Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, May 11—make sure you don’t forget! For our part, the Garden will help you show mom how much you care during our Mothers’ Day Garden Party, offering a perfect weekend of spring activities amidst a landscape of flowers and greenery. This celebration has family fun for all ages, too, so no one has to feel left out!
Live jazz, croquet, badminton, hillside picnics and even our new giant chessboards present endless options of fun to explore. Why settle for breakfast in bed when you can give mom a day at the Garden, surrounded by a wide variety of food, drinks, and more? Click through for the full lineup of activities.
What a beautiful Friday! And the weather promises to remain gorgeous throughout the weekend, which is terrific news for our Spring Wine Festival! This is the first event in our Spring Festival Series and it promises to be a palate-pleasing journey for everyone. Gourmet food samples paired with delicious wines from our participating vendors will be served near the Native Plant Garden, and guests can then enjoy the aromas and sensations of spring with a tour of this cutting-edge, 3.5-acre installation presenting a dramatic 230-foot-long water feature as its centerpiece.
Along with live acoustic music by Milton near the Reflecting Pool, the Native Plant Garden Education Pavilion will host a full series of winemaking and wine pairing workshops conducted by visiting vendors and NYBG experts. Click through for the full list of topics as well as the rest of this weekend’s program schedule!
Stephen Scanniello is NYBG’s Curator of the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. The author of six books on roses, his latest is A Rose By Any Name. Stephen is the recipient of the Jane Righter Rose Medal from the Garden Club of America. He gardens in Barnegat, NJ.
New breaks on a ‘Reve d’Or’ rose plant
Compost piles filled with blackened rose canes eclipsed the forsythia as the harbinger of this year’s rose season. Gardeners everywhere, dealing with the effects of a long cold winter followed by roller coaster spring temperatures, were left with no alternative but to prune their roses much more severely than they have in recent seasons. The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden wasn’t immune to this situation. From modern hybrids to rugged old roses, plants were shortened, some nearly to ground level. Am I worried? No. I look at this as “tough love” for roses.
Experienced gardeners know that this is an opportunity to rejuvenate a rose plant. With sharpened secateurs, and a shot of courage, this seemingly somber situation becomes a chance for you to improve the health of the rose bush. Removing dead wood and weakened canes encourages strong basal growth. By June, this plum-colored growth will produce beautiful roses.
This year’s cherry blossoms announced the arrival of spring at the Garden in great bursts of white and pink. When a light breeze picks up the petals in a candy-colored flurry, you are reminded of the winter blizzards that are thankfully behind us.
Several beautiful varieties are scattered throughout the Ross Conifer Arboretum, with elegant weeping cherries framing the Haupt Conservatory. The best cherry blossom walk on grounds, though, is definitely Cherry Valley, just past the Thain Family Forest on the path to the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden. There the billowing trees surround you in a celebration of spring’s arrival. Click through and brighten up your day with a peek at the Garden’s cherry trees at the height of their flowering season!
Mother’s Day is this coming Sunday, May 11—make sure you don’t forget! For our part, the Garden will help you show mom how much you care during our Mothers’ Day Garden Party, offering a perfect weekend of spring activities amidst a landscape of flowers and greenery. This celebration has family fun for all ages, too, so no one has to feel left out!
