Celebrating the Season and Looking Ahead to Our Spring Exhibition
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
Garden staff members have been busy learning all they can about Emily Dickinson and her poetry in advance of the Botanical Garden’s spring exhibition, Emily Dickinson’s Garden: The Poetry of Flowers, May 1–June 13, 2010. We take note wherever and whenever we see her name.
So when we saw in a datebook, by chance, a gingerbread recipe by Emily Dickinson, we decided to blog about it, since the Garden currently is presenting Gingerbread Adventures in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden as part of the Holiday Train Show.
With a little digging around I learned that Dickinson had a bit of a reputation as a baker in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, she was particularly known for her gingerbread (and Rye and Indian bread), and would lower a basket of it to children below (photo by Lewis S. Mudge, courtesy of his estate), according to Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook, with Selected Recipes, by Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and Jean McClure Mudge, and published in 1976. We have a copy of this 28-page booklet in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, where in spring 60 objects that tell the story of Dickinson’s life will be on view in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery. (Complementing this will be a re-creation of her garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and a poetry walk throughout the Garden’s grounds.)
My intention was simply to post the recipe here, with permission from Jean Mudge, and let you try it out for yourself. However, I got caught up in the “everything Emily” mood, and to celebrate her 179th birthday (December 10), I decided to try making the recipe myself to share with co-workers.
I’m Back at the Garden; Please Come Visit—I Can’t Wait to See You
Thomas the Tank Engine™ is an annual visitor to The New York Botanical Garden.
Hello everyone! It’s Thomas, and I want to tell you about my next exciting destination—The New York Botanical Garden! I pull into the station on January 2 to welcome all the children who visit each day through January 10.
I see so many smiling faces every year during my visit to the Holiday Train Show. I sometimes wish I were small enough to wind through the miniature New York landscape made of sticks and leaves and pine cones like the trains in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory.
At the Garden I have a very important job of meeting families at the Ross Lecture Hall and posing for photos with lots of boys and girls. Remember to bring your camera!
Sir Topham Hatt will travel with me to make sure we are right on time and that everything runs smoothly while we have fun at the Holiday Train Show. We’ve brought treats like stickers, tattoos, and coloring sheets to share with all our friends. Everyone can earn these and become honorary engineers when they come and see me.
Also Savor Special Seasonal Holiday Fare and Treats
David Sanchez is General Manager of Abigail Kirsch at The New York Botanical Garden.
No doubt you’ve noticed a few changes in the Garden’s two cafes in recent weeks. We listened to you, our customers; incorporated your suggestions; and added some of our own thoughts on how to create a sense not of eating but of dining. As the new General Manager of Abigail Kirsch at The New York Botanical Garden, I bring the commitment of Abigail Kirsch to offering fresh food, great service, and appealing variety.
Master Puppeteer Brings Children’s Storybook to Life
Ralph Lee, a master puppeteer, adapted the story and created the puppets for The Little Engine That Could™ Puppet Show at The New York Botanical Garden. Photo of Ralph Lee by Brett Vermilyea
In the fall of 1995, I was asked by The New York Botanical Garden to create a show for children as a companion program to its annual Holiday Train Show. So I asked myself, “What children’s story has to do with both trains and the holiday season?” The Little Engine That Could™! It had been one of my favorite stories as a kid.
I fashioned locomotives for the trains in the story using cardboard as the primary material, wood for strength, and a lot of found objects—things you might see lying around the house—for details. These would give each train its own face as in the illustrations of the original storybook: the Broken Down Train, the Streamliner, the Big Strong Locomotive, the Rusty Dusty Dingy Engine, and of course, the Little Engine That Could. I also made small puppets to represent the toys that are being delivered to the other side of the mountain: a teddy bear, Raggedy Ann, some dancing dolls, and a monkey.
View Holiday Train Show, Ex Libris Exhibition, and More
Before sitting down to turkey and stuffing, come enjoy the bounty of the Garden, which is open on Thanksgiving Day this year, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Garden will have extended hours for the remainder of the weekend for your enjoyment, relaxation, and gift shopping: from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday through Sunday, November 27–29.
