As ice floes drift down the Hudson and East Rivers, New York looks forward to Spring with The New York Botanical Garden’s 13th Annual Orchid Show featuring “Living” Chandeliers.
The Orchid Show: Chandeliers dramatically transforms The New York Botanical Garden’s landmark Enid A. Haupt Conservatory into the country’s largest curated show featuring orchids. Eye-catching baskets and cylinders filled with the stunning tropical flowers decorate the Seasonal Exhibition Galleries in the Garden’s Victorian-style glasshouse—the largest of its kind in the country—with a giant star-shaped chandelier overflowing with hundreds of orchids as the centerpiece of this year’s visual extravaganza.
Cylinders with a kaleidoscopic array of orchids and baskets with spikes of different orchids, such as Cattleya and Phalaenopsis, are interspersed throughout the show, framed by the magnificent architecture of the crystal palace Conservatory. The largest of the “living” chandeliers will stretch across the four beams of the Conservatory’s corner house. Pools of water reflect the spectacle of orchids in the containers that hang above, while beds of Cymbidium and other orchid species delight the senses below.
For the first time ever, the design theme will run throughout the Conservatory, beyond the Seasonal Exhibition Galleries and into the Tropical Rain Forest Galleries and other galleries. Each year this eagerly anticipated exhibition displays thousands of orchids, captivating New Yorkers and visitors from across the country and around the world. This year the exhibition is designed by the Botanical Garden’s own Francisca Coelho, Vivian and Edward Merrin Vice President for Glasshouses and Exhibitions, who has been called “the best female head gardener at present working under glass.”
Through exhibition interpretation, The Orchid Show will explain the extraordinary history and conservation stories of rare and endangered orchids in the rain forests of the world, while also offering visitors ideas on how to display their own orchids in creative ways, teaching them how these awe-inspiring chandelier creations are made.
(through Sunday, April 19, 2015); for further information, check out www.nybg.org)
photo credit: Dana Meilijson;