“To cultivate a garden is to walk with God, to go hand in hand with nature in some of her most beautiful processes, to learn something of her choicest secrets, and to have a more intelligent interest awakened in the beautiful order of her works elsewhere.”
—Christian Nestell Bovee (1820–1904, American author)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Spring was in full bloom at the New York Botanical Garden during a visit in late April 2016. Daffodil Hill was especially impressive. White dogwood trees and pink and white cherry trees too were alive with blossoms. The lilac bushes were full with many shades of purple flowers, and white ones too. The cherry trees and pansies (above) offer a colorful greeting to visitors who use the entrance at the Mosholu Gate to the New York Botanical Garden.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
“The Earth laughs in flowers.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
The ground was covered with purple flox (above) by the side of the Bronx River, which runs through the Botanical Garden. In the background is an arched stone bridge spanning the river.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Somebody’s little girl—how easy to make a sob story over who she was once and who she is now.
Somebody’s little girl—she played once under a crab-apple tree in June and the blossoms fell on the dark hair.
—from “Crabapple Blossoms” by Carl Sandburg (1878–1967)
The riot of pink blossoms (above) that the crab-apple tree produces is well worth the effort, even if the fruit is not edible.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
“My first was Billy. Oh, I’ll never forget it! That night under the dogwood tree, the air thick with perfume, and me with Billy. Or Bobby? Yes, that’s right, Bobby! Or was it Ben? Oh who knows, anyway, it started with a B.”
— Blanche Devereaux, “The Golden Girls”
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Dogwood trees (above), lush with creamy white flowers, have been planted along one edge of the 3.5 acre Native Plant Garden.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Young Dandelion
On a hedge-side
Said young Dandelion
Who’ll be my bride?
Said young Dandelion
With a sweet air,
I have my eye on
Miss Daisy fair.
—Dinah Maria Mulock (1826–1887, English author)
The humble dandelion (above), befitting its common status, grew around a utility plate on the grounds of the Botanical Garden.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
I never see that prettiest thing
A cherry bough gone white with Spring
But what I think, ‘How gay ’twould be
To hang me from a flowering tree.’
—Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
More that 200 cherry trees—both white and pink blossoms—are planted on the New York Botanical Garden’s 250 acres. There is a wide variety of them in Cherry Valley!
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
“The cherry blossom tree is truly a sight to behold, especially when it is in full riotous bloom. There are several varieties of the cherry blossom tree, and while most of them produce flowering branches full of small pinkish-hued flowers, some of them produce actual cherries.”
—Homaro Cantu (1976–2015, American Inventor)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Break open
A cherry tree
And there are no flowers,
But the spring breeze
Brings forth myriad blossoms.
—Ikkyu Sojun (1394-1481)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Fair daffadils, we weep to see
You haste away so soone;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attained its noone.
We have short time to stay as you,
We have as short a spring;
As quick a growth to meet decay
As you or anything.
— from “To Daffodils” by Robert Herrick (1591–1674, English poet and cleric)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
I wonder if the Daffodil
Shrinks from the touch of frost,
And when her veins grow stiff and still
She dreams that life is lost?
Ah, if she does, how sweet a thing
Her resurrection day in spring!
—from “Daffodil and Crocus,” April 1902 by Emma C. Dowd
To celebrate the New York Botanical Garden turning 125 years old in 2016, a project was launched in October 2015 to expand the Garden’s collection of daffodils to one million bulbs!
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
—“I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” 1804
by William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
Go down to Kew in lilac-time, in lilac-time, in lilac-time;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London).
And you shall wander hand in hand with love in summer’s wonderland;
Go down to Kew in lilac-time (it isn’t far from London).
—from “The Barrel Organ” by Alfred Noyes, (1880–1958, British poet)
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom’d,
And the great star early droop’d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn’d—and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
—from “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d” part of “Leaves of Grass” by Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
Purple and white lilacs (above) were blooming in the Garden’s Burn Family Lilac Collection, near the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.
New York Botanical Garden, Spring 2016
“The artist is the confidant of nature, flowers carry on dialogues with him through the graceful bending of their stems and the harmoniously tinted nuances of their blossoms. Every flower has a cordial word which nature directs towards him.”
—Auguste Rodin (1840–1917)
A visit to the New York Botanical Garden can bring joy the year round. Please include it on your next Specialty Tour that Walk About New York can design for you. Take the Tour; Know More!
ALL PHOTOS AND TEXT, EXCEPT NOTED QUOTES, © THE AUTHOR 2016
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