New York Botanical Garden's Orchid Show celebrates Mexican Modernism
This year's orchid show is well worth a trip to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. Credit: Newsday/Scott Vogel
The peonies are barely poking through the ground and the herb garden still brown and lifeless.
But don’t be deterred from trekking down Perennial Garden Way anyway, especially on days that augur a warm spring, if only to summarily banish winter from your mind courtesy a visit to The New York Botanical Garden’s annual orchid show in the Bronx.
As in years past, the event is a marvel, a visual and horticultural feast for both body and soul, a celebration of one of the strangest and most ubiquitous members of the plant kingdom, and an intensive course in self-care such as only thousands upon thousands of orchids can provide.
This year’s installment also functions as a salute of sorts to Luis Barragán, a pioneering mid-20th-century Mexican architect known for simple facades, bright colors and seamless transitions between indoors and out. As such, large walls of purple and orange have been installed in the Garden’s Haupt Conservatory, along with bright yellow latticework and troughs of gently running water, allowing for "the gentle murmur of silence," as Barragán himself once put it.
They also allow for unruly throngs of dendrobiums, miltonias, paphiopedilums and moth orchids, those last the same species you’ll find in any supermarket, although not in the fantastic array of colors and patterns here. Many were created not by nature but botanists — the orchid is a plant made for interbreeding — although on the evidence of the varieties' names, the results often left the breeders reaching for poetry ("Surf Song," "Charming Snow") or gobsmacked and at a total loss ("Holey Moley," "Downy Rattlesnake Plantain").
As you make your way through room after room in the conservatory, it’s impossible not to be awe-struck, and perhaps even moved, by the orchid’s lust for life, the way it finds homes in both rain forests and deserts, in trees, pots, air and gravel. Many of the varieties are native to Mexico, which may be one reason they pair so well with Barragán’s work and, one imagines, the work of DJ Hellotones. He’s the tunemaster for Orchid Nights, which take place on Saturday evenings at the Garden, when the lights are dim, the bar is open, the conservatory and grounds pulse with cumbia sonidera music and a dance party for the over-21 set commences. Barragán’s gentle murmur of silence? Nope. But guaranteed fun for fans of fauna and flora alike.
"The Orchid Show: Mexican Modernism" is through April 27 at The New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Blvd., in the Bronx, 718-817-8700, nybg.org. Hours are 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Sundays, closed Mondays except select holidays. Tickets are $35, $15 for children 2-12. Orchid Nights are Saturdays from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. (timed entry) and for ages 21 and up only. Tickets are $45.
Newsday writer and restaurant critic Scott Vogel aims for a refreshing, gimlet-eyed take on the Long Island food scene, often while drinking a refreshing gimlet.
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