Gregory Long is President and CEO of The New York Botanical Garden.
On Saturday, April 10, the Botanical Garden celebrates the opening of its new Midtown Education Center with a free Open House and programs involving New York City’s finest gardening authors and professionals. I invite you to drop in at the Center at 20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues) for the event, which will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Speak with the Garden’s experienced instructors in Botanical Art & Illustration, Floral Design, Gardening, and Landscape Design. Take mini-classes, watch demonstrations, hear about the skills you can learn, and review portfolios of current students while considering the courses from among the daytime, evening, and weekend classes.
Since 1917, The New York Botanical Garden’s Adult Education Program has helped students receive unmatched horticultural training. Many of our students have discovered new careers through the Garden; others have cultivated their passion for new, rewarding green hobbies. The top-notch instructors, hands-on classes and seminars, and engaging lecture series you’ve come to expect from the Botanical Garden are now conveniently located just two blocks from Grand Central Terminal.
Jessica Blohm is Interpretive Specialist for Public Education.
The statue of La Giraldilla you see atop a tower in the Conservatory’s Palms Gallery reflecting pool as you enter The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower represents one of the most ancient and best-loved symbols of the city of Havana. The statue sits atop one of the oldest stone fortresses in the Americas, Castillo de la Real Fuerza (Castle of the Royal Force), a defensive fort built in 1538 after an attack on Havana by French pirates.
The bronze statue, created by Cuban sculptor Jeronimo Martin Pinzon, was added to the Castle in the early 1630s. The female figure is thought to represent Doña Isabel de Bobadilla, wife of Cuban Governor Hernando de Soto. When Governor de Soto sailed from Havana in 1539 to conquer Florida, he left Doña Isabel to govern in his stead, making her Havana’s only female governor.
Legend has it that from that day on, Doña Isabel spent hours in the highest part of the Castle awaiting her husband’s return. Governor de Soto died four years after his departure from Cuba on the banks of the great river he discovered, the Mississippi. A few days later, Doña Isabel is reported to have died of a broken heart. She is posed forever looking out to sea for her husband’s ship.
Laura Collier is Marketing Associate at The New York Botanical Garden.
Since I started working at the Garden, my friends, family, and acquaintances assume I instantly acquired all sorts of plant-related knowledge. I have to politely explain that, while I love being at the Garden, my position doesn’t provide me with a wealth of horticultural learning. But, times arise when it’s time to step up and get some hands-on training. And that’s exactly what I’ve done with The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower.
Besides regularly stopping by the Conservatory on my lunch break to check out the show and all its blooms, I’ve decided to purchase an orchid from Shop in the Garden, to bring a bit of the show to my home in Queens. Luckily, I’m not expected to be an expert at the Shop when picking out flowers. Along the shelves full of orchids are signs with great tips about orchid care and details about each type. (For more great tips, click here)
Garden Scientist Talk Reveals What’s New in Northeastern N. America
Robert Naczi, Ph.D., is Curator of North American Botany.
Since its founding in 1891, The New York Botanical Garden has been a center of scientific study of the plant life of northeastern North America. Generations of Garden scientists have been active in writing books that aid in the identification of plants that grow spontaneously within this vast region, which extends from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota, and south to Virginia and northern Missouri (more than 25 percent of the area of the contiguous United States). This region hosts about 5,000 species, including many that are essential for a healthy environment, economically important, and quite beautiful, such as Lilium superbum (turk’s-cap lily, pictured here).
The most recent book on the subject is Manual of Vascular Plants of Northeastern United States and Adjacent Canada by Henry A. Gleason and Arthur Cronquist (1991, The New York Botanical Garden Press; also available electronically). Professors, students, land managers, conservationists, and gardeners universally regard it as an indispensable reference. Advances in botany since 1991 have made a major revision of the Manual an obvious necessity.
At Shop in the Garden we celebrate the 2010 edition of The Orchid Show with two
marvelous books that show the fascination these charismatic plants have had on artists, horticulturists, and botanists over the years.
Surely one of the most useful orchid books to come down the pike in a long while is Bloom-Again Orchids by judywhite (sic. for that is indeed the way to spell her name, all lowercase, like a specific epithet).
Here is a book designed to correct an all-too-common condition: orchids that sit on windowsills and sulk without either growing or dying. By emphasizing plants that normal human beings can cajole into bloom and are likely to encounter in the marketplace, i.e., big-box stores, supermarket shelves, mall kiosks, florist windows, and of course, botanical garden gift shops, Bloom-Again Orchidsis accessible and unique. It demystifies home orchid-growing in a very concise way, with an A-to-Z of 50 beautiful varieties, each one annotated with an easy-to-understand, 12-point checklist.
