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.
It’s just our Adventure Garden birdhouse, hanging out.
While we’ve been ogling the bushels of delicious vegetables growing in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Sarah Paulson, our Coordinator of Teen Programs, tells us that there’s more than enough going on in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden to warrant a little attention. And she’s right! One look at the art and beauty going on at ECAG and you’ll know that neither educators, horticulturists, or teen Explainers are resting on their laurels this season.
With Monet’s Garden still underway and the last days of summer winding toward a close, horticulturist Katie Bronson keeps the Adventure Garden alive with a mosaic of textures and colors, maintaining lush and vivid plantings in the midst of these dry months. Sarah was kind enough to pass along a handful of photos from around the garden, showing flowers and foliage at their pre-fall peak.
When Kerlly Bernabé first arrived in the late ’90s, The New York Botanical Garden served as more of a “look but don’t touch” establishment. The Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, far from the hub of children’s activities it is today, was little more than a blueprint doodle. But it was on that same day, with the appearance of our first Explainers, that all of this began to shift for the better.
Kerlly’s four years as one of the original Garden Explainers resulted in the founding of one of the most significant volunteer programs of any cultural institution in New York City. Today, these high school students–aged 14 to 17–work daily to make learning more than a chore, engaging kids and families throughout the Garden in hands-on activities and open exploration. In helping to build this thriving program, each Explainer leaves with not only a newfound knowledge of nature, but a sound jumping-off point for opportunities in their education and careers. Perhaps more importantly, they leave with a sense of confidence and responsibility.
Monet’s masterpieces may be hanging safely in the Rondina/LoFaro Gallery, but the artist’s inspiration runs wild in our children’s garden! The bright flowers in their full spring glory aren’t all that far off from the confetti-colored borders of Monet’s own Giverny. Of course, the giant, googly-eyed caterpillars bursting with tiny flowers aren’t anything you’ll find in the average Impressionist’s landscape painting. But then again, why not?
At the NYBG, the artistic muse speaks early, and nowhere is it more alive than in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden. Visit for the morning during Monet’s Garden and enjoy hands-on classes with your kids, or take an afternoon stroll with your toddler in tow to experience freeform creativity with our knowledgeable Explainers. Art is at its best when you let the mood take you!
What the heck is Phragmites? I found myself posing the same question. What could be so diabolical, so absolutely devilish as to demand several days’ sweat and muscle ache shoveling out a muddy pit? Why the misleading singular noun? Sadly (and despite the phonetic similarities), Phragmites has nothing to do with Fraggle Rock. Neither is it related to flaming space junk, or the stone spikes that spur the floors and ceilings of winding underground caverns. Nope–it’s a plant. And, to many, it’s a ruthless swampland invader.
Gardening isn’t always a cakewalk. For New Yorkers, it can be the supreme struggle. Back yard vegetable plots are replaced with cramped fire escape terra cotta, and a window sill planter sits in for the shady garden tree. In light of the trouble with greening a studio apartment the size of your childhood closet, it’s no shock that the terrarium is coming back into vogue. And with Little Landscapes, the valedictorians of terrarium design are bringing the craze to The New York Botanical Garden.
Sometimes it seems like no amount of scheduling can prepare you for a school vacation week. It so often ends up an unpredictable whirlwind of video games, laziness, messy rooms and puzzling out dinner plans. But you can save the remains of your patience! With the kids freed from class next week, The New York Botanical Garden has rearranged the calendar to make it easy for you to keep the little ones occupied–anything to get them off the couch and out of the house. We’ll be offering longer hours, ongoing children’s events every day of the week, and of course our Winter Science Camp to keep young minds sharp.
Walking up the path through the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, I noticed something hanging on the air that I haven’t caught in a while. I don’t mean the sound of kids giggling, though there’s often plenty of that floating around if you simply stop and listen. It was something else. Something…decidedly unpumpkin.
Yes, it’s that quintessential holiday potpourri: the smell of sugar and spice!
And I’m talking about authentic sugar and spice–not the cloud of cinnamon air freshener that tackles you as soon as you wander into a department store after Thanksgiving. It’s the smell of evening baking sessions, bite-sized candy canes, and vanilla frosting, all part of the recipe to Gingerbread Adventures.
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.
