Inside The New York Botanical Garden
Family Garden
Posted in Gardens and Collections, Learning Experiences on April 16 2010, by Plant Talk
Children Learn About Plants Through Hands-on Gardening
 |
Toby Adams is Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. |
Clickety clank. Bumpity bumpity bump. Two pairs of ears stand up scanning the Family Garden for the noise. Clickety clank. Bumpity bumpity bump. Two curious, twitching noses aim this way and then that.
“What’s that clanking and bumping?” wondered sleepy Darwin, the Family Garden’s newest resident rabbit (at left in photo).
Newton hopped around his hutch, the Family Garden’s original resident rabbit had heard these noises before. “I think I know what the clinkety clanks and bumpity bumps are,” Newton assured Darwin. “The Family Garden must be open again!”
Read More
Posted in Exhibitions, Programs and Events, The Edible Garden on September 4 2009, by Plant Talk
A few weeks ago, during one of many rainstorms in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden this summer, I took refuge with a few students from our Children’s Gardening Program in the wigwam tucked in the side corner of the garden’s Meadow. While the kids played giddy musical chairs on the stumps inside, I sat quietly with my back against the bark wall. It’s a cozy space. Although the kids were acting loud and giggly, the small wigwam felt peaceful. The rain fell near-noiselessly on the dome of birch saplings. Through the wigwam’s single window, daylilies and tall zebra grass shone orange and green against the gray.
Part of the Three Sisters display garden, the wigwam was built in 2006 to re-create the lifestyle of the Lenni-Lenape, the first New York natives. When teaching, I often ask my students to imagine what it would be like to live as the Lenape did 400 years ago. I ask the children to think about everything they do inside their homes—cook, read, watch TV, play with toys, take refuge in air conditioning when the summer hits—and think of what the Lenape would be doing instead. With seven-year-olds, of course, a reflective discussion like this leads to hilarity pretty quickly.
But after some groans and giggles about sharing a bedroom with your whole family, comparing lifestyles leads to an epiphany as well. The wigwam only seems small in comparison to today’s houses when you think about it as an equal living environment. But it isn’t. In those early, pre-hustle-and-bustle New York years, an entire world around the home provided the space for cooking, playing, harvesting. (Who needs air conditioning with the Bronx River running so close by?) What I like about the wigwam is its clear definition of necessity. It’s a space of shelter and sleep. Imagination provides the rest.
Read More
Posted in Exhibitions, Learning Experiences, Programs and Events, The Edible Garden on August 21 2009, by Plant Talk
|
Toby Adams is Manager of the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden. |
Vegetables and kids: two of my favorite things, growing together in the Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden! Each year we open the gates of our one-and-a-half-acre garden to thousands of children and invite them to help us in our annual effort to grow thousands of plants.
Sitting here now, among the tangles of tomato vines heavy with fruit and rows of sunflowers standing tall, it takes a leap of faith to believe this site was nearly bare when we began. Only a short time ago, I’m certain I was sitting in this same spot bundled in countless layers of thermal fabric with my eyes closed imagining the fragrances that envelope me now, straining to hear the drones of the pollinators patrolling the plots, and wondering at what point in the summer the garlic leaves would collapse under the weight of themselves.
A little over one hundred days later, my imaginations have been realized. The freshly harvested basil leaves stain fingers with their pungent perfume, the bees are busy buzzing in and out of the squash blossoms, and the garlic has already been harvested, braided, and hung in the garage to cure.
Read More
Clickety clank. Bumpity bumpity bump. Two pairs of ears stand up scanning the Family Garden for the noise. Clickety clank. Bumpity bumpity bump. Two curious, twitching noses aim this way and then that. 
