Tuesday, October 08: Hudson Gardens
Oct. 16th, 2024 08:34 pmLast week Alex and I went back to Hudson Gardens, a free botanical garden. We went back in the spring, but at the time it was a little too early for a lot of the stuff we wanted to see. This time we were too late! But it was nice to go anyway.
The gardens are doing a seasonal event, "The Magic of the Jack-o-Lanterns" or something to that effect. It's a paid, ticketed event at night, but you can walk through the setup during the day as part of the regular free admission.
The Halloween setup is pretty cool - tons of carved (foam) pumpkins. (But pretty good realistic fake pumpkins!) Unfortunately, it does block a couple areas of the garden off even more than they already were. (This year they've roped some sections off for reseeding and to reestablish areas that have been eroded. I can't be mad about that, but it's sad not to be able to get to all the usual things. The event stuff ropes some of the things like the beehives off entirely, so you can't approach them at all.)
We were too late for some of the stuff I'd hoped to see, like the water lilies (which we were too early for in the spring), but the roses were having a fantastic second bloom! The single frost we had last month seems to have done away with the Japanese beetles that were devouring them earlier in the year, so they were doing great now!

Always love bees on flowers.

I also really liked this rose. The picture only sort of does justice to just how enormous it was!
( Ten more below the cut: )
And there were the pumpkins! Like I mentioned above, they are foam pumpkins rather than real ones. They're good fakes, and it makes sense. If you want the displays to last the whole month, real ones certainly wouldn't!
Lots of the displays were things like pop culture figures that I didn't really care about too much, but some of them were really neat.

Edgar Allan Poe was certainly an appropriate choice, imo.
( Eleven more below the cut: )
The gardens are doing a seasonal event, "The Magic of the Jack-o-Lanterns" or something to that effect. It's a paid, ticketed event at night, but you can walk through the setup during the day as part of the regular free admission.
The Halloween setup is pretty cool - tons of carved (foam) pumpkins. (But pretty good realistic fake pumpkins!) Unfortunately, it does block a couple areas of the garden off even more than they already were. (This year they've roped some sections off for reseeding and to reestablish areas that have been eroded. I can't be mad about that, but it's sad not to be able to get to all the usual things. The event stuff ropes some of the things like the beehives off entirely, so you can't approach them at all.)
We were too late for some of the stuff I'd hoped to see, like the water lilies (which we were too early for in the spring), but the roses were having a fantastic second bloom! The single frost we had last month seems to have done away with the Japanese beetles that were devouring them earlier in the year, so they were doing great now!
Always love bees on flowers.
I also really liked this rose. The picture only sort of does justice to just how enormous it was!
( Ten more below the cut: )
And there were the pumpkins! Like I mentioned above, they are foam pumpkins rather than real ones. They're good fakes, and it makes sense. If you want the displays to last the whole month, real ones certainly wouldn't!
Lots of the displays were things like pop culture figures that I didn't really care about too much, but some of them were really neat.
Edgar Allan Poe was certainly an appropriate choice, imo.
( Eleven more below the cut: )