The Orchid Show Returns to The New York Botanical Garden

NEW YORK, Feb. 7 /PRNewswire/ -- The sixth annual rendition of The Orchid Show returns to The New York Botanical Garden on Saturday, February 23. Running for six weeks, the eagerly anticipated exhibition and sale of fine orchids will arrive in the nick of time to lift winter-weary spirits and herald the perennial promise of spring.

The Orchid Show at The New York Botanical Garden will be the only place in the northeastern United States this winter to see thousands of orchids in a curated and designed, museum-quality exhibition. It is also the place to gather information about orchids and to purchase fine specimens and the materials to nurture them.

The Enid A. Haupt Conservatory is the central site for the Botanical Garden's comprehensive orchid experience. The Orchid Show's location in America's largest Victorian-style glasshouse offers a prime opportunity for visitors to gain insights on orchid biology as they meander through balmy galleries, temporarily forgetting that it is still winter in New York. Interpretative signs, pictures, and diagrams complementing orchid specimens in various stages from the Botanical Garden's collection of more than 8,000 will offer easy-to-understand explanations about what makes an orchid an orchid.

Under the 90-foot dome of the Palms of the Americas Gallery, which houses the largest collection of New World palm trees under glass, the reflecting pool will feature a spiral planter filled with a rainbow of "floating" orchids.

In the Lowland Tropical Rain Forest Gallery, exotic trees arch overhead to invite discovery of orchids as they would grow in nature: clinging to branches and twining around massive trunks. Here, visitors will encounter fragrant pansy orchids, extravagantly ruffled corsage orchids, and perchance a butterfly orchid, said to be the flower greatly responsible for the "orchid- mania" that took hold of 19th-century England.

During The Orchid Show, the terrarium in the Conservatory's Upland Tropical Rain Forest Gallery will showcase beautiful and often strange miniature orchids, allowing close-up views of these plants, which have tiny flowers as small as less than 1/16th-inch wide and feature colors that span the spectrum.

Sixth Year Casts a Spotlight on Singapore

To a first-timer, the scene of orchids in the Palms and Rain Forest Galleries might seem an exhibition in itself. However, aficionados of The Orchid Show know that an even more mesmerizing display awaits in the Seasonal Exhibition Galleries. Each year an astounding new design element has wowed visitors. For 2008, get set to be transported to Singapore.

In a beautiful and deferential nod to the tiny island nation, which happens to be one of the great orchid centers of the world-visitors will be awestruck by a southeast Asian-style pavilion, bursting with a multitude of spectacular tropical orchids such as Vanda and Dendrobium, which are grown in great quantities in Singapore.

Designer Thomas Noel and his team at Event Design Incorporated are gearing up to continue this exhibition's tradition of Broadway-worthy set design through the creation of the façade of the two-story pavilion as well as a series of planting arches reminiscent of many formal gardens in Singapore.

Orchid Displays and Education Continue in the Library Building

As if the spellbinding arrays in the Conservatory wouldn't be enough, the Orchid Rotunda on the first floor of the Library building will be filled with Dendrobium orchids, including many specimens of this orchid genus that have been recovered by The New York Botanical Garden in its role as a Plant Rescue Center. Dendrobiums, commonly known as cane orchids, are epiphytic-they grow wholly upon another plant, but are not parasitic and depend on the host plant for support rather than nourishment-and have canelike stems with many joints.

See vanilla orchids unveiled in the ongoing exhibition on the fourth floor, Plants and Fungi: Ten Current Research Stories. Here, displays of photographs, diagrams, unusual plant specimens, artifacts from explorations in remote locales, and an audiovisual presentation offer a look at some of the plant mysteries of the world being unraveled by our scientists and show there's a lot more to the Botanical Garden than its beauty.

On the sixth floor, large, rare folios published in the 18th and 19th centuries, which contain beautiful orchid illustrations, will be exhibited in the Rare Book and Folio Room of the Botanical Garden's LuEsther T. Mertz Library.

Programming and Audio Tour Enrich the Exhibition

Exhibition tours, informative signs, home gardening demonstrations, expert Q&A sessions and presentations, Continuing Education classes for adults, and an Everett Children's Adventure Garden program that reveals to youngsters the secrets of vanilla, which comes from an orchid, make a visit to The Orchid Show a rich experience. Program topics that change for each of the seven weekends of the exhibition make repeat visits almost too tempting to resist.

An audio tour that is accessible by free wands available on the Garden grounds or via cell phone on site and off site makes it easy to learn all about these intriguing plants.

Located in the Garden's Leon Levy Visitor Center, Shop in the Garden is a destination not to be missed during The Orchid Show. Thousands of top-quality orchids, from exotic, hard-to-find specimens for connoisseurs to elegant yet easy-to-grow varieties for beginners, will be available for purchase in the Shop.

The Shop will also offer orchid products for properly caring for new acquisitions and hundreds of orchid books, from profusely illustrated how-to titles to the more scholarly new release from NYBG Press, Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives, IX, which includes a chapter on the origins of Singapore's national flower, the well-known hybrid Vanda 'Miss Joaquim', first described in 1893.

Audio tour stops in Shop in the Garden will provide answers to frequently asked orchid questions and allow visitors to dial up care tips on watering and feeding, reblooming, and repotting for several specific types of orchids on sale in the Shop during the length of the exhibition.

                Founding Sponsor, The Tiffany & Co. Foundation
Exhibitions in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory are made possible by the Estate
                              of Enid A. Haupt.

The New York Botanical Garden is a museum of plants located at Bronx River Parkway (Exit 7W) and Fordham Road. It is easy to reach by Metro-North Railroad or subway. The Botanical Garden is open year-round, Tuesday through Sunday and Monday federal holidays. During The Orchid Show the Garden is open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. The best way to enjoy the Garden during The Orchid Show is with the All-Garden Pass, which includes admission to the grounds as well as to seasonal gardens, exhibitions, and attractions such as the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Everett Children's Adventure Garden, Rock and Native Plant Gardens, and Tram Tour: $20 for adults, $18 for seniors and students with ID, $7 for children ages 2-12, children under 2 are free. A Grounds-Only Pass is available: $6 for adults, $5 for adult Bronx Residents; $3 for seniors, $2 for students with ID, $1 for children ages 2-12, children under 2 are free. Grounds-only admission is free all day on Wednesdays and from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturdays. For more information, please call 718.817.8700 or visit www.nybg.org

Media Contact: Melinda Manning 718.817.8659/8616 or mmanning@nybg.org