View Holiday Train Show, Ex Libris Exhibition, and More
Before sitting down to turkey and stuffing, come enjoy the bounty of the Garden, which is open on Thanksgiving Day this year, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Garden will have extended hours for the remainder of the weekend for your enjoyment, relaxation, and gift shopping: from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday through Sunday, November 27–29.
250 acres of fall beauty—Catch the end of autumn’s colorful display in the gardens and Native Forest.
Holiday shopping and lunch—Find wonderful gifts for everyone on your list at Shop in the Garden and then grab lunch or a snack at one of our two Cafes.
The New York Botanical Garden is thankful for your patronage and support. Come share the day and the long holiday weekend with us, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Excitement Builds Waiting to See Show for First Time
Laura Collier is Marketing Associate at The New York Botanical Garden.
Ah, yes. The first month of a new job. So many exciting possibilities, but also so many questions! I just moved to New York City and just started at The New York Botanical Garden, so there certainly is a lot to learn. Since my first day, I’ve been happy to be thrown right into the mix, learning quickly about the Garden, the events, collections, location of the lunchroom—the general “first-week 101.”
It’s an especially busy time here, preparing for the huge Holiday Train Show, which opens this weekend. It’s been interesting to see how much the staff and volunteers look forward to this event. Whenever someone mentions the Holiday Train Show, their voice changes a bit. When they find out that I’ve never been to the show, they immediately drop what they are doing to tell me about how beautiful the Conservatory looks when it’s all decorated and lit up or about their favorite landmark replica, like Yankee Stadium or the Brooklyn Bridge. Maybe they even mention that they secretly like The Little Engine That Could™ Puppet Show and that they are glad to have a 3-year-old nephew to use as an excuse to see it again this year. (Don’t worry; your secret is safe with me.)
Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden includes a display of detailed and fragrant gingerbread creations by renowned pastry chefs in and around New York. Here Leslie Randazzo, co-owner with her husband, Mark Randazzo, of Mark Joseph Cakes, describes how they conceptualized and executed their design.
Although Mark and I had never worked with gingerbread before, we were so enthusiastic about making our gingerbread debut in The New York Botanical Garden’s annual holiday exhibit. Yes, Mark is a pastry chef, but he specializes in custom cakes, so this was quite different.
This year’s theme, “Gingerbread People at Work and at Play,” left us wondering “What do gingerbread people do?” I called my nephew, Harry, whose immediate response was, “the same things we do.” Aha! Brilliant! With our target audience being kids, we thought about careers revered by children. It was my sister who suggested firemen. Then we were on a roll. Mark and I share a love for New York City’s pre-war architecture, so there was no question that we’d model our main structure after an old FDNY house. Through research, Mark found one in Manhattan on Lafayette Street that is stunning.
Our next order of business was a crash course in gingerbread structures, namely, keeping them up. For this, Mark made an icing that was similar in consistency to cement. We cut the gingerbread dough into the dimensions that were already carefully calculated. These large pieces make up the main structure. Then we cut gingerbread dough into equally sized rectangles. These were used as a second layer, to achieve the stones the building is made of. Laying the “stones” was extremely time consuming, because the firehouse had so many dimensions and different shapes to work around and each “stone” had to be trimmed to fit precisely in the appropriate space. The windows were made using a sculptor’s molding material that we melted and poured into the gingerbread’s square openings. As it dried, it solidified beautifully. To light the inside, we used LED Christmas lights that we clipped short. For the roof, we thought the perfect candy would be bite-sized black licorice that we would line up to look like shingles. Unfortunately, after placing on more than half of the licorice we discovered that the oily coating used to keep the pieces from sticking together in the package were also keeping them from sticking to the icing. The solution was Nilla® wafers. We were concerned that they wouldn’t cut easily with a knife, but they worked quite well.
Once the main structure was completed, we began adding the details. Red Twizzlers® were used for each window frame, and icing was piped on to create the appearance of snow. The fire truck was decorated using a sugar dough called “gum paste.” Then we designed the wintry fun that one notices when examining the display closely such as the snowball fight and the boy making a snow angel as the firemen look on.
This entire experience was so rewarding; it felt like a tremendous accomplishment after a total of 70 hours of labor. It was great fun and well worth the effort.
Karen Daubmann is Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays.
Planning for the holiday celebrations at the Garden starts long in advance. At this time last year the holiday display in the Reflecting Pool in the Leon Levy Visitor Center was evaluated and decisions were made concerning additions, deletions, and upgrades for this year’s display.
In August, our Director of Arboretum, Grounds, and Gardens, Kurt Morrell, traveled to the mountains of North Carolina to select the trees that would be used. Since big trees are hard to come by, the location of the farm must be kept a secret. We use a 28-foot tree in the center, surrounded by eight smaller trees. Always working well in advance of each project, Kurt has earmarked several trees that are being groomed for the years to come. Fraser fir, Abies fraseri, is his tree of choice. It lasts well from mid-November through mid-January, has nice structure and color, and the branches are stiff enough to support the weight of the large ornaments and the huge pine cones, which are from Pinus lambertiana, sugar pine, native to California.
