Building on his success in last year’s Family Garden events, the legendary Babbo chef will once again join with the NYBG in raising awareness about the power of the foods we buy and eat. Along with Mario’s partners, Lidia and Joe Bastianich, the trio’s B&B Hospitality Group honors this year’s Earth Day with a special promotion at each of its restaurants in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, sending every patron of their fine B&B restaurants home with a special Earth Day gift. Not only will you leave well-fed, but you’ll do so with a packet of B&BHG’s organic Cherry Belle™ radish seeds. It also doubles as a two-for one ticket offer to visit the NYBG this summer, all in the name of bringing environmental responsibility home.
We think everyone should treat each and every square on the calendar like it’s Earth Day; we’re loud proponents of keeping the environment healthy and ship-shape. But on the celebratory front, we like to pile our events into one spectacular week of sunny spring days. So if you’re searching for a way to show the planet that you appreciate all it’s done for you, and you want to give back, we have just the thing. Read on for all that’s going down with The New York Botanical Garden and its partners, here and around New York City!
This weekend we enter the home stretch of the Orchid Show balanced on a bittersweet note. Thousands of visitors have had the opportunity to experience Patrick Blanc’s inspiring vertical architecture, stepping under, around, and between the reaching walls of tropical foliage and luxuriant orchid flowers. This year’s spring display is a masterwork only “The Green Man” could have conjured.
Going into the final week of our tenth anniversary exhibition, we encourage everyone who hasn’t yet made the short trip to the Bronx to put on some comfortable shoes and step out for a day at the Garden. Between the sunlit brilliance of these spring afternoons and the rare form of the Orchid Show, there are few excuses for missing out.
Gardening isn’t always a cakewalk. For New Yorkers, it can be the supreme struggle. Back yard vegetable plots are replaced with cramped fire escape terra cotta, and a window sill planter sits in for the shady garden tree. In light of the trouble with greening a studio apartment the size of your childhood closet, it’s no shock that the terrarium is coming back into vogue. And with Little Landscapes, the valedictorians of terrarium design are bringing the craze to The New York Botanical Garden.
Have you been following Plant Talk this week? If you have, you’re already well aware that the skies are criss-crossed with soaring hawks, the daffodils are bobbing alongside the paths, and the NYBG‘s tenth annual Orchid Show is proving every bit the belle of the ball we knew it would be. With or without a few hems and haws from departing winter, a welcome spring is here more than two weeks early.
If you’re looking for escapism, the walkways of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory are a sure bet, ringed as they are with thousands of orchids in nearly every color of the spectrum. Better yet, you can start the day with Debbie Becker’s Saturday Bird Walk, then jump into orchid workshops and lectures of all sorts, with terrarium building in Little Landscapes to occupy the kids; there’s something about holding a miniature world unto itself–all in the palm of your hand–that’s infinitely appealing.
Doug Tallamy (Photo courtesy of the University of Delaware)
Doug Tallamy’s lecture started from a basic and logical premise: if you take away the places for wildlife to live and feed, you will lose your wildlife. We are all aware that habitat destruction leads to a loss of species, but very few of us believe that we can make a difference or that we are directly linked to the process. I mean this in a non-judgmental way and from a place of empowerment.
Some of you may think that this is an early case of ‘election fever,’ but alas it is not. Last month I sat in an auditorium and listened to a very convincing and lucid proponent for environmental restoration and species diversity. Regardless of his own political views, with respect to the biome Tallamy is definitely not a democrat. “All plants,” he asserts, “are not created equal in their ability to support wildlife.”
Sometimes it seems like no amount of scheduling can prepare you for a school vacation week. It so often ends up an unpredictable whirlwind of video games, laziness, messy rooms and puzzling out dinner plans. But you can save the remains of your patience! With the kids freed from class next week, The New York Botanical Garden has rearranged the calendar to make it easy for you to keep the little ones occupied–anything to get them off the couch and out of the house. We’ll be offering longer hours, ongoing children’s events every day of the week, and of course our Winter Science Camp to keep young minds sharp.
Especially because this winter feels like an early springtime, it’s time to get excited for a new season of the Children’s Gardening Program at the two-acre Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. As of February 1, we opened registration for our popular Crafters and Sprouts for the spring, summer, and fall sessions.
Garden Sprouts introduces three- to five-year-olds and their accompanying parent to garden exploration, from digging for earthworms to planting seeds. Sprouts enjoy seasonal gardening tasks, the opportunity to sample garden-fresh produce grown in their own plots, and activities especially crafted for the young green thumb.
The mid-winter break is coming up on the calendar for local school kids, leaving us just a bit excited here at The New York Botanical Garden. Not that we’re taking any vacations for ourselves, mind you. For the first time, we’re throwing open our gates as one of the world’s premier centers for botanical science, welcoming curious young minds as we turn the Garden into a 250-acre classroom, laboratory, and learning playground.
Winter Science Camp offers children a “behind the scenes” learning experience under the guidance of the NYBG’s world-renowned plant educators. Kids will investigate plants in the Herbarium unseen by the public, enjoy early-morning exploration in the Forest, and experience a curriculum you just won’t find in the local elementary school schedule. Where else can they try their hand at planting vegetables, or pressing their own botanical specimens?
My apartment’s not exactly the first place anyone would think to have a Christmas tree. It’s the size of a toddler’s shoe box and my daft cats have a sweet tooth for pine needles. However, for thousands of New Yorkers who did decorate trees for the holiday season, this past weekend was an opportunity to not only retire 2011’s evergreens, but grant them a second life.
24,231. That’s the number of trees recycled during this year’s MulchFest. It soundly tops last year’s final count of 17,000, and with good motivations–it’s the best way for New Yorkers to keep their conifers out of the landfill (the compost is probably better used elsewhere). On Saturday and Sunday, thousands of city residents hauled their trees to one of 35 MulchFest collection spots throughout the metropolitan area, handing over their firs and pines for a cup of coffee and a bag of mulch.
If you’re coming to the NYBG on Sunday for The Nature Conservancy‘s Picnic for the Planet, try not to overdo it during lunch! You’ll want to save room for an evening outing sure to have gourmands salivating, because long-time Friend of the Garden Mario Batali is jumping in with an event of his own.
