Emily Dickinson's Garden: The Poetry of Flowers

Emily Dickinson's Garden: The Poetry of Flowers
At The New York Botanical Garden
April 30–June 13, 2010
Bronx, New York

Going into the show I really didn’t have high expectations. The mixture of words and gardens is a powerful one for me but a whole show devoted to poetry and flowers just didn’t seem like it was going to be interesting. After walking into the Conservatory it revealed a perfect period garden with a great assortment of plants and flowers. Most of the plants were what I would call common but they were nicely presented and for a few seconds I forgot that I was in a building that I have been in hundreds of times. The flowers and plants were arranged as a border and I could imagine myself walking around at Emily’s garden admiring the various types of Hollyhocks, Larkspurs and Delphiniums. Throughout the displays were little, what I call Plant trivia, signs about the language of flowers and the plants themselves both of which were interesting.

There were couple of building mock ups at the intersections of the greenhouses. Again these were well done and looked like the fit right in.

Here are a few of the featured flowers:


Poor Man's Orchid
Schizanthus pinnatus
(ski-ZAN-thus) (pin-NAY-tus)


Rocket Larkspur
Consolida ‘Sydney Light Blue’
(kon-SO-lih-duh)


Dame's Rocket
Hesperis matronalis
(HES-per-iss)
Synonyms: Sweet Rocket

I realize now that a few full pictures showing the why the exhibit was laid out would have been helpful. All I had for lenses was the 105mm macro and in a relatively small space it isn’t going to give much of a landscape shot. You will just have to use your imagination and take my word that the show is worth visiting.