Sandy's Garden ... 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, NY 10458-5126

“I heard ya askin’ for tickets to Bedford Park Boulevard. Ya wanna catch the D train and not the B train. The B train stops in Harlem; the D train doesn’t. Take my advice and take the D.”

It’s 2003 when we were younger and … arguably … even more foolish than we are now.

We were enjoying a holiday in Manhattan, listening to a rabble-rousing orator in Times Square, enjoying a theatrical night out on Broadway, flying across the city in a rattlin’, rollin’ hang-on-to-your-hats, elderly Bell 47G helicopter, strolling down to Grand Central Station at night what naive and innocent tourists do when they’re let loose in New York.

We were bound for The New York Botanical Garden and had determined to use the Subway rather than hire a yellow cab.

The New York Botanical Garden (NYBG) is distinguished by the beauty of its landscape, collections, and gardens, and the scope and excellence of its programs in horticulture, education, and science. NYBG was inspired by an 1888 visit that eminent botanists Nathaniel Lord Britton and his wife, Elizabeth, took to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, near London.

The Brittons believed New York should have a great botanical garden to advance public understanding of plants, be a repository of rare and valuable specimens, and lead original research in botanical science. Because of its picturesque terrain, freshwater Bronx River, rock-cut gorge, and 50 acres of old-growth forest, the Garden was sited on the northern half of Bronx Park.’

We had been attracted by promises of ‘the beauty of its landscape, collections, and gardens;’ and the reality was truly stunning. The 250-acre Garden …it has grown over the years … includes some fifty specialty gardens housing collections of more than one million plants!

The Nolen Greenhouses and the Enid A. Haupt Conservatory … America’s pre-eminent Victorian-style glasshouse … the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden, the Native Plant Garden and more than 30,000 trees, many more than 200 years old, are but a few of the highlights of this little-known-in-the-UK treasure trove of botanical science. We had one day to sample its delights … it covers four times the area of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) … and even casual visitors like us could spend an enjoyable week there.

What brought that day to mind was the arrival of the February 2022 edition of PostScript, the catalogue of a company which offers publishers' overstocks and backlist titles at discounted prices.

And there, on page 50, is ‘Flora Illustrata,’ a sumptuously illustrated compendium in which international experts introduce us to some of the most fascinating works held by the renowned LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden. Published by Yale University Press at £40 in 2014, it is on offer from PostScript at a decent discount.

No, I’m not going to buy it: but I might be tempted to visit another of the world’s truly great botanical gardens one day soon, for I haven’t been in the RBGE for ages!