250 acres of fall beauty—Catch the end of autumn’s colorful display in the gardens and Native Forest.
Holiday shopping and lunch—Find wonderful gifts for everyone on your list at Shop in the Garden and then grab lunch or a snack at one of our two Cafes.
The New York Botanical Garden is thankful for your patronage and support. Come share the day and the long holiday weekend with us, and have a Happy Thanksgiving!
For those who visit the Garden to enjoy, say, the Holiday Train Show or the explosion of floral magnificence known as spring or some other such event, this broader perspective can be easy to miss. For that matter, even those of us who work at the Garden can slip easily enough into our individual niches and lose sight of the Garden’s broader environmental role—that, for example, our 250 acres of gardens, forest, wetlands, and green spaces nestled into a spectacularly urban setting provide many important environmental services we don’t always think about. Or that our scientists are contributing to conservation around the world. Or that our educators are spreading the word far and wide, including to the next generation of leaders, about the importance of understanding and protecting the world in which we live.
Earth Day should remind us of all this, of the ongoing and critical relationship between each of us (as people, as institutions) and our environment. It should remind us of what we do right, where we can improve, and, not least of all, why we care. There is no better place than The New York Botanical Garden to come and renew one’s love of Mother Earth on Earth Day. The Garden—indeed, any garden—thrives in that space where the natural world of soil, water, sun, and plants intersects with the human environment. And that, from an environmental and human perspective, is the intersection that matters.
So, here at the Garden we have decided to celebrate Earth Month, to give ourselves a little more time to linger over the relationship we share with the natural world. And we invite you all to join us to hear what we have to say and to share with us your thoughts on this most important of topics.
The key is to plan ahead. My wife and I managed another year of preparing our tax returns, and we did so by revisiting our financial strategies soon after completing our taxes at this time last year. We kept thinking of five criteria: earnings, tax withholdings, deferred retirement savings amount, charitable giving, and lastly, what we owed! Increasing our retirement savings and charitable giving last year significantly reduced the tax amount due this year.
Enter the gift annuity—the gift that gives twice.
With a gift annuity, you irrevocably transfer cash or stock in exchange for an immediate tax deduction and guaranteed annual payments for life. For a cash transfer of $10,000, for example, a 65-year-old person would receive $530 per year of which $351 would be exempt from personal income tax for an effective rate of 7.3 percent.
I suffer from an edible complex: I am always thinking about eating! So I find myself irresistibly drawn to the food section of the bookstore, checking out the display copies of new cookbooks to see how the recipes stack up: One of the perks of the clerk. This is how I’ve come up with a number of recommendations for holiday gift giving for the foodies in your family!
Anyone who looks forward to putting on their annual winter layer of fat will be pleased with A Year in Chocolate. In this month-by-month guide to cooking with cacao, noted New York chocolatier Jacques Torres has adapted for the home cook his exquisite, indulgent desserts full of butter and cream with explicit but not complicated instructions. I love fine eating, but I still ignored all the ones that called for tempered chocolate and headed right for the brownies and the poached pears with chocolate sauce. The chocolate cookie that includes ancho chili powder among the ingredients is a real sweet slap in the face!
Okay, the New York dead of winter is not the right time to think of farmers markets, but Outstanding in the Field, by Jim Denevan, with its seasonal and market-based recipes, summons up summer in a dish so evocatively you’ll be living in July in perpetuity. These recipes derive from the impromptu farm dinners created by Mr. Denevan and his fellow foodies for their unique, eponymous organization Outstanding in the Field, which goes across the country creating locavore versions of ’60s-style happenings, eat-ins maybe? I don’t know if they’ll ever come to the Bronx, but you can re-create the experience with the corn chowder, spinach gnocchi, and the free-range chicken dishes described here. Not until the roast turkey do you find a recipe that goes on for more than two pages. But if you’re like me you’ll read it, think “How interesting,” and then accept the invitation to dine at your sister’s for the holiday feast.
