Rain has a funny way of perking things up. New Yorkers spent day after day splashing through puddles and wrestling umbrellas in the last week. But while your spongy shoes might evince the sort of misery that goes hand in hand with a drizzly day, most of our plants are loving this cloudy attention! Though it often takes some sunlight to reveal the effects to passersby.
Top of the list for what’s beautiful now is Daylily Walk. It had to be, really: these lolling fireworks shout “SUMMER!” just as loud as the megaphones they resemble, and their braggadocio is just beginning to kick into high gear. Meanwhile, broader collections like those in the Home Gardening Center, Mario’s Kitchen Gardens, and the Seasonal Border are looking as refreshed as ever. Chipper, even!
The color carnival keeps trucking in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, and, to be honest, there’s no way I could do literary justice to 4,000 blooming rosebushes. It’s almost beyond reason to stand there and ogle such a brilliant, scattershot rainbow of flowers.
You’ll also want to seek out the Stewartia in the Ross Conifer Arboretum, with its subtle, flopsy white flowers. And in the Conservatory Courtyard, the waterlilies are only getting bigger, brighter, and that much better. Finally, there’s the green. Yep—just the green. Everything growing here is wrapped in a plush blanket of foliage right now, and it’s…well, comforting. —MN