To reduce energy use, we decided to change over to LED lights this year; the orders had to be placed earlier than usual, beginning in early summer. The lights arrived by early autumn and awaited installation—more than 19,000 bulbs just for the Reflecting Pool trees. Vendors were selected for the lighting and the decorating, and all waited for the November 10 arrival of the trees, ready to put the plan in motion.
The trees left North Carolina early Saturday morning, November 8, on a special, extra-long trailer. They arrived at the Garden two mornings later and were met by a crew from the outdoor gardens staff and a large crane. After the trees were placed in special steel tree stands, the crew from Frost Lighting leaped into action. It took three days to add the LED light strings to the trees. Meanwhile, the crew from Bowman Dahl Floral and Event Design arrived to clean and prep the ornaments, both those that were recycled from past shows and those that would be new additions.
Just five days after delivery, the vignette of trees was ready for its unveiling.
The NY Times, TV, and Even the New York Lottery Charmed
Nick Leshi is Associate Director of Public Relations and Electronic Media.
The Holiday Train Show at The New York Botanical Garden has been a magical must-see for more than 1 million visitors over the past 17 years. Edward Rothstein of The New York Times called it “exhilarating,” marveling at “the wonders of this annual show” that presents “New York through a looking glass.”
David Hartman, popular television personality, produced and narrated a charming documentary about the Holiday Train Show, revealing how the structures are made from natural materials and displayed to the delight of visitors of all ages. The documentary aired last year 528 times across the country on 285 PBS stations.
In case you missed it, below is a clip of the show. You can catch the entire program tonight, December 11, at 10:30 p.m. on Channel Thirteen/WNET-TV. It will air again several times during December on PBS, including on WLIW-TV; check the online schedule. If you’re looking for a stocking stuffer or holiday gift for a loved one (or for yourself), the documentary is available on DVD at Shop in the Garden
After viewing the clip, you’ll see why the Holiday Train Show has been a sought-after location for singular New York events. That tradition again rang true last week when the New York Lottery awarded more than $17 million to two winners before replicas of the Empire State Building, Rockefeller Center, Radio City Music Hall, and others and to the delight of a festive crowd of visitors young and old that erupted into spontaneous congratulatory applause.
There have been other occasions over the years when Holiday Train Show visitors received an additional unexpected treat, including a marriage proposal between New York City police officers that was nationally broadcast on the Today show and a mayoral press conference that touted the wonders of the holiday season in New York. Amid the glow of twinkling lights in the Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the Holiday Train Show proved the perfect magical setting for these memorable events.
Make your own memories by coming to see the Holiday Train Show in person, through January 11, 2009. Tickets are available for purchase on the Garden’s Web site. See for yourselves what Mr. Rothstein in his review described as “this phantasmagorical landscape, which at twilight comes alive with illumination.”
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
As a kid growing up, just a few blocks from here, the only time I got to see model trains in action was occasionally during the holidays when the boy in the apartment across the hall would invite my three sisters and me to see—briefly and no touching allowed—his miniature landscape all set up with little people and trees and trains that could be glimpsed as they made their way around make-believe villages. I was younger and shorter and had to stand on tiptoe to try to get the full effect of this tabletop other world. Regardless, I always got a sense of something fun and magical happening.
My husband confirmed this. One of three boys and with a slew of neighborhood buddies, he talks of spending hours during the holidays watching and playing with model trains, moving around at will the tiny figures and buildings and ice rinks and track segments within the diminutive fake-snow-covered scenery.
Not until I was an adult did I have the chance to be immersed in the enchanting atmosphere that is so reminiscent of this childhood memory, thanks to the Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show. I’ve come back to see the show several times over the years and with family members both young and old.
There is something indescribable, something that makes your heart jump a beat, when you enter the Holiday Train Show and are immediately surrounded by twinkling lights, soft whistles, and tracks that wind around waterfalls and across overhead bridges and past magnificent replicas of New York landmarks. On closer inspection, you see that each of these 140 or so buildings is made from parts of plants! And as you bend down to investigate further, all of a sudden you glimpse a train approaching and stand back to watch the scene in awe. You look around and are beckoned by other vignettes; it keeps going. You are transported.
The Holiday Train Showhas gained wild popularity in its 17 years. Now that I work at the Garden, I have the benefit of seeing the show even during lunch breaks. My favorite time of day, though, is at dusk, when the show is especially charming and festive. This year the Garden will be open an extra hour on select days so you can enjoy the show well into the evening.
There is plenty to do, too, if you’d like to spend an entire day at the Garden: Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden; The Little Engine That Could™ puppet theater performance and a visit by Thomas the Tank Engine™ both later in the run; lunch and snacks at our two cafes, and holiday gift-getting at Shop in the Garden.
Another exhibition season ends this weekend with the closing of the ever-popular 