The second book is one that is good to have available again: Volume 17 of The Works of Charles Darwin: The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilized by Insects. In this work the controversial naturalist continues his investigation of adaptations in the natural world. His astonishing powers of detailed observation combined with his sense of something larger at work are conveyed with an ease and naturalness that is pure poetry.
Both books, of course, are available at Shop in the Garden.
Noelle V. Dor is Museum Education Intern in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden.
As the days grow longer and the first signs of spring emerge throughout the landscape, the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden is heating up with Chocolate and Vanilla Adventures. While this flavorful exploration focuses on the botanical origins of these two popular food ingredients, it also offers a taste of cultural history.
From ice cream and milkshakes to candy and cakes, we learn early on to identify chocolate and vanilla as standards of deliciousness. But there’s much more beneath that sweet surface. Before the rise of dark chocolate as a healthier alternative to common milk chocolate, few people knew that pure cacao (chocolate) is actually bitter. As well, the taste of real vanilla is just as obscure, due to its high cost and limited usage in mainstream food products.
Considering how chocolate and vanilla have been modified, added to, and substituted, it’s no wonder many of us have no clue about their plant origins! As both an educator and a learner at the Children’s Adventure Garden, I’m thrilled this program can bring everyone back to the “root” of the matter, so to speak.
Some 100-Year-Old Specimens Destroyed; 150 Others Damaged
Todd Forrest is Vice President for Horticulture and Living Collections.
While gardeners are accustomed to coping with the slings and arrows of outrageous weather, this winter has tested the patience of even the most experienced horticulturists among the Garden’s staff. Two wet, heavy snowstorms in February caused significant damage to the Garden’s historic trees, but nothing prepared us for the damage of the nor’easter that hit New York the weekend of March 13 and 14.
The deep snow that fell only two weeks before had not even completely melted when the torrential rains started late in the week of March 8. The combination of snowmelt and rain completely saturated the ground, creating the perfect conditions for what foresters call “wind throw”—trees, roots and all, torn out of the ground by fierce winds. With winds holding steady at between 30 and 40 mph and gusting to over 70 mph, many of the Garden’s historic trees had no chance.
By Sunday, March 14, 50 of our trees, including many historic conifers planted in the early 1900s and oaks older than the Garden itself, were lying across the ground. More than 150 other trees lost limbs or were otherwise damaged. Nearly every small tree planted in fall 2009 was uprooted. While our arborists will be assessing the full extent of the devastation for weeks to come, we are already mourning the loss of some of our favorite trees, including a Ponderosa pine planted in the Ross Conifer Arboretum in 1904 and a blue Atlas cedar planted in the Benenson Ornamental Conifers in 1966.
Lecture Series Presents Fritz Haeg on Replacing Suburban Lawns
Replace your front lawn with a diverse edible landscape: Fritz Haeg, author of Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn, will show you how March 25, from 10 a.m. to noon, in the last installment of the Adult Education gardening lecture series From the Ground Up: Gardens Re-Imagined.
Edible Estates is Fritz’s ongoing project that converts lawns into productive landscapes. He will discuss the related social and environmental issues the project addresses, and look at the historical progression of urban land use, gardening as a form of activism and survival, and the growing interest in urban agriculture.
Get new ideas on how to shape your front lawn into a garden of eating.
Let’s See Your Pictures of The Orchid Show and the Outdoors
Saturday marks the first day of spring! Bulbs are popping up all over. Birds are singing their songs in anticipation of mating season. The Orchid Show: Cuba in Flower is in glorious display.
We invite you to visit the Garden with your camera during this marvelous season and during this stunning orchid exhibition. Share your beautiful images on our Flickr site, where dozens of visitors have already done so.
Gregory Long is President and CEO of The New York Botanical Garden.
On Saturday, April 10, the Botanical Garden celebrates the opening of its new Midtown Education Center with a free Open House and programs involving New York City’s finest gardening authors and professionals. I invite you to drop in at the Center at 20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues) for the event, which will run from 10:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Speak with the Garden’s experienced instructors in Botanical Art & Illustration, Floral Design, Gardening, and Landscape Design. Take mini-classes, watch demonstrations, hear about the skills you can learn, and review portfolios of current students while considering the courses from among the daytime, evening, and weekend classes.
