Flower Power “Rules” this Month in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden at The New York Botanical Garden

For Families: NEW! Flower Power-June 14-September 14, 2003, 10:00 a.m.-6:00 p.m.

Visit the Adventure Garden and experience the dizzying diversity of color, fragrance, shape, and size found among our blossoms during this summer’s floral festival. See beautiful flower sculptures combined with nature’s own bounty. Children match the hummingbird, bee, butterfly or beetle paper pollinator as they travel from one tempting flower to the next, investigating which flowers their pollinator creature likes best and why. Additional activities include dissecting live flowers and studying them under microscopes, crafting paper flowers, and exploring the Adventure Garden on captivating flower hunts.

For Camp And School Groups: What better place to enjoy the beauty of the season? Camp groups are dazzled by the wonders of the natural world in the Garden’s 250 acres, including two gardens designed especially for children. The one-of-a-kind Adventure Garden is a unique 12-acre indoor-outdoor museum where children explore, discover, and experience plant science in a fun and engaging way, and the Howell Family Garden is a place where children dig, plant and compost. Kids also learn about plants and enjoy nature in the garden’s individual garden plots, playful theme gardens, the meadow, and a compost facility filled with red wiggler worms! Call to register today! Groups select from a lineup of exciting summer programs: Flower Power in the Everett Children’s Adventure Garden, How Does Your Garden Grow? Ruth Rea Howell Family Garden, Guided Walks of the Garden Grounds or in the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, Self-led Tours of the Garden Grounds.

Pea Pod Explorers-for children ages 2-5, through June 27: Two or four session programs in the Adventure Garden for pre-K school groups. Pea Pod Explorers learn about nature’s life cycles while participating in activities including singing, storytelling, and scavenger hunts, planting, and making experiments to take back to the classroom. Participants in the four-session program also plant a group garden. Hand lenses and achievement certificates are awarded to each child at the end of the program. For more information or to register call (718) 817-8181.

For Teachers: Expanded! Teacher Training: Summer Institutes

Led by scientists and educators, The Sara Lee Schupf Summer Institutes provide a weeklong immersion in ecology and plant science. Participants in this dynamic program discover the thrill of science through field-tested, hands-on, inquiry-based activities. Teachers discover how to make the Garden an extension of their classroom, while enriching the curriculum with award-winning resources. Seedlings Workshop for teachers of grades K-2, July 7-11 and NEW! July 14-18. Saplings Workshop for teachers of grades 3-5, July 21-25 and NEW! July 28- August 1

Participation in the Summer Institutes is limited and competitive. There are three options for credit: Thirty units of New York City Department of Education New Teacher Credit. Three “G” in-service credits from the New York City Department of Education. Two graduate credits in education through CUNY Lehman College.

Additional fee and requirements apply for “G” and graduate credits. For more information, or to register call (718) 817-8177.

Ongoing: There is always something to do at the Garden. Every day the Garden inspires children to investigate the world of plants, explore nature, and discover the thrill of science. Children have fun while learning about plant science in an engaging, hands-on way with a variety of indoor and outdoor activities such as dissecting flowers, pressing plants in the herbarium, using microscopes and hand lenses to study plant parts, and take-home activities including making a nature field notebook to record observations, leaf rubbings, and plant and flower sketches, nature art and seasonal crafts.#

For a full listing of family fun activities go to www.nybgorg/family/famevents.htm. For more information call (718) 817-8700 or visit us on the web at www.nybg.org. The Everett Children’s Adventure Garden has been made possible by the leadership generosity of Edith and Henry Everett.