Two days before a heat wave hit the east coast and gave Baltimore the highest temperature in the country at 96 degrees, I was in New York. In a turtleneck, fleece and quilted jacket I visited the New York Botanical Garden as part of my sister’s birthday weekend. On a chilly tram ride we toured some of the garden’s 250 acres and enjoyed an overview of the varied terrain and many gardens within the garden founded in 1891.
Only scilla, daffodils, pansies and early cherry trees bloomed outdoors.
To warm up and bask in color we went inside the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory. This elegant 1890’s glass palace is similar but larger than Baltimore’s Howard Peters Rawlings Conservatory, http://www.rawlingsconservatory.org with dessert plants underneath, ponds and fountains inside and out.
I know almost nothing about orchids, but the kaleidoscopic profusion of the exhibit showed hundreds of different sizes, shapes and textures, eye-candy at the beginning of spring.
Tropical temperatures in the pavilions prepared me for the week ahead in Baltimore when daffodils, forsythia, cherry, tulip and star magnolia trees burst like popcorn.
