| |
Damask,
Alba, Noisette, Rugosa, Zéphirine Drouhin, Grandiflora, Meilland,
Baronne Prèvost: roses by other names that all roll off the
tongue with lyrical beauty. The rose, iconic ancient symbol
of love and object of aesthetic delight for centuries, desired for
its beauty of color and form, petals that unfurl in sensual
luxury, its sweet nectar and perfume. The Brooklyn
Botanic Garden -- a remarkably landscaped 52-acre expanse
within Prospect Park has perhaps the finest and largest
collection of roses on the East Coast, with more than 1,200
species and varieties in its Cranford
Rose Garden.
Growing in raffish abandon (here it is not about the luxuriance of
the blooms, but always about variety) the garden includes hybrids,
wild species, old garden roses, miniatures, climbers, and
ramblers. A library of some 5000 bushes that one may browse
like a bee on drowsy summer day. And right now the roses, of
every shade from white to shocking pink to that perfect deep red
are flowering in all their glory (a fortuitous result of a rainy
June and the perfect cooler weather this month) -- so now is the
time to visit, before, as they say, the bloom is off the rose….
The
Cranford Rose Garden -- a wild blur of color and light and
scented summer breezes! Love, beauty, secrecy (sub rosa
takes on new meanings here, kissing one's beloved under roses that
climb up trellises) -- all a subway ride away. And among the
other delights at the Botanical Garden there is the Japanese
Hill-and-Pond-Garden where a serene pond is encircled by trees
that picturesquely droop in studied aestheticism, bridges, a
gateway, a Shinto shrine…
There
is also the adjacent Brooklyn
Museum to
visit, a minute's walk away. Yinka
Shonibare's
(the UK-based Nigerian artist) installations are currently on show -- all
pattern-on-pattern African fabrics, ocelots, even a brightly-colored textile
take on Fragonard's The Swing (above). African wax-print textiles were
originally manufactured by the Dutch (who were influenced by the batik fabrics
of their Indonesian colony) and were sold by them in Africa where they became,
in many ways, native dress. Shonibare, who uses these fabrics extensively
in his work, has said: "Even things that were supposed to represent
authentic Africa, didn't turn out to fulfill the expectation of
authenticity." Small surprise that in our ever-changing, mutating
world, we thought, as we walked amidst the hybrids in the glistening light -
and thought only about things infinite - love, beauty, sunlight, and
roses.
Visit:
Cranford
Rose Garden
See:
Yinka
Shonibare, The Brooklyn Museum
|
|
|
