Patrick Blanc‘s travels and expertise have taught him that no one plant can convey the true beauty of a vertical wall–the living art, as Francisca Coelho, our VP for Glasshouses and Exhibitions explains, can’t realize its full potential on the shoulders of an individual flower. That’s why this year’s Orchid Show is not only about spotlighting these captivating tropical blooms, but about complementing their place in one of our most complex and beautiful presentations of the last decade!
Taking the time for a trip to the Holiday Train Show is a family tradition New Yorkers have been revisiting for two decades–it doesn’t matter how old you are! But if you’ve never had a chance to see it before, making this year’s show your first visit might be one of the best ways to get in a little of that increasingly rare family time you’ve been looking for.
As we move through the last two weeks of holiday celebrations here at The New York Botanical Garden, we hope you’ll take a day and stop by. You really can’t know what you’re missing until you see it for yourself.
With wintery weather on the way, it hardly seems like the time to be talking roses. The forecast looks chilly and the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden has been “put to bed” for the season, so what is there to talk about?
How about completely changing the face of rose growing for home gardeners in the northeast? That’s what rose garden curator Peter Kukielski hopes to accomplish with the EarthKind™ Rose Trials beds, located just south of Daffodil Hill. The goal of the EarthKind™ program is to identify cultivars that combine beauty with proven durability in the landscape, and that means they’ll receive no water other than what falls from the sky, nor fertilizers or pesticides of any kind.
In case you hadn’t heard, the Garden offers a range of audio tours providing additional insights into our collections and exhibitions, as well as information about horticulture and the research initiatives going on here and across the world. Recently we told you about our partnership with the National Book Foundation and the Poetry Society of America, a collaboration undertaken to add a literary element to our tours.
Breaking developments in the world of giant pumpkin spiders! — How often do you get to write a sentence like that in all seriousness?
Artist Michael Natiello will be here this weekend carving up one of the world’s largest pumpkins. (You might know him as the man behind the Great Jack ‘O Lantern Blaze as well as the Haunted Pumpkin Garden here in the Children’s Adventure Garden).
We’re still basking the freakish glow of superstar sculptor Ray Villafane’s (on the right in this photo) wild zombie sculpture he constructed at the Garden using two of the world’s largest pumpkins. But by no means are the creepy carvings over with! This weekend will feature the supremely talented artist Michael Natiello (under the zombie’s hand)–the brains behind the spectacular Great Jack ‘O Lantern Blaze as well as our Haunted Pumpkin Garden here in the Children’s Adventure Garden.
Weather permitting however, Villafane’s pumpkin creation will only be on display for as long at it stays presentable and also as long as we can keep the wily Bronx wildlife from having their own pumpkin feasts.
For those of you who couldn’t be here last weekend, we put together a short video of Ray in his own words describing his process. All the gory, gourdy goodness is below!
The New York Botanical Garden didn’t just start growing traditional styles of Japanese chrysanthemum–called kiku in Japanese–on a whim. It’s a labor intensive process that the Japanese have been perfecting for centuries, passing down techniques from generation to generation. Some of the more complex display styles can take a team of gardeners almost a year to pull off, which also includes the fabrication of multiple sets of giant metal frameworks upon which the flowers are trained. Training the plant, forcing its buds, timing the blooms; kiku is most definitely not for novices.
Tropical Storm Irene and her friend Lee certainly left their mark across the northeast. They left a trail of downed trees, broken limbs, and leaves pretty much everywhere. Not only did it give the arborists and horticulturalists here at NYBG plenty of work, but it also provided a unique situation for a commissioned sculpture in the Palm Dome of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Internationally renowned installation artist Tetsunori Kawana–no stranger to working with natural materials–got the chance to try something new, recycling what would ultimately end up as compost or mulch into a sculpture, a “rebirth.”
Patrick Blanc‘s travels and expertise have taught him that no one plant can convey the true beauty of a vertical wall–the living art, as Francisca Coelho, our VP for Glasshouses and Exhibitions explains, can’t realize its full potential on the shoulders of an individual flower. That’s why this year’s Orchid Show is not only about spotlighting these captivating tropical blooms, but about complementing their place in one of our most complex and beautiful presentations of the last decade!
