Results tagged “botanicgarden”

This weekend marks the start of many pre-Lunar New Year Festivities in the city. The New Year begins on February 7 (more information here), and there will be the firecracker ceremony and cultural festival in Chatham Square on that day, plus the Lunar New Year Parade and Festival in Chinatown on February 10. There is also a Lunar New Year Parade in Flushing on February 9.

Zagat's updated Best of Brooklyn 2008 guide was released yesterday, filled to the brim with all that the city's largest borough has to offer, including 216 restaurants, 141 nightspots, 355 shops, 25 tourist attractions and more. Like all Zagat guides, this one is a complilation of surveys from the public and each entry is rated on a scale of 1-30. The guide is broken up into five sections: Dining, Nightlife, Shopping, Gourmet Shopping & Entertaining,...

Brides hate being disappointed, especially on their wedding day! And Elana Glatt is no different, as she, her new husband and mother-in-law are suing their wedding florist for a number of floral mistakes.

On the heels of the NY Times' Alex Williams calling Brooklyn "over" -- Park Slope has been named one of the 10 best neighborhoods in the country! Take that Gray Lady. In fact, "the historic area, just steps from Prospect Park and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, is the only New York City neighborhood to make the first-ever list from the American Planning Association (APA)." Which would mean that a Brooklyn 'hood bested a Manhattan 'hood -- though the latter did get on the "Best Street" list with Harlem's 125th Street (which the Daily News goes into here). As for the Slope, here's a bit of reasoning behind the decision:

"It's got a lot of past, but it has also evolved and has a lot of vibrancy in the present," said association spokesman Denny Johnson, citing the area's architecture and proximity to such cultural spots as the main library. "People in Park Slope care about everything from big to small," said Fifth Avenue Committee executive director Michelle de la Uz, who cited residents' interest in such things as where a bike lane should be built and protests over the war in Iraq.

There's a new Bronx (Stink) Bomber! Lehman College's Teaching and Research Greenhouses have grown an amorphophallus titanium [sic] plant (more colloquially known as the corpse flower because it smells like rotting flesh) and it will bloom by Monday night. The flower usually takes 10-20 years to grow in nature, but with nutrients from greenhouse workers, the Bronx corpse flower has been growing three inches a day!

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a two alarm fire at 80 Washington St in Lower Manhattan; an aircraft emergency at JFK this morning; two pedestrians struck on E. 53rd St.; and a "possible A.I. job" (whatever that is) in Woodhaven.
• The NYCLU objected yesterday to the number of cases the Civilian Complaint Review Board substantiated. The board, which investigates police misconduct, only substantiated 5% of the cases, but that's actually higher than that of Washington D.C. and San Francisco.
• A 64-year-old Gambino capo was given a 15 year sentence for orchestrating the murders of a couple that robbed his social club. No news on whether Dominick "Skinny Dom" Pizzonia, who has 6 grandchildren, lectured the judge on how they did things in his day.
• Mom and pop may have it a little easier if the City Council gets its way. They are examining the idea of giving tax breaks to small businesses hoping to "preserve neighborhood character," something that Mayor Bloomberg may not sign if it gets to him.
• Judith Zuk, the former president of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, passed away over the weekend due to breast cancer. She served as president from 1990 until her retirement in 2005.
• Red Hook vendors and area eaters have lucked out. The Dept. of Parks and Recreation are letting the food vendors remain through October 21st when they traditionally end their season. New rules are expected to be laid out in the Fall that may prevent the vendors from returning next year.
• The hottest ticket in town? Not Oprah, not the US Open, but J.K. Rowling. She's coming to New York to read at Carnegie Hall for 1,600 lucky kids from NYC's public schools. She'll also be signing books and answering questions about the series to the lucky students. No tickets are available to the public.
• And coming to your computer - MTV is building "music world" a virtual Brooklyn and Lower East Side that replicates "hip" clubs. Bonus: no need to dress up while sitting at home late at night in front of the computer.

