Straw Hats at NYBG

This seems to be my month for field trips. Today I made a flying visit to the New York Botanical Gardens with "M" and "A". We've noticed that everywhere we go we always seem to see ladies from the Red Hat Society. We decided that gardeners need a similar group so we have formed the "Straw Hat Society" for gardeners. The only requirement for membership is that you must be a gardener. We elected "M" as the Head Hatter (or Madhatter, as we affectionately call her) since she always leads the tours. The Straw Hat Society made its debut today. Unfortunately we were in such a rush to see as much as possible in a short time that we didn't have time to have a picture taken of our inaugural event.

There is a special display of glass sculpture by the artist Dale Chihuly in the conservatory and a few pieces outdoors in the gardens. We didn't have time to tour the conservatory today. Here are some of the outdoor pieces:

Rose Crystal Tower

The Sun

Rose Garden Fiori

The sculptures are incredibly beautiful but I felt that they were out of place in a naturalistic setting. Our first stop was the Home Gardening Center which contains display gardens of plant trials, fragrant plants, a cutting garden and a veggie garden, to name just a few.

The Trial Garden

This is the Fragrance Garden. I love the little gazebo.

This is rosemary!

The Cutting Garden from the outside.

The Cutting Garden inside

The Vegetable Garden is planted in raised beds. There is even a bed raised high enough to be comfortably used by a gardener in a wheelchair (not pictured).

Care to guess why this was my favorite garden? It's called the "Country Garden". It is a series of pools and streams planted with shade-loving plants.

Straw Hat Sighting!! Straw Hat Sighting!! Straw Hat Sighting!!

I was trying to get a photo of these reeds. If you enlarge it, you can see the Head Hatter on the right checking out the compost demo.

This was a lovely walk planted with annuals. Further along were these containers:

The Perennial Gardens were breathtaking. . .







There are a surprising number of trees considering this garden is in New York City. Here are two that caught my eye. The first is a pear tree. The fruit is about the size of my thumb.

The hotly debated topic among the Straw Hatters was, since this is New York City, would there be a partidge in the pear tree or a pigeon in the pear tree?

Don't you love the trunk(s) on this conifer? Unfortunately, the ID tag didn't come out well so I can't tell you what it is.

We hopped the tram to the Family Garden which has ethnic and children's gardens. Can you spot the caterpillar?

The Korean Garden even had a Korean Gardener!

The photo doesn't do her justice. She was extraordinarily kind to us. We were each given a gorgeous leek from this bed.

In another bed, there was rice growing in water-filled containers.

A whimsical raised bed

I loved these containers

This seemingly chaotic scene is actually veggie beds planted by children. Each bed is labelled with the child's name.

I'm considering a hyacinth bean tepee for my garden next year. Don't you just love it?

Just a friendly reminder!

Our last stop was the rose garden. It was HUGE!

Straw Hat Sighting!! Straw Hat Sighting!! Straw Hat Sighting!!

It wasn't easy prying OldRoses away from the roses!