Check This Out: New York Botanical Garden's Antique Garden Furniture 1st Dibs Preview Party is Virtual Tonight; Followed by Weeklong Events with Exhibitors & Superb Garden Programs

 

I love(d) this event in the "before times," where all The Who's Who in the garden and exterior design world gathered and hobnobbed for cocktails, conversations, and getting their first dibs on rare and unusual gotta' have plants for your collection, as well as the chance to discover and score a perfect antique and/or piece of exterior design for their garden rooms.

A few years back, one of my most delightful and favorite garden design clients set her eye for beauty on these charming, Four-Season Cherubs that nowgive sanctuary and grace her white marble parking courts.

  

Festivities for this year's show begin on Thursday, April 29, 2021, with a Preview Party Featuring the Collectors’ Plant Auction.

Public Access to the Fair Runs from Saturday, May 1 to Friday, May 7, 2021.

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) will present its much-anticipated Antique Garden Furniture Fair virtually this year in a weeklong event from Thursday, April 29 to Friday, May 7, 2021, featuring unique offerings from leading antique dealers, including classic furniture and fine garden antiques—some with a modern twist, both elegant and inspiring—for the home and garden.

Festivities begin on Thursday, April 29, with an exclusive Preview Party Featuring the Collectors’ Plant Auction, from 4 to 7 p.m. Ticket holders will receive a special early access link that will allow them to purchase objects from the Fair exhibitors’ offerings and bid on a curated collection of exquisite and beautifully grown garden plants handpicked by NYBG’s horticultural staff. Proceeds support NYBG and its premier horticultural programs. 

For Preview Party tickets and information, please e-mail Thao Phan at tphan@nybg.org or call 718.817.8774.

The Antique Garden Furniture Fair is the ideal virtual venue for finding design inspiration for the home and garden, learning about garden antiques, and building personal collections. 

Public access to the Fair begins at 10 a.m. on Saturday, May 1, when a link to the exhibitors’ offerings will be posted on the Fair’s webpage. The exhibitors’ online showcases will remain accessible for purchases until 12 p.m. on Friday, May 7.

During the Fair, a selection of virtual programs will be available on the Fair’s webpage, including short videos spotlighting some of this year’s exhibitors, lectures by leading designers, a special documentary screening, and a floral design demonstration. The lineup of programs, which will be available to Preview Party ticket holders on Thursday, April 29, and to the general public beginning Saturday, May 1, features the following:

•   Spotlight on Exhibitors videos, providing insight into the world of antiques through the perspectives of six exhibitors (Find Weatherly, Westport, Conn.; Barbara Israel Garden Antiques, Katonah, N.Y.; Milne’s At Home Antiques, New York, N.Y., and Kingston, N.Y.; New England Garden Company, Sudbury, Mass.; Pagoda Red, Chicago, Ill.; and Jeffrey Tillou Antiques, Litchfield, Conn.)

•   Cultivating a Creative Life, a lecture by potter, gardener, cook, and entrepreneur Frances Palmer, who centers her creative life—and daily photo shoots—in an airy studio inside her Connecticut barn with a focus on determination, routine, prioritization, perseverance, and perspective.

•   An Eye for Design, a lecture by Kathryn Herman, founding principal of Kathryn Herman Design in New Canaan, Conn., who brings a strong horticultural background and intense interest in architecture to her international residential and commercial landscape design work.

•   Beatrix Farrand’s American Landscapes, the 2019 documentary by director Stephen Ives and horticulturist Anne Cleves Symmes, which explores the life and innovative ideas of one of the most influential and creative garden designers of the early 20th century whose work includes NYBG’s Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden.

•   A floral demonstration video in which celebrated designers Michael and Darroch Putnam of Putnam & Putnam will create a centerpiece in keeping with their signature opulent and densely layered style, using color as the guiding principle.

