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Plant Talk

Inside The New York Botanical Garden

John’s Tree

Posted in Gardens and Collections on December 4 2012, by Matt Newman

Sonia Uyterhoeven is the NYBG‘s Gardener for Public Education.

I spend a lot of my time working with John Egenes in the Native Plant Garden. John is the gardener in charge of the area and his discerning eye doesn’t miss an inch of the vast new landscape.

I recently discovered that one of his passions is native trees. One day, during the height of fall foliage, he rattled off some of his favorite trees while pointing out the merits of both foliage and form. One of them–the pignut hickory (Carya glabra)–is situated just outside the Rock Garden, close to the rear service entrance.

The pignut hickory is a close relative to the famous pecan tree (Carya illinoinensis), responsible for your holiday pecan pie. But unlike the pecan, the nuts that the pignut provides are not so palatable. In fact, the name “pignut” is derived from the fact that the nuts are only suitable for swine. In nature, these are a valuable food source for many woodland creatures such as black bears, raccoons, squirrels, blue jays, foxes, rodents, and deer.

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What’s Beautiful Now: Orchids Obscured

Posted in What's Beautiful Now on December 3 2012, by Matt Newman

This post is a bit of an anomaly for our “What’s Beautiful Now” series. Usually, we cobble these together to show our fans and visitors what’s worth slipping into the agenda during a trip to the NYBG; each post is a rundown of what you should go and enjoy at its peak flower or aroma, depending on the season. But some of the collections we have growing here at the Garden aren’t always open for public consumption–not yet, anyway. They’re too early in their growth, or still being primped for coming exhibitions. And most of these plants fall within the purview of the Nolen Greenhouses for Living Collections, where preparation begins for coming events many months (if not years) before opening day rolls around.

Seeing as I already teased you this past weekend with some of the jungle jewels sprouting up under the glass of the Nolen Greenhouses, I figure there’s no reason to keep the rest of Ivo’s recent photo shoot cooped up in our files. Standouts among the photos taken are easily the orchids, a few of which we expect to steal the spotlight in 2013’s spring Orchid Show. And while we can’t spill the entire layout of the exhibition just yet, I’m all too happy to pass along a gallery of eye candy in the meantime.

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HTS Highlights: Williamsburg Art & Historical Center

Posted in Holiday Train Show on December 3 2012, by Matt Newman

As the Holiday Train Show ramps up, we’ll be highlighting the cultural landmarks of New York City that have come to inspire the NYBG‘s many miniatures, as well as the established organizations behind each one. It’s an opportunity for our readers to not only come away with a fresh understanding of the beautiful architecture in our city, but of the important institutions that have helped to create our rich cultural landscape.

Like so much of New York’s iconic architecture, what would become the Williamsburg Art & Historical Center (WAH) began life as a very different establishment. The Kings County Savings Bank was designed in the French Second Empire style by William H. Wilcox, a bank partner, with ground broken at the corner of Bedford and Broadway in 1860. Construction continued in Brooklyn through the course of the Civil War to see completion by 1868, at which point the building began a century-long run as home to a succession of banks.

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This Weekend: Relax

Posted in Around the Garden, Programs and Events on November 30 2012, by Matt Newman

Whether you’re coming in to catch the Holiday Train Show before December’s crowds pile in, or to glean a bit of feathered wisdom from Debbie Becker’s Saturday morning Bird Walk, this weekend is squarely focused on relaxation. Because we know that in between the crush of Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and winter holiday preparations, there’s hardly a sliver of space to squeak in your chill time! Of course, at the NYBG there’s a wider window for taking it easy.

With a light schedule and reasonable temperatures promised for Saturday and Sunday, this is your opportunity to explore 250 acres of New York City’s finest natural sanctuary. If you’re looking for activities, there’s always the Bird Walk for picking up a new hobby, or maybe you’d rather take a load off with the heat on? For that, stop by the Holiday Train Show in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory before hoofing it over to Ross Hall for a bit of history on our decades-long tradition.

Over in the education department, you can join in a two-hour rundown of the herbal arts through a course on making tinctures, salves, and oils from nature’s bounty. And, of course, there’s Gingerbread Adventures waiting for the kids in our Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. Why would you even consider passing up a hand-decorated cookie (of your own artistic creation, of course) before leaving?

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Treat Your Sweet Tooth!

Posted in Holiday Train Show on November 29 2012, by Matt Newman

While the shingles may be drifting ever so slowly off the roof, and the gummy candy filling in for the lamp post has taken a header into the driveway, we don’t expect your homemade gingerbread house to be a triumph of art and engineering. It just has to taste good! But at the NYBG, our visiting bakers do hold themselves to a standard above anything most of us can piece together during an afternoon with a frosting bag.

This year, Gingerbread Adventures returns with more sugar, spice, and everything nice than you can wave an edible blueprint at. We’re back in the Discovery Center of the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden for cookie-decorating (and eating!), along with plenty of other holiday activities to keep your little one’s sweet tooth in the game. Beyond a perfectly reasonable sugar high, we’ll be offering fun craft and learning activities to focus that energy, along with a back-to-basics approach to the gingerbread cookie itself. Before the ingredients ever reach the supermarket shelf, your kids can learn the origins of sugar through sugar cane, grind their own cinnamon, and see ginger in its fresh-from-the-ground form. It goes a long way toward teaching them that not everything comes straight from the shrink wrap.

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HTS Highlights: The Jewish Museum

Posted in Holiday Train Show on November 28 2012, by Matt Newman

As the Holiday Train Show ramps up, we’ll be highlighting the cultural landmarks of New York City that have come to inspire our many miniatures, as well as the established organizations behind each one. It’s an opportunity for our readers to not only come away with a fresh understanding of the beautiful architecture in our city, but of the important institutions that have helped to create our rich cultural landscape.

What would become the world-renowned Jewish Museum did not begin as such. C.P.H. Gilbert, a prominent New York architect of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, designed this building as a private home for the family of Felix Warburg in 1908. Gilbert’s specialty was designing grand, chateau-style houses on Fifth Avenue for wealthy New York patrons like investment bankers Warburg and Otto Kahn, and entrepreneur Frank Woolworth.

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This Weekend: Segue into Winter

Posted in Around the Garden on November 23 2012, by Matt Newman

Hope everyone had a filling, drama-free Thanksgiving! And now, if you’re not rolling around in a turkey-induced malaise, or elbowing your way through a mob of frantic shoppers, there’s all the opportunity in the world to scoot your way up to the Bronx and escape that post-holiday madness! The NYBG is open both today and throughout the weekend, with a full schedule of holiday programming and late fall explorations on deck–and not a sink full of dishes or shopping cart in sight. Quite the opposite, in fact.

With the Holiday Train Show now entering its second week, crowds are still small and the weather is perfect for a trip to the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. Inside, our miniature city of familiar architecture and zippy model trains is growing by the year, with fresh New York landmarks added to the collection and a few stunning wonders of the world tucked into our expanded Artist’s Studio. Paul Busse has pieced together this meticulous world over the course of more than two decades, and his New York microcosm only continues to grow with his imagination.

Outside, the Garden is still a landscape painted with the occasional fall hue, especially in the Forest. So get out there and join our expert Garden Tour Guides for a tour of the 50-acre woodland, the only old growth, native forest remaining in the five boroughs. You might even catch a few vibrant leaf displays before autumn doffs its hat. And even if much of the color is drifting off, not all of the season’s beauty is wrapped up in the trees: heads up for the many graceful, singsong, or just plain comical flyers to be seen cruising the branches during Debbie Becker’s weekly Bird Walk.

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