'Where the Orchids Bloom' for VIE Blog

“Did you know the New York Botanical Garden has a rescue center for plants smuggled into the country? Instead of destroying the seized plants, they are brought to the gardens to be bred, propagated, and shared. Marc Hachadourian (NYBG director of glasshouse collections and senior orchid curator) shares many little throwaway but useful facts, which I love collecting. Did you know that a vanilla bean is really the seed pod of an orchid? And there are only six flowers in the world with the remarkable color of a jade vine, a thirty six-inch cluster of turquoise green. Finally, for the finale, when we arrived at the garden’s hugs arches blanketed with orchids. Maybe it’s better to first experience this online, because if I walked under the orchid arches and around the reflecting pool in person, I might have fainted and fallen into the pool.”

Read more about taking one of many delightful virtual tours of the NYBG, on the VIE Blog HERE…

"Walking into a Perfume Bottle" for October VIE

“A ballroom needs structure to contain its empty party space, and a garden ballroom is no different. Four ‘walls’ were a way of containing the area but open to the sky where anything seemed possible: a place for sitting still or dancing among a crowd. One wall was an avenue of thirteen twenty-foot holly trees, and another was a line of five black cement pillars with gigantic pots of pink sasanqua trees shaped like umbrellas. (This was the view from the kitchen table.) Two clipped hedges formed the north and south walls. Four pots of standard orange trees stood in the corners. Ballrooms look grand with a piece of art, so we installed a sculpture — a seven-foot-long hippopotamus bench made of Pennsylvania granite….”

Suzanne writes of her time spent living in the Elizabeth Barnwell Gough house (c. 1780) in Beaufort SC, where she restored the gardens to their original glory with her signature nod to modern. In case any readers are like us — faced with fallen trees and perhaps a future blank slate in your backyard, desperately needing the ultimate yard inspiration after Hurricane Dorian — read the rest of this article in the October issue of VIE Magazine HERE!