April 26, 2006
PARK(ing) Space
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In a city where parking garages can charge as much as twenty dollars an hour and the minute you leave your hard-won parking space on the street, a car has already pulled up to replace you, it is clear that parking is at a premium. Still, the notion of this portable park, however unrealistic it might be, captured our fancy. Imagine all those barren midtown streets peppered with patches of green. Imagine a whole street lined with turf on either side...flower boxes...trees...benches...beach umbrellas. The possibilities are endless.
Link: Rebar
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)
April 13, 2006
Spring Windows
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The most seasonal store window in New York this week is not the kitschy giant mechanical bugs and birds flying though forests of neon azaleas at Macy's Herald Square (although that is definitely the most popular one), it's the 57th Street windows at Bergdorf Goodman, where the window-display elves have created a slight, gentle, yet poetic installation that captures all the promise of the growing season. Working from what look like good photocopies, the installers have taken decoupeed birds, fragments of botanical manuscripts, and old flower catalogs and pinned them informally on the backdrop of the display, as if it were a giant "idea" board. The windows are fresh and whimsical and make you long for nature, and oh yes--there are some pretty dresses there too.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 06:06 PM | Comments (0)
October 13, 2005
Tulips
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Here's how we at Citygardenguide take our minds off horrible weather, or horrible thoughts. We check out on-line bulb catalogs, and choose some bright beautiful tulips for spring.
Studying tulip catalogs, it is easy to understand the Dutch 17th-century passion for tulips. We have to discipline ourselves, because it is all too easy to get carried away. So we are careful after a couple of out-of-control bulb orders, to review the order and to scale it back to something reasonable. Always remember, you have to plant what you order, if you want the tulips to bloom anywhere else but in your imagination.
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There are lots of tulip catalogs, but we usually start with Brent and Becky's Bulbs andJohn Scheepers. They both have good selection and excellent pictures. Also, if a favorite item is sold out of one catalog you can often find it in the other.
Tulips are ideal for city gardens. They don't perennialize that well in our climate- so you can yank them out without a pang when they are done. They give a lot of bang for the buck. And although they are attractive to squirrels, deer, which will devastate a tulip planting in a nanosecond, are few and far between in town.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 06:32 PM | Comments (0)
May 09, 2005
Rockefeller Center
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Where is the prettiest spring display in the city this week? Believe it or not, it's at the Rockefeller Center Promenade (sometimes known as the Channel Gardens). It consists of two rows of ten-foot-tall European hornbeams planted in the beds on either side of the central water tanks. Lush grass, sprinkled with blue, white and purple pansies, carpets the area under the trees. It is all fresh, simple and really inviting. The Promenade displays only last a couple of weeks--they are changed about ten times a year--so this delightful incarnation won't be around for very long. We can only hope that those 28 elegant hornbeams are going to a good home when their gig is up.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:40 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
Eye Candy, Greenwich Village
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Windowshopping in New York is always great, but in the spring every store window has delicious displays of flowers and bright spring colors. When we spotted this little handbag from Lulu Guinness, we knew we had found just the thing to banish the winter blues--even though it might be too big of an indulgence to actually buy one of these bags, the message alone cheers us up: Gardening is Good for the Soul. Happy spring!
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 02:17 PM | Comments (0)