The Haupt Conservatory houses living collections, from soaring tropical palms to unique desert cacti—and it’s also a living machine, with systems and processes to keep these plants thriving. Check out today’s story to see how we’re restoring its iconic palm dome to ensure this complex and beautiful structure continues to protect our important plants from around the world.
During the palm dome restoration, most of the Conservatory remains open for you to explore.
Get to know Vershaffeltia splendida, one of the palms in the Haupt Conservatory collections that we’re working to maintain and protect during the restoration of the structure’s palm dome. Hear from our Director of Glasshouse Horticulture, Marc Hachadourian, on this plant’s origins and unique qualities, just one of countless species facing the escalating challenges to our world’s biodiversity.
With the Holiday Train Show closing out for another year this coming Monday, January 19 (we’ll be open!), we’re getting ready for mid-winter relief with the opening of Wild Medicine—a highlight of the important plants in the permanent collection of the Haupt Conservatory. More info is on the way, but in the meantime, think tropical thoughts.
In the Palm Dome of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory – Photo by Ivo M. Vermeulen
The historic Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is well known for extraordinary seasonal exhibitions. The Holiday Train Show delights winter-weary visitors with festive lights, New York landmarks artfully crafted from natural materials, and myriad model trains chugging through a whimsical tropical landscape. The Orchid Show electrifies the senses, offering a veritable jungle of astonishing colors, forms, and perfumes. The annual spring-autumn exhibition showcases kaleidoscopic plantings and has recently paid homage to Monet’s garden at Giverny and the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller garden in Seal Harbor, Maine. Beginning May 16th, 2015, the vibrant Mexican garden of artist Frida Kahlo will find an ephemeral home right here in the exhibition houses.
All of these shows certainly warrant a visit, but I strongly encourage visitors to delve into the permanent glasshouse plant collections as well. This incredibly diverse assemblage, comprised of over 20,000 plants from around the globe, is the soul of the Conservatory. Since the grand building’s completion in 1902, many of these specimens have been collected by some of the most distinguished botanists and horticulturists of the era—from our founder Nathaniel Lord Britton to Sir Ghillean Prance.
Kristine Paulus is NYBG’s Plant Records Manager. She is responsible for the curation of The Lionel Goldfrank III Computerized Catalog of the Living Collections. She manages nomenclature standards and the plant labels for all exhibitions, gardens, and collections, while coordinating with staff, scientists, students and the public on all garden related plant information.
I recently became the Plant Records Manager here at NYBG, and when I was offered the position I thought I would be spinning plant records as a DJ at the Orchid Dinner and the Conservatory Ball. Just kidding! However, while I was fully prepared to take on the massive task of keeping tabs on the Garden’s living collections, I still secretly harbor a desire to play plant records—that is to say, to play records (or CDs, or MP3s, or whatever is en vogue now) about plants.
There’s so much good music out there about plants! Sure, there are tons of vague ditties about generic flowers (blue flowers, red flowers, wild flowers, where flowers have gone, and not getting flowers anymore) but I get particularly excited about songs that allow me to “botanize” because they’re about specific plants. Songs about plants that grow here at The New York Botanical Garden are even better.
