All Photos By Gail

The New York Botanical Garden’s annual Orchid Show for ended a couple of weeks ago, but if you weren’t able to make it all the way to the Bronx for the 2018 edition of this landmark event, you can now live through me with a selection of my favorite Orchid photos from the show. Enjoy!

The show takes place each year inside the beautiful Enid A. Haupt Conservatory, the garden’s climate controlled glass treehouse which is based on an Italian Renaissance design. I visited the show on a frigid Sunday in late April and, like these lovely tropical plants, I was very grateful for the warmth!

This years show featured installations by Belgian flora designer Daniel Ost.

Just inside the conservatory, you enter the Palms of the World Gallery, where Ost installed a monumental living sculpture of orchids entwined within a network of transparent tubing — which mimics the jungle vines on which orchids grow in their natural environment.

The show features hundreds of varieties of orchids, and while many of them may look similar, each plant has unique characteristics.

These look like little Ballerinas, don’t they? I think so.

Orchids live mostly in the air, attached to trees, rather than on the ground, rooted in the soil.

Its almost impossible to resist taking one photo after another after another.

Look, how beautiful is this one, which its bright crimson center?

You might this that this bright fuchsia bloom is identical to the ones at the top of this post. But if you go back and compare the two, you will see many differences, aside from the similar color.

I’m sure you can see how moving from room to room, being continously faced with so much breathtaking beauty, can be a bit overwhelming.

Here’s a reminder to look up!

About half way through conservatory, you come to a room with a fountain in the middle of a  long reflecting pool , which runs through its center. This is the room where everyone stops to take all kinds selfies and posed photos, so it gets pretty congested. You have to indulge people though, because as you can see it is quite beautiful.

The fountain is draped by a curtain of hanging orchids.

As hard as it is to leave the fountain room, there are many more orchids to discover!