me. I find God in nature. If you think about it, much of the revelations in the Bible all happen outdoors, in nature—Moses coming down from Mount Sinai, Paul falling off his horse on the road to Damascus—very little happens indoors. The outdoors with its plants is rather churchy in its own right.
For the program, I will read the work of others poets of my choosing. I’ll also read one or two of my own poems from among those I’m working on for my second book, “The Upper Room,” which is due out with Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2014. The title refers to my room at the seminary in New Haven where I have lived in the process of Holy Orders for the Episcopal church. There is a small flower bed I can see out my window; it contains purple cornflowers.
Five seminarians live in the house, along with the Dean of the Divinity School, his wife, their child, and their Burmese Mountain Dog. One of our tasks as seminarians is to prepare a meal for the community once a week. It is a dinner for 100 to 150 people. Part of that duty requires cutting some of the cornflowers for the dinner parties. The cornflower is a delicate, easily broken flower, the petals shedding as rapidly as you pick them; something about their fragility speaks to me. The cornflowers look forlorn in their vase surrounded by all the food and people.
November 20th promises the reverse: three poets placed in a crowd of plants.
Laura Fenton is one crafty lady! We first ran across her work when she wrote about the giant pumpkins for AOL’s home and garden blog ShelterPop. We immediately loved her sense of humor (we thought about charging rent inside the pumpkins, too), and the more we looked, we realized we also loved her sensibility. Laura loves cooking and crafting with in-season, locally sourced veggies, fruits, and flowers (just like we do).
So, when we had the chance to ask her about her “Favorite Things” for holiday gift giving, we knew it would be a lovely, inspiring list full of hidden gems from the Shop in the Garden. See for yourself!
The Garden’s native Forest is home to two distinct populations of these small amphibians: Plethodon cinereus, the terrestrial Redback Salamander and Eurycea bislineata, the aquatic Northern Two-Lined Salamander.
The New York Botanical Garden has been named one of 10 recipients of the 2010 National Medal for Museum and Library Science Service, the highest honor for museums and libraries in the United States. The annual award, made by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) since 1994, recognizes institutions for outstanding social, educational, environmental, or economic contributions to their communities. The Botanical Garden will receive the National Medal at a ceremony held later in Washington, D.C., and a $10,000 award in recognition of its extraordinary contributions.
The New York Botanical Garden