Learn About This Popular Urban Hobby in Dig in! Adult Ed Course
Sara Katz is the Community Horticulturist for Bronx Green-Up, the community outreach program of The New York Botanical Garden, and a hobbyist Bronx beekeeper. She will teach Beekeeping Basics at the Midtown Education Center.
Beekeeping is proving itself an urban hobby, with hives popping up on rooftops, in backyards, and in community gardens throughout New York City. Even the Botanical Garden has two hives in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
As a Bronx beekeeper myself, I regularly marvel at the detailed work of the colony: the bright colors of pollen brought back from so many flights, the hoarded honey, and the careful nursing of new life in the brood chamber.
The urban honeybee has faired well this summer, with ample sunshine, and in turn, abundant blooms of plants such as mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum). The leaves of this native perennial make a good tea or can be applied as mosquito repellant. Butterfly bush (Buddlea davidii), a shrub that can tolerate urban pollution and alkaline soils, has tufts of tiny purple flowers on show for months—a perfect plant for pollinators. These and many other flowering plants, from vegetables and herbs to street trees, are visited by bees and other pollinators in great numbers every season.
One Bronx beekeeper who keeps hives behind a rectory abutting the Genesis Park Community Garden has harvested 275 pounds of honey since July. It tastes floral, minty, and may originate in good part from the nectar of white clover, a spring bloomer found on lawns and other open spaces in the city.
9-Year-Old Everett Sanderson Offers 9 Tips to Get Growing
Elizabeth Fisher is Associate Manager for Education Marketing and Public Relations.
Everett Sanderson is a talented soon-to-be fifth grader who has spent most of his nine summers gardening in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, helping his mom, Han-Yu Hung, who is Garden Coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program. In the Family Garden, kids work hands-on growing fruits and vegetables, learning that food, fun, health, and teamwork are connected. This year their garden plots have been in the spotlight as part of The Edible Garden.
Unlike most 9-year-olds, Everett is an accomplished gardener and a lover of veggies. Harvesting is what hooked him at first: “I realized that in order to harvest, you have to grow it, and in order to grow it, you have to plant it,” said Everett. Gardening also helped him to love eating vegetables: “If you can plant it, you have a better chance of liking it.”
Now a veteran of the Children’s Gardening Program, Everett, who lives in the Bronx, started gardening at age 3 as a “Garden Sprout” and is now a “Garden Crafter,” leading gardening lessons and hands-on activities.
He shares these helpful tips for kids to get their own gardens growing.
See Honey Taken from Hive Saturday as Part of National Celebration
Toby Adams is Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
Every day during the gardening season, the Family Garden is a hive of activity hours before visitors arrive. A diverse staff—coordinators, instructors, explainers, volunteers, and interns—zip about this way and that, preparing for the day’s programs. I’ve described this scene as resembling a beehive—the many tasks to be accomplished are shared by everyone, with necessary details divided and completed.
Veteran staff mentor new arrivals in how to get tiny seeds and delicate plantings off to a good start. Difficult projects are completed through teamwork and cooperation, and the most unglamorous but important of chores (cleaning the tools and washing the dirty dishes) taken on by a willing hand for the benefit of the group.
I’ve come to realize that this analogy to a beehive is most appropriate. Since May 1, I’ve had the awesome opportunity to witness the activity of a real beehive while helping to manage our newest addition to the Family Garden—two honeybee hives placed on top of our garage.
From digging in the Children’s Vegetable Garden to pretending to harvest fruits and vegetables at the Farm-to-Table play station, it’s easy for families to make a connection with food while having fun during The Edible Garden, which runs through October 17.
Explore nature in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden
Farm-to-Table play station inside the Bendheim Global Greenhouse Tuesdays–Sundays, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Kids can pretend to “harvest” fruits and vegetables and then use them to “cook” delicious recipes at the “cafe.”
Flowers-to-Fruits Tuesdays–Fridays, 1:30–5:30 p.m.;
Saturdays–Sundays, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Children color paper pollinator puppets and go on a flower hunt, create a field notebook, and pot up a seedling to take home while they learn how flowers become fruits.
Gardening fun in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden
Children’s Vegetable Garden Tuesdays–Sundays, 12–6 p.m.
Children connect with the food they eat by exploring whimsical gardens and plantings, including the Pizza Garden and Breakfast Bowl. Kids can hunt for squash-family plants such as cucumbers and gourds and see the new Pumpkin Patch!
Dig, Plant, Grow! Tuesdays–Sundays, 1:30–5:30 p.m.
Kids are encouraged to dig, weed, compost, plant, tend, and harvest in garden plots, with a different theme each month. Herbal Delights, Naturally is featured through July 30. Families go on an herb hike through the garden, cool down with an iced herbal tea, sample a healthful herbal snack, and pot up an herb to take home.
All proceeds of The Edible Garden benefit the Children’s Gardening program.
Many of us have heard of secret gardens, but how about a secret farm? Especially one that’s hiding in plain sight?
Recently, I visited a rooftop farm in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Yes, the farm was in Brooklyn. And yes, because of the lack of space, it was on a roof.
