Outdoors

Rick Bayes has spent a whole summer preparing for an invasion of U.S. military personnel in Oak Hill. Like most Americans, he’s thrilled to see “the cavalry” roll in. The soldiers, however, are going to sweat when they see what Bayes has waiting for them.

The New York Botanical Garden is a museum of plants, an educational institution, and a scientific research organization. Founded in 1891 and now a National Historic Landmark, it is one of the greatest botanical gardens in the world and the largest in any city in the United States, distinguished by the beauty of its diverse landscape and extensive collections and gardens, as well as by the scope and excellence of its programs in horticulture, education, and science.

BBG is a 52-acre living museum where beauty, romance, and fun blossom among world-class plant collections and specialty gardens. Admired as an urban horticultural and botanical resource, BBG inspires visitors to discover that plants are essential to life.

Would you invite a foreign stranger in to doss down on your sofa? It might sound insane but that is the aim behind an internet phenomenon known as couch surfing, a travel network that connects people from all around the world. Finding freeloading house guests through a website might appear tantamount to inviting in scoundrels and ragamuffins but that is not the experience of Kay Ross. “It’s actually safer than picking up a guy from a bar in Lan Kwai Fong. I don’t get to read a reference in that case!” she laughs, referring to feedback left on the couch-surfing website by both guests and hosts.