My sweetie & I went to the New York Botanical Garden on Friday for the Train Show. It also happened to be one of the last few days of The Spectacular Art of Japanese Chrysanthemums, a special exhibit located at the Nolen Greenhouses.
Even though the exhibit had been up for quite a while the mums are still in great condition.
They’re fading for sure however they’re quite beautiful.
The colors ranged from quite subtle to vibrant & bold. I love the color play of the orange & lavender in the cascade of spidery mums (not the official name, rather my description of the mums) to the left.
One of the most amazing pieces/plants of the exhibit is this one plant, one stem that can just be barely made out in the photo to the left, just to the right of the wood pole in the center. This one stem produced an amazing amount of flowers.
That one stem produced all of these mums!
While there is a framework that supports the whole plant & flowers.
I’m just amazed! There is one woman who works for 11 months to set up the entire exhibit! I can’t even begin to imagine all of the work that goes into cultivating each plant, training them to grow in just the right direction.
The delights just kept right on up…looking up that is with these mums that were trained to grow down the curved structure of this hay basket. The shape is rather inviting and very quilterly.
The shape & feel of the mums closing is something else as well. This is something I’d like to try some thread play with just to see if I could get the feel of the shape and texture of the plant. I’m thinking a grayed green background would be delightful! I have some Aurifil that would be just the right color for exploring this. Oh…inspiration hits…more on that later.
One of my favorite shots is catching this bee having dinner. The first shot is the one with several flowers in the picture. The bee then flew to the flower where I have the close up. I don’t know if the greenhouse keeps bees or not but this one seemed quite at home flitting from stem to stem snacking on mum pollen.
I’ll share more photos of the quilt show tomorrow.
We really had some amazing quilts. I’ll have a class update for you in a few days.
Happy quilting!
Teri
It does look like Mick Jaggers tongue. ewwwwwwww
looks like a great day
Beautiful flowers!