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New York Botanical Garden: Plant Crazy ABout Trains
by DIG-IT
ALL ABOARD! for the New York Botanical Garden’s Holiday Train Show!
In its 19th year in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, all the tropicals are a stage for this model train show like no other.
There, 14 G-gauge American trains, with locomotives, railroad cars and trolleys, travel over 1,200 feet of track past 140-plus replicas of New York landmarks like the Chrysler and Empire State Buildings, the old Yankee Stadium and other impressive buildings, many demolished. They travel over famous bridges like the George Washington and Brooklyn Bridge, through trestles and tunnels and the Washington Arch. They hustle up the Hudson to visit grand homes.
And amazingly, they’re all built with dried plant materials by artist Paul Busse and his crew. The trains range from 1800s steam engines to today’s high-speed passenger trains.
Enter the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the nation’s largest glasshouse, magnificent in itself and alone worth the trip. In this grand Victorian conservatory, palms rise almost to its 90-foot dome. They linger over a central reflecting pool where Lady Liberty greets the visitor as she has always done, though now her torch is pomegranate with a monarch flower flame. Next to her, the Ellis Island Immigration Station with stonework of elm bark and a Transworld Airlines Flight Center complete with helicopter and jets reflect in the black water surrounded by calathea, philodendron, begonia and other small tropicals.
Bear right around the circular pool into the Train Show. Or, before you begin The Show, turn left through the doors into the Ecuadorian rainforest, whether you’ve been there before or not. “You mean there’s more?” asks first-time visitor Ursula.
It’s cool in this high-altitude forest. Stroll under Tarzan vines, bromeliads, mahogany trees, a chocolate tree and vanilla orchid, papaya trees, beside gorgeous leaves of calathea and family, painted by Nature.
See Yesterday-today-tomorrow’s (Brunfelsia grandiflora) purple and white blossoms on the same flower cluster, Brazilian Red Cloak’s (Megaskepasma erythrochlamys) hot pink flowers and Calathea flowers!
In the serene and meditative Aquatic Garden, check out Ceiling Wax Palm ( Cyrtostachys renda), Mysore clock vine, New Guinea creeper (Mucuna bennettii, gold cup vine Solandra maxima with golden flowers, and Crown bamboo (Chusquea coronalis) so delicate it looks like spirea.
“There are so many places to go,” says the astounded Ursula. “Oh, gosh, there’s more!” We are in a cloud forest. “Are we in the Andes?”
We visit an orchid showcase and nearby blueberry relatives with colorful blossoms, so recently discovered they don’t have common names. Walls of moss drape over boulders with ferns and huge bromeliads not to be missed – a duplicate of Nature’s living green wall. Then into desert, then a garden of gardenia trees and bougainvillea that bloom just when you need it, and other colorful tropicals.
Swing open the doors and enter the Holiday Train Show. But first take a brief detour to the Artist’s Studio to discover how Busse created the structures. A display features a building in three stages of construction.
Into the Show, trains zip and chug on tracks that twine through tropicals and New York architecture. Overhead, the lit-up Brooklyn Bridge stretches across the conservatory above the crowd.
Visit Yankee Stadium, the House that Ruth Built, demolished in 2010. This memory has field walls of cherry bark, an outside wall of horse chestnut bark, seats of elm bark, pillars and light towers of willow sticks and acorn tops. It sits among shrubbery of ornamental red hot peppers, ferns and small gardenias and cyclamen.
See Pennsylvania Station the largest replica at 20 square-feet. The original building spanned eight acres. It was “demolished under controversy in 1964 to make way for the fourth incarnation of Madison Square Garden.” (All Aboard!) The model has honeysuckle columns, a roof of magnolia and pine cone scales. Its eagles have white pine cone bodies, feathers of magnolia buds, and acorn cap wings.
Or the fairy tale-like Olana, the home of American painter Edwin Church of the Hudson River School. Olana, designed by Calvert Vaux, has horse-chestnut bark siding, eucalyptus leaf roof, and heavy ornamentation of seeds, pods, and twigs. It sits nestled among miniature cyclamen and ferns.
Enjoy the photos here but go see it for yourself and bring the entire family for a time never to be forgotten. And don’t miss the perennials gardens, fabulous in winter.
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published December 29, 2011
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