“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.”
—John Muir (1838-1914)

We received more than we were seeking from a walk at the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx It was a beautiful day in New York City on Palm Sunday, 13.April; the weather was perfectly to suited to walk in the garden. Getting to the Botanical Garden is easily done. From historic Grand Central Terminal we rode the Harlem Branch of MetroNorth, the commuter rail line linking the northern suburbs with the city.

The dome marks the entrance to the 1902 Enid A. Haupt Conservatory; it is a grand sight. The Conservatory is a New York City Landmark.

Under the 90-foot high dome of the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the nation’s largest Victorian glasshouse is a Palm Court. It was Palm Sunday! Open throughout the year, the Palm Court also features a reflecting pool surrounded by those palm trees.

Since the spring of 2013 the courtyard behind the Conservatory has played host to four 15-foot-tall busts; they are the creation of contemporary American artist Philip Haas. Four colossal sculptures of human heads are made of fiberglass vegetation including fruit, bark, flowers and twigs. Each head depicts one of the four seasons.

Haas was inspired by the Four Seasons, composite portrait paintings by the 16th-century, Italian Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526/1527–1593).

In the New York Botanical Garden’s LuEster T. Mertz Library, scale models of Philip Haas’s fantastic heads were on display.

Back in the Conservatory’s greenhouse, gardenias and water lilies were in bloom. The gardenias were intoxicatingly fragrent.

On the grounds of the Botanical Garden signs of early spring were everywhere. Daffodils were around each corner. And nothing says spring like forsythia. The Botanical Garden has some of the most spectacular forsythia bushes. Along Magnolia Way the trees were flowering.

In the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden two worm-shaped topiaries were in bloom. This is very cute.