There is no point in trying to ignore the Barefoot Contessa, a.k.a. Ina Garten, whose latest cookbook is Back to Basics. She is as irresistible as the brownie pudding there on page 218. The subtitle is “fabulous flavor from simple ingredients,” but it is the element of subtle sophistication that sets her recipes apart. BC’s BLTs add avocado; roasting replaces poaching in her shrimp cocktail; caramelized onions fillip the burger. When she says “This version has always been my favorite but…” and then she tweaks it with one ingredient or maybe two, or some technical change…and the dish is transformed! She makes it look easy, but that inventiveness takes years of practice.
There you go. We’re really into food this season, and we’ll be expanding the selection as we ramp up to our big summer show on edible gardens. Stay tuned for details. Can’t wait for the okra to come in!
Amanda Gordon, a writer and consultant to the Garden, first wrote about NYBG when she was a reporter at the New York Sun.
A glittering flurry hit the Holiday Train Show last Friday night when it became the setting for The New York Botanical Garden’s 10th annual Winter Wonderland Ball. Sponsored by Chanel Fine Jewelry, this black-tie event raised $250,000 for the Children’s Education programs at the Botanical Garden and brought 350 guests to the sparkling Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and adjacent tent for cocktails, dinner, and dancing. During the past decade, the ball has become a tradition for supporters of the Garden in their 20s, 30s, and 40s.
“I look forward to this all year. It’s the most festive Christmas event. It’s so nice to get out of the city and be surrounded by a beautiful environment and all fun, good friends of our age group,” one of the ball’s chairmen, Alex Kramer, commented. “It’s also nice because you get out of the city and you have just green everywhere,” another chairman, Christian Leone, said.
Designers Erin Fetherston and Holly Dunlap attended, along with model and writer Jessica Joffe and Marie Claire’s fashion director Nina Garcia of Project Runway fame. The guest list for the event was so fashionable that Vogue set up a photo booth to take pictures of guests for the magazine’s February issue. Bill Cunningham of The New York Times also snapped away.
But the eye-catching gowns competed for attention with the equally eye-catching trains, bridges, and buildings featured in the Holiday Train Show. “I wish I were a little person who could ride on the trains,” model Coco Rocha noted before getting in front of a camera to interview guests about their outfits for the Web site Style.com.
For Chanel, the event was an opportunity to support an important New York institution as well as to enhance the botanical legacy of its signature flower. “We’re excited tonight because we’re working with the Garden to create a variety of camellia that is going to be named after Coco Chanel,” Chanel’s Division President, Fashion, Fine Watches & Jewelry, Barbara Cirkva Shoemaker, revealed.
With or without fancily clad guests, the fairyland atmosphere is present for all visitors to the Holiday Train Show, which runs through January 11 and is especially magical for children. “I brought my young son today,” a Ball committee member, Adelina Wong Ettelson, said. “It’s pretty amazing for a four-year-old to see; actually, it’s pretty amazing for a somewhat older than 40-year-old.” Ms. Wong Ettelson hinted that she might come back for another visit. “I told my son that if he was a really good boy, I’ll bring him back to see Thomas the Tank Engine in January,” she added. The popular character will be visiting the Botanical Garden from January 3 through January 11.
Carol Capobianco is Editorial Content Manager at The New York Botanical Garden.
With a little digging around I learned that Dickinson had a bit of a reputation as a baker in her hometown of Amherst, Massachusetts. In fact, she was particularly known for her gingerbread (and Rye and Indian bread), and would lower a basket of it to children below (photo by Lewis S. Mudge, courtesy of his estate), according to Emily Dickinson: Profile of the Poet as Cook, with Selected Recipes, by Nancy Harris Brose, Juliana McGovern Dupre, Wendy Tocher Kohler, and Jean McClure Mudge, and published in 1976. We have a copy of this 28-page booklet in the LuEsther T. Mertz Library, where in spring 60 objects that tell the story of Dickinson’s life will be on view in the Rondina and LoFaro Gallery. (Complementing this will be a re-creation of her garden in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory and a poetry walk throughout the Garden’s grounds.)
Another exhibition season ends this weekend with the closing of the ever-popular 