I was there on a field trip with other students from the Botanical Garden’s School of Professional Horticulture. From the street you could see nothing other than the industrial buildings and the Gowanus Canal (one of the most polluted waterways in the United States).
To get to the farm, we took a gray concrete staircase up three flights. On the roof there was—honest-to-goodness—a farm. It was sort of like looking at a field in Iowa or Indiana, but with views of the Manhattan skyline. Your eye first settles on the buildings across the East River, but you quickly look away from that spectacular photo-op to see crops—tomatoes, lettuces and other greens, herbs, carrots, radishes, and more—growing in just a few inches of soil across 6,000 square feet. There’s a chicken coop (those layers enjoy the best views of any chickens this side of Switzerland). And there are three beehives, whose inhabitants pollinate the plants. (The farm is so secret that even many insects and birds have yet to discover it.)
The Eagle Street Rooftop Farm is the brainchild of co-founder Annie Novak in partnership with Goode Green and Broadway Stages. Annie has become a real celebrity in the urban gardening scene. She travels the world to learn from farmers everywhere, including a recent trip to my native Peru to learn about potatoes. She’s also coordinator of the Children’s Gardening Program in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden at the Botanical Garden.
Adult Ed Classes Teach You How to Grow, Prepare Good Food
Leda Meredith is the Gardening Program Coordinator for Adult Education at The New York Botanical Garden and author of The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget.
When I took on a year-long challenge to eat, almost exclusively, foods produced within 250-miles of New York City, many people thought I was crazy. That was in 2007–2008, and it’s amazing how much has changed in just these past few years. Now “local,” “organic,” and “seasonal” have become buzzwords—and for good reason.
Just bite into a perfectly ripe, locally grown strawberry and your taste buds will never again be satisfied with its out-of-season, chemically grown cousin that spent weeks in transit before you ate it.
Superb taste is just one of the reasons to celebrate local, organic food. While you’re relishing that strawberry, you’re also helping the environment and supporting small farms and the local economy. It’s a lovely win-win partnership between consumers, producers, and the planet.
See Life More Leisurely Through Botanical Illustration Study
Rose Marie James is an instructor in the Garden’s Botanical Art and Illustration program.
What started me thinking about what I call “slow art” is my affinity for “slow food” (I must confess to a McDonald’s fix on occasion). Engaging in the preparation of food is a more meaningful experience for me than driving through a pick-up window or popping something into the microwave.
Knowing what a bean looks like before it gets cut up, handling a whole head of lettuce that needs washing and tearing into bite-size pieces, trimming the greens and roots from a beet before cooking remind me that I am connected to and rely on plants to thrive. Additionally, eating food that is carefully prepared is both satisfying and delicious.
That same kind of connection between process and result is the reason I love working as a botanical artist, and have, therefore, come to see it as “slow art.”
It contrasts with the work I have done as a graphic designer in promotional advertising, where everything has to be done in a hurry. Using the computer to this purpose just amplifies the frenzy, leaving time for little but making things look good.
Kids Learn Science Through Virtual Exploration of Haupt Conservatory
Elizabeth Fisher is Associate Manager for Education Marketing and Public Relations.
The New York Botanical Garden has launched a new online resource that brings the wonder of its extensive plant collections into homes and classrooms around the world. Plant Hunters is an innovative tool that provides a virtual exploration of Earth’s vast biodiversity inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and serves as a dynamic way for students and families everywhere to discover the beauty and importance of the world’s plants.
Plant Hunters combines digital illustrations and interactive games with expert-developed plant science content as an engaging way to teach users about topics such as pollination, plant evolution, and how plants may be used for medicine, food, and shelter. Users can navigate the Tropical Rain Forest and Desert Galleries of the Haupt Conservatory, explore 64 different plants in more detail, watch videos of Botanical Garden scientists, play seven different Plant Challenges, and much more! Learning as they play, kids can progress from a “Beginning Biologist” to a “Cool Conservationist” and finally to a “Professional Plant Hunter.”
Register Now for Fruit/Flower Centerpiece Workshop with Bill Tansey
Trish O’Sullivan, who earned a Certificate in the Floral Design Program at The New York Botanical Garden, where she now teaches, is principal of Eco Floral Design.
As the world around us comes alive with color and the garden is busting with beauty, I want to share with you my enthusiasm for our upcoming Premier Floral Design Workshops and one designer in particular—the always gracious and talented Bill Tansey (right).
The bold and lush floral style of this world-renowned floral and event designer will bloom at the Garden’s new Midtown Education Center on May 11 with a demonstration of and commentary on how to create a fruit and flower centerpiece.
Bill’s high-end, refined work is a mainstay of major benefits, including the American Ballet Theatre, the Winter Antiques Show, and opening night at the Metropolitan Opera, which gives an idea of the scale to which he presents his breathtaking and simply stunning floral talent.
Beekeeping is proving itself an urban hobby, with hives popping up on rooftops, in backyards, and in community gardens throughout New York City. Even the Botanical Garden has two hives in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden.
One Bronx beekeeper who keeps hives behind a rectory abutting the Genesis Park Community Garden has harvested 275 pounds of honey since July. It tastes floral, minty, and may originate in good part from the nectar of white clover, a spring bloomer found on lawns and other open spaces in the city. 
