In less than two weeks, a beloved annual exhibition returns to the Garden in a dramatic new form as The Orchid Show: Chandeliers. For its 13th year, The Orchid Show is taking over every gallery in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory with a series of hanging installations of living chandeliers. Check out the exclusive teaser trailer below for a first look at the hundreds of the many colorful and fragrant species that will be on display!
With Bar Car Nights, adults enjoy access to the Holiday Train Show® alongside delicious cocktails, seasonal treats, and live entertainment, all beneath the glow of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory‘s colorful evening lights. Our latest Garden News video with Kevin Character takes viewers into the Haupt Conservatory after dark during one of these intimate events.
See what’s in store for our eight remaining Bar Car Nights and hear from visitors on what they love most about the Holiday Train Show® in the clip below. This year features more Bar Car Nights than ever, so reserve your tickets today! MasterCard cardholders also enjoy free access to a champagne pre-party in Shop in the Garden on select nights, but spots won’t stick around forever. Reserve now!
Last weekend was our Pumpkin Carving Weekend with Ray Villafane, and the Master Carver himself executed a massive pumpkin sculpture, after his own design, with the help of his crack team. The fruits—or gourds—of his labor are on display through October 31 as part of The Haunted Pumpkin Garden.
In case you missed the opportunity to see Ray’s zombie carving come to life, we have a video with Ray himself taking you through the process of carving his pumpkin sculpture for NYBG. The end result is a bone-chilling zombie climbing out of a 1700-pound pumpkin! Check out the installation this weekend as part of our annual Award-Winning Giant Pumpkin Display, or for the full Halloween experience get tickets to one of our upcoming Spooky Nighttime Adventures and see Ray’s creation fully illuminated for the first time in his four years working with the Garden.
Weird, Wild, and Wonderful, the stunning botanical art exhibit in the Ross Gallery, has been extended through October 26. This exhibition invites artists from around the world to seek out visually unusual plants and create works of art that celebrate the bizarre—yet beautiful—flora of the world. From 240 submissions, members of the American Society of Botanical Artists selected 46 works created by 45 artists from the U.S., Australia, Canada, India, Japan, and the U.K.
According to NYBG instructor and botanical artist Dick Rauh, the show’s emphasis is definitely on the “weird.” He writes, “There are certain botanical categories that provide us with almost limitless examples of strange-looking plants.” He mentions “the parasites,” such as the white stalks of Indian Pipe (Monotropa uniflora) and the “evil-looking” Hydnora africana, also known as Jackal Food.
Other weird plants that Rauh notes include insectivorous plants, fungi, ferns, and those plants whose size would qualify as unusual, such as “the two-foot-wide inflorescence of the onion Allium giganteum, the huge bloom of Stapelia giganea, or living stones (Lithops spp.)—a rare example of floral camouflage. Many of these plants are featured in a gorgeous 76-page catalog of the artwork in the show, available in the Shop in the Garden.
This Thursday is the opening of Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden, NYBG‘s stunning tribute to Japan’s most celebrated fall flower, the chrysanthemum—or kiku. For many months, NYBG’s specially trained experts have been painstakingly cultivating hundreds of Japanese chrysanthemum flowers along frames in a variety of traditional and contemporary styles. Masters of the art of kiku can coax hundreds of blossoms from a single stem. The end result will debut in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory on October 2, when these flowers blossom simultaneously to create showstopping displays.
While we gear up for the first weekend of Halloween fun at the Haunted Pumpkin Garden, remember that Kiku arrives at NYBG in just two weeks! Our popular celebration of the rich tradition of chrysanthemum cultivation in Japan returns on October 2 with new, breathtaking displays in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
To offer a bit of background about the exhibit, and to provide a sneak peek at our exciting upcoming programs, please enjoy this latest trailer for Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden.
Visitors to the Garden will notice a number of small installations throughout the grounds as part of our new Curator’s Spotlight series. Behind the many gardens and collections that make up NYBG’s 250 acres is a legion of dedicated horticulturists and passionate curators, and for this new series we invited them to choose their own subject to focus on from the plant kingdom.
There is so much to see in the vast diversity of the Garden. Who better to guide our visitors and direct their attention to some of the individual beauty on display than the people who cultivate it? See the Garden through the eyes of its experts in this new video for Curator’s Spotlight, in which Kevin Character overviews some of the fun new installations our curators have dreamed up. Hear from our own Christian Primeau, Manager of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, on why he chose to highlight the whimsical colocasia, also known as elephant’s ear.
More videos are coming soon! In the meantime, keep an eye out for Curator’s Spotlight installations on your next visit. See the full lineup here.
As NYBG horticulturists preen the nasturtiums and primp the poppies, we draw closer to the opening of the year’s most spectacular exhibition. Monet’s Garden goes live this weekend! And just in time for our grand opening, we’re putting the finishing accents on the scenery that makes Monet’s Giverny a destination for gardeners and art aficionados the world over.
Karen Daubmann, Director of Exhibitions and Seasonal Displays, gives us a rare peek at the behind-the-scenes efforts taking place under the glass of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. But by the time you visit the NYBG on Saturday, what you see below will have come a long way. Claude Monet’s garden has always bridged the gap between untamed art and flawless design; we think you’ll see that our homage is taking things in the right direction.
Creating a masterpiece takes more than simple inspiration. It requires preparation–arranging each color and readying the canvas. And as with a painting, Monet’s Garden at the NYBG is a work of art with as much going on behind the scenes as happens in the open.
Marc Hachadourian, Manager of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, takes us through the expansive collection of delphiniums, poppies, nasturtiums and other flowers that will soon embody our homage to Claude Monet’s garden at Giverny. Months of careful tending in specialized growing environments have allowed us to tease the flowers into bloom all at once, re-creating the artist’s living muse at its kaleidoscopic peak. But you won’t have to wait that long to see them.
If you haven’t reserved your tickets yet, get to our ticket page! The doors to the French master’s private paradise open to New York on May 19.
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!
