Botanical Garden looks back on first 125 years and forward to its future as a treasured oasis

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The New York Botanical Garden has often been a site for celebration — hosting weddings, galas and such. Now the venerable natural oasis in the middle of the Bronx has something of its own to celebrate — its 125th anniversary.

Unlike its neighbor to the south, The Bronx Zoo, where children and their parents scurry from exhibit to exhibit and crane their necks to see around a sea of other visitors, the NYBG offers a place of quiet contemplation.

Both landmark settings offer free admission on Wednesdays, but their scenes on a recent midweek couldn’t have been more different. You’ll rarely see children running around at the garden. Instead, they’re observing with rapt attention. 

Together with their parents, they quietly circle around the Native Plant Garden, one of the many smaller gardens on the 250-acre campus. They hold their mothers’ hands, sniff some flowers, and look around for more. 

This is the Bronx?

With a plethora of plants at every corner and the honking and grinding sounds of the city far away, visitors can forget they are in the Bronx. Even the large headquarters and research center looks more like an English manor house than an urban building.

Founded in 1891 by Nathaniel Lord Britton and Elizabeth Knight Britton — a married couple who admired the Royal Botanic Gardens in London and felt a need to bring something similar to the Bronx — today, the Botanical Garden is a hub for plant enthusiasts in New York and beyond, and a space for research. By 2020, it will be part of a major initiative to create the World Flora Online database where the public can search for over 350,000 known plant species. The project aims to educate the inquisitive and serve as reference on rare and endangered plants for scientists and researchers.

But educating the public does not stop there.  

The Botanical Garden is renowned for its exhibitions, many of which are planned as much as five years in advance, said Karen Daubmann, an associate vice president for exhibitions and public engagements. The goal is to provide visitors with a well-rounded view, she said. 

“We’re really trying to inspire people and to help them understand the world and the role of plants in the world,” said Ms. Daubmann, who has helped plan the garden’s events for the past nine years. “So it’s done through spectacles like flower shows and art shows, but it’s also done by someone meandering through the forest trail.”

Community minded

Like many Bronx organizations, the Botanical Garden is no stranger to giving back to its community by employing local residents, providing free memberships for families, and partnering with urban farmers in the area. 

Even after an exhibition or flower show closes, its materials often embark on a journey of their own when plants are donated to Bronx nursing homes and hospitals, or when fresh pumpkin and squash are used for a community baking project, Ms. Daubmann said.

“Things like that really warm my heart that the exhibition really lives on,” she said. “It’s just another way to sort of close the circle on plant life that are used in the exhibition.”

Looking ahead to the next 125 years, Ms. Daubmann said she thinks about what the Brittons wanted when they sought to start the Botanical Garden.

“I think that places like the New York Botanical Gardens are going to continue to be an oasis, not only for city dwellers, but all people to sort of escape the hustle and bustle and stresses of city life,” she said. “It’s one of those things that’s really going to be the prescription for a healthy existence — to really experience beauty and really experience peace.”

Tiffany Moustakas

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