  *Antique Garden Furniture Fair and Preview Party sponsored by Bartlett Tree Experts

ANTIQUE GARDEN FURNITURE FAIR 2021 EXHIBITOR LISTING (In formation)

David Bell Antiques
Brennan & Mouilleseaux Antiques Dinan & Chighine Ltd
Find Weatherly
Finnegan Gallery
Garvey Rita Art & Antiques
Hawthorne Fine Art
Barbara Israel Garden Antiques Richard Kazarian Antiques
Glen Leroux Antiques
Milne’s At Home Antiques
New England Garden Company Pagoda Red
Francis J. Purcell
Rayon Roskar
Red Fox Fine Art
Thistlethwaite Americana
Jeffrey Tillou Antiques
Earle D. Vandekar of Knightsbridge Inc. 

Van Roÿen Antiques & Objects 

Withington & Company

The New York Botanical Garden is located at 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, New York 10458. It is easy to reach by Metro-North Railroad, bus, or subway. NYBG is open year-round, Tuesday through Sunday and Monday federal holidays, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, please call 718.817.8700 or visit nybg.org

New York Botanical Garden's Collectors' Plant Auction is Online: Shop Rare Plants from the NYBG Collections

The New York Botanical Garden’s annual Collectors’ Plant Auction had to be cancelled - obviously and respectfully - due to the Covid crisis. But the good news is that the Garden sprites and plucky New York Garden team found a way to still offer you their incredible, rare plants.

As readers of Garden Glamour, I don’t need to remind you how happy our plants make us.
Nor how plants heal us.

We need plants more than ever now …

So I’m so thrilled to share with you that even though I am missing my garden art and plant and horticulture friends more than ever at this very special NYBG event -- the 2020 Collectors’ Plant Auction includes an exciting variety of plants that - according to the Gardens’ brilliant team who filled me in on the Plant Auction details:
“Would be quite difficult, or even impossible, for gardeners to find elsewhere because they were propagated from NYBG’s own collections. While many of these offerings have a particularly exciting provenance or are not commonly available in the trade, they are all certainly a living piece of the Garden’s 129-year history of plant collection and care.

Summer container gardeners or glasshouse plant enthusiasts should look for palms propagated from palm dome specimens within the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, and even a corpse flower! For the city apartment dweller and plant hunter, there will be unusual aroid and philodendron cuttings from the Garden’s diverse glasshouse collections, as well as an array of specialty garden auricula collections, which can be grown inside given summer air-conditioning.

For outdoor gardeners, the Auction features over 20 herbaceous peonies divided from NYBG’s own Matelich Anniversary Peony Collection, as well as cherry trees and irises propagated from the living collections. Other highlights garden curators are most excited to offer include large specimens of giant philodendron, organically grown dogwood and apple trees, and favorite varieties of garden classics like witch-hazel and epicedium.”

And I just love this - especially the “botanical curiosities reference.” Plants are astonishing and never fail to wow us:
“Collectors will be sure to find a host of botanical curiosities and many great garden performers online at this year’s Collectors’ Plant Auction.”
NYBG will send a link via email when the auction is live on Friday. You’ll be able to access it from NYBG.org at this page

The auction features an exciting array of plants and other unique garden items, beginning on April 17 at 10 a.m. and running through April 23.

***

I have to add that it just tickled me that when looking into the details of this year’s Plant Auction and what was the other element of the event - the Antique Garden Furniture - I researched the Garden’s website and saw the page with news of this year’s event - and among other highlights, saw they had posted news features from last year in order to give guests a preview.

And there was my Garden Glamour post from last year’s event review.

Garden Glamour was in good company: The NY Times, Antiques and the Arts Weekly, and listed just above Martha: Up Close and Personal.

Thank you, Garden Glamour readers and followers! And NYBG.
Please enjoy reading about the glamour of last year’s event to get you in the garden mood. Then, get ready to purchase your plant passions online.
And do share what you “won” at the NYBG Plant Auction. I always say that the next best thing to being in the garden is seeing images of the plants and gardens. And well, to be perfectly honest, reading books about gardens and plants. And perusing magazines for garden art. And seed catalogs… You get the shared passion. Good luck at the Plant Auction!