New York Botanical Garden - with kids!

The New York Botanical Garden invited me to explore their gardens so this past weekend I took up the opportunity and went with my husband and 3 little girls for our first visit to it in the Bronx. A first of many visits for certain!

Elegant autumn toned dahlias grew in the seasonal walk

I could not contain my excitement and I think it rubbed off on my girls as we excitedly went from garden to garden. As we walked up to the conservatory, my husband saw the sign "A world of Plants" and knew without words that I would want a picture in front of it.

 so many lovely green textures.

I really enjoyed the different hanging baskets of Apocynaceae plants native to Indonesia and Malaysia:

 

riding on the tram!

 The flowering 'sweet autumn clematis' were a sight to see:

Naturally, we spent the most time in the Everett Children's Adventure Garden. My girls loved seeing the massive critters designed using different plantings.

They also enjoyed a scavenger hunt that had them searching for medicinal plants. They even got to plant and take home their own medicinal plant to put on mosquito bites. At the time, I missed what seed it was that they were planting, but we will find out once they start to sprout!

 

overflowing hydrangeas

The garden grounds were so much larger than I expected! For any horty like me, I would recommend spending a full day at the gardens to fully enjoy each area without feeling rushed. There are many things I would love to go back and discover more about that we did not have time to see, especially the Mertz Library. It is one of the world's largest and most important botanical and horticultural research libraries, with over one million items such as books, journals, original art and illustration, seed and nursery catalogs, architectural plans of glass houses, scientific reprints, and photographs. I think that alone would take a whole day for me to enjoy.

As for my girls, they loved it and asked the next morning "when can we go back?!".

exploring princeton university

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A 1/2 day for my husband, a craigslist find in Princeton and an hour car ride later we found ourselves in South Jersey walking the campus and admiring the architecture of one of the countries oldest universities, Princeton.

 

Ivy, ivy, ivy! It's not called Ivy Leauge for nothing. Ivy creeps and crawls everywhere throughout the campus. It is trimmed and taken care of properly to show how gorgeous it can be on brick buildings.  Graduating Princeton seniors started the custom of planting ivy at the university building, Nassau Hall, in 1866 as seen above. It became part of each graduating class’s tradition and they also placed a plaque on the wall with the date of their graduation.

 My girls had a great time exploring all the different "castles". Good thing the campus was pretty empty as we were pretty loud everywhere we went.

ivy hill

 snack time:

I am so glad we made this little day trip. Princeton is a breathtakingly old and intriguing campus. Moreno girls, class of 2028, 2030 and 2032.

walking the high line, nyc

We took an afternoon as a family in the city and walked the High Line! I have been wanting to do it for ages and I don't  know why it took so long to go. It was gorgeous, very windy, but oh so worth it. The High Line is a modern park made from the old, elevated New York Central Railroad on the lower west side of Manhattan.

Peekaboo empire state building:

 

The old rail lines have been repurposed into an ever growing luscious flowering wonderland in the bustle of the city. Recycling at its best. I love how they kept some of the rail lines intact though and planted in and amongst them.

 It's neat to walk elevated through all of the buildings while still in a park that is a mile and a half long.

 

If you are planning a trip to NYC anytime soon, I highly recommend walking the High Line! It was great to walk with kids too. My girls loved looking at the flowers, climbing on the benches and just plain old people watching. We can't wait to go back!

ps- if you are planning on going with kids, check out this book, The Curious Garden by Peter Brown and read it before you go. It is a children's book inspired by the High Line and now one of our favorites.

trumpet tree

I just got back from a little vacation down south in Florida and Georgia. I kept noticing these pretty tabebuia trees that were flowering in Florida. The yellow trumpet like blooms were dropping from the trees in the wind littering the grass with eye candy. This is my little Penny enjoying the dropped blossoms. I can't wait for the trees to start blooming here soon!

autumn wildflowers

I didn't mean for our playdate at the reservation to end in collecting wildflowers, but it did. On the way there we kept passing patches and clusters of goldenrod along the roadside. I love goldenrod, it reminds me of the patches of wildflowers in the fields by my home growing up in western new york. As I was pushing one of my daughters on the swing, I saw bountiful amounts of it not far off. With a 14 month on my hip and two wee excited girlies in tow, we picked wildflowers, which might look like weeds to anyone else, but quite an afternoon treasure to us.