by
Ambi: walking on gravel path, fade under narration.
The staff of the Gardens used to get thousands of phone calls a day every April, asking whether the cherry blossoms had peaked ... these days, they've come up with a high-tech way to keep people informed:
We have a cherry watch on our website,
That's Mark Fisher, director of horticulture.
you can log in and see where the cherries are, whether they're prebloom,
blooming, or past. And certain people have certain species that they're
interested in, and they'll watch those, so they can find out on the website
when it's going to bloom, and come in and check it out.
Fisher has worked here for 24 years. He says that while the cherry blossoms take center stage for a while, the other species in the gardens require lots of thought ahead of time.
It takes patience and planning, it's not like you can decide in May that
you want a certain plant which needed to be started in October or November,
so you need to be good about planning what you want as well as a backup
plan.
The gardens see lots of visitors once spring arrives, and Fisher notes that a lot of them bring their children ... maybe as an excuse to stop and smell the flowers.
It's like the parents suddenly become like little kids, too, when they want
to smell things. Because the little kids are interested, it's cool then,
for you as an adult to smell it.
While some parents need strollers for their kids, Zoie and her mother Denise, visiting from Connecticut, are long past that.
Denise Saldania: Spring hasn't really started in Connecticut, so this is a
perfect day to come and find spring here. We don't have star magnolias.
We don't have any of the magnolias out. We do have them eventually, so I
get to have spring twice.
Adam: And what are you seeing that you don't normally see?
Zoie Sheehan: My mother [laughter] I'm a spring flower.
Denise: I'm the best spring flower.
Local schools, like Ms. Ramato's Brooklyn class, take school trips through the grounds, the tropical conservatory, and the desert house ...
Student: My favorite thing was the cactus right now. It's spiky and some
of the insides were really cool, if you expand it.
Teacher/Guide: I thought you guys didn't like the desert.
Another Student: Because we thought it was going to be hot, we thought it
was going to hot like a real desert. But it's not so hot.
From the desert house to the tropics, Fisher's staff work year-round, but when spring comes ...
Your stress level goes up. You have a short window to get everything done,
because it seems like even this year it seems like we went right from
winter into spring.
The Brooklyn Botanical Garden will hold its Cherry Blossom Festival this year on the weekend of May 3rd and 4th. I'm Adam Hirsch, Columbia Radio News.
Backannounce:
To see pictures of the gardens as of this morning, go to uptownradio.org.