Beautiful lawns, flowering bushes, and planters with lush greenery: This morning, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden announced the winners in its 13th annual Greenest Block in Brooklyn Contest. The residential first place winner was MacDonough Street between Stuyvesant and Lewis Avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant (pictured above) while first place for a business/commercial block was Hoyt Street between Atlantic Avenue & State Street in Boerum Hill (pictured below).

SALE: Our recent interviewees at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are having a plant sale today and tomorrow. With .50 cent plants for kids and "new and exclusive varieties [of plants] from Monrovia Growers" for adults. Tomorrow at 10am there's a "Houseplants for Sun or Shade: guided shopping trip," so that may be a good time to go!

Earlier this week, when Gothamist was looking at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden's CherryWatch Blossom Status Map, things didn't look too promising for the weekend. But with yesterday's update, we see that the buds on the 'Kanzan' (the trees in a row on the left) are starting to open. Just in time for this weekend's Sakura Matsuri (cherry blossom festival).

Patrick Cullina is the VP of Horticulture and Facilities at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and New York's go-to guy for cherry trees (there are over 200 trees and 42 species at BBG alone!). Anita Jacobs is responsible for all of the programs that go along with the garden, speaking of which...

A look at some noteworthy television programs this week:

Sigh. The fog has taken a bite out of what would have been a pleasant spring day. Instead of sunny and 65 it is foggy and 48. With any luck the fog and clouds should be gone soon. The sun should be out by mid-afternoon, which doesn't leave much time for warming. Highs today might reach 60. Tomorrow should be warmer –at least until the showers arrive in the late-afternoon.

THEATER: The esteemed Classical Theatre of Harlem is reviving Peter Weiss’s masterpiece Marat/Sade. The dizzying action takes place in an asylum in France, where the infamous Marquis de Sade is sequestered in 1808. To pass the time, he directs a play about the assassination of Jean-Paul Marat during the revolution. His asylum casting pool yields up some magnificent performances, though the production is almost squelched by the hospital administrator, a tool of Napoleon’s post-revolutionary regime. In the right hands, which CTH certainly has, the whole production is a multi-layered feast of subversion. - John Del Signore

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. City offices, post offices and other government buildings are closed today in observance of Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday. Public schools are closed, as well.

Holy crap it's warm out there! Today is, by far, New York's warmest January 6th since records began. The only question now is whether we will reach 73 degrees to become the city's warmest January day ever. With winds out of the southwest and slightly drier air arriving over the last couple of hours we may do it.

Check out this picture in today's Times. A lone cherry tree at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has decided to jump-start spring. Winter doesn't even start until tomorrow! While many trees put out buds before going dormant for winter, we usually don't see one flowering before winter begins. This particular breed is an everblooming cherry, which occasionally puts out a few flowers during fall and winter warm spells, but rarely does the whole tree bloom like this.

At the farmer’s market you’re entranced. The stalls swell with the season’s natural bounty—corn, tomatoes, peaches, peppers—all the foods that taste right only when eaten at this time of year. You buy pounds and lug the harvest home. But as the shortening days slip by, those special $2 bags of veggies risk going to rot in your fridge. It’s enough to make a gourmet’s heart sink. What do you do? Can it. That’s what some people in the city are learning to do. It may seem like a lost art, but canning could be coming into a revival. “Putting up” food has an old-fashioned homey appeal, not unlike that of knitting, another noble homestead craft that has spurred a recent craze. This summer the Unitarian Church in Brooklyn Heights threw a couple “jam sessions,” and the Park Slope CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) group gave a tutorial for members last week. If you’re a believer in the importance of buying locally, canning gives you a way to have your cake and eat it too. Stock up on berries now, cook them into jam, and eat them in January without any guilt. Preserving food at home can even feel a little revolutionary in this era when industrially produced food is the norm.

That putrid smell coming from Eastern Parkway and Prospect Park? It might just be the Amorphophallus titanum blooming at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The titan arum, aka the "corpse flower," is one of the world's largest flowers, and the BBG has been carefully cultivating its own for the past ten years. The plant, named "Baby," is set to bloom sometime this week - it seems that the flowery part (the "spathe") will unfurl for two days.

Ask.MeFi has been assembling an eclectic guide to "the best alternative/weird/unusual/eye-opening places in Manhattan." Most of the suggestions are actually located in the outer boroughs, but nevermind that. We've pulled out the highlights and linked everything for your browsing pleasure:

- He loves orchids

Today marks the first day of National Museum Month. This means, amongst other things, that it's the first day of Bank of America's Museums on Us! program. This program allows free access to 56 cultural institutions (19 in New York) - and to this day stands as the only nice thing that BOA has ever done for us cardholders.

Don't forget that the Sakura Matsuri Cherry Blossom Festival is going on all weekend at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden!

The cherry blossoms along the Cherry Walk and Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden are at peak and this weekend is the Garden's Sakura Matsuri, or Cherry Blossom Festival. The weather should be perfect for blossom viewing.

It's that time of year again: when everyone we know starts asking if the Cherry Trees in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden have bloomed. Yeah, we know, we need to get a more interesting group of friends. Still, until now we've had to rely on hearsay reported by people who visited during the past weekend. No more! From now on, we'll just check out this handy Cherry Tree Blossom Map prepared by the BBG. Looks like there's some hot cherry action around the lake this week, but so far nothing on the main cherry tree lawn. That makes sense, since the big Sakura Festival isn't until April 29th. [Related: a list of all the cherry tree types at the garden, a photo album from past Sakura festivals, and here are some shots of the blooms.]

The wonderful Holiday Train Show at the New York Botanic Garden opens this Saturday, and Gothamist urges anyone with a passing interest in NYC architecture to head up to the Bronx to see it. We went last year, and it was absolutely magical: The Guggenheim made out of huge mushrooms! The Brooklyn Bridge carefully constructed from twigs - with trains zipping on it! The lions outside of the New York Public Library! The NY Times' Ink column looks at the creation of buildings and bridges, which has Yankee Stadium as a new addition this year, and there's a great quote from tPaul Busse, the landscape architect who builds the models: "Every year, we take a ride into Manhattan. But after working with our buildings, the real thing can almost be a letdown."

beat.So while the humble street fair will never be abandoned by Gothamist, we can't help but make the more upscale Chile Pepper Fiesta part of our annual autumn ritual.Brooklyn Botanic Garden, 1000 Washington Avenue, (718) 623-7200

For more events, check out Gothamist Arts & Events.

, you wouldn't have to trek over to the grocery store for a tiny bunch of overpriced herbs? Gothamist certainly thinks so. April is a good month for starting seeds, and, after a few anxious moments during these gray days, Gothamist's seeds are finally in effect! (Squint your eyes. They're at Armando the cow's ten o'clock.)

This weekend, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is celebrating Sakura Matsuri - the Cherry Blossom Festival! Gothamist is going to try to make it out there for fresh air and some beautiful nature. Check out the activities on Saturday and Sunday, but just walking around the gardens is fun and lying on the ground in the esplanade is blissful.

So this thread in my favorite message board got me thinking about wildlife in our fair city. A quick Google search turned up a relevant and quite nice site from Urban Neighbors as well as the website for an episode of Nature about NYC wildlife (I've seen the episode and it's somewhat disappointing). There's also a book called Wild New York that I bought for my parents a long time ago and that I can recommend. To add a personal touch to this post, let me list some of the things I have seen in NYC: recently I watched a red-tailed hawk eating a squirrel up in a tree; in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden I have seen snowy egrets, black-capped night herons, little green herons, cedar waxwings, goldfinches, and many rabbits; I fed peanuts to chickadees from my hand; I used to catch leopard frogs and bullfrogs; I watched a snapping turtle with a head the size of a football suck down mallard ducklings; I often see pheasant by my grandparent's house; I saw a roadkill opossum on Staten Island once; one time, while walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, I came litterally face to face with a Peregrine Falcon; my parents regularly go see the horseshoe crabs when they come ashore at Plumb Beach; in my house I have killed mice, houseflies, fruitflies, pillbugs, silverfish, spiders, centepedes, and strawberry root weevils. Other points of interest: a coyote in Central Park, my parent's friend has a problem with black bears in her Westchester neighborhood, the Monk parrots of Brooklyn.