Visitors to the opening celebration for the Wicked Broadway Garden won’t be able to pluck any magical herbs to concoct a green potion and suddenly acquire the power to defy gravity. But they can take photographs among lush blossoms, hear spirited musical performances, play witchy trivia games and enjoy a slice of Oz in the Bronx.
These will all be part of the festivities on Saturday from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the New York Botanical Garden, which for three weeks is devoting some of its own emerald expanse to the Emerald City. Taking its cues from Stephen Schwartz and Winnie Holzman’s hit musical, which has been adapted into a two-part movie starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, the Wicked Broadway Garden will bloom through Nov. 2 with plants in pink and green, the production’s signature colors.
“Our team was inspired by the iconic moment when Glinda gives a pink flower to Elphaba,” said Michael Crowley, the botanical garden’s chief marketing officer, in an interview at the project’s site. “It’s the first real moment of connection between these two friends.”
As we head into year 2 of press coverage for the much-hyped film adaptation, it’s unlikely that anyone reading this is unaware that “Wicked” is a revisionist prequel to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” Based on Gregory Maguire’s 1995 novel, it features the green-skinned Elphaba as the actual heroine. When the flower is bestowed in the Broadway show, Elphaba, who grows up to be the Wicked Witch of the West, and the perky Glinda, who becomes the Good Witch, are schoolgirl roommates and former enemies.
“The other thing that we’re inspired by is the story of empowerment in ‘Wicked,’” Crowley said. “It is very related to our science and horticulture work here in the Bronx. You know, Elphaba’s desire to make the world a better place is really aligned with our work to unlock the power of plants and fungi.”
Over the summer, the botanical garden’s staff conceived the “Wicked” display, which will be in its outdoor Home Gardening Center. While the Broadway show fueled the project, it doesn’t hurt that Halloween is coming, Crowley added, or that the second part of the film adaptation, “Wicked: For Good,” will debut in theaters on Nov. 21.
The finished garden, which will feature more than a dozen plant species in individual pots, is accompanied by over 25 varieties already growing in the soil.
“We have the dark purple, almost black, elephant grass, which will kind of add some extra drama to the planting in the containers,” said Tess Kuracina, the botanical garden’s director of living collections. “And then we also have a beautiful ornamental grass called ruby grass, which started blooming a couple weeks ago, with really soft, fluffy pink flowers. And so that obviously will tie in really well to the color story, and also kind of the contrast between the characters of Elphaba and Glinda.”
The varieties in pots include ornamental kale and cabbage, Bismarck palms and agave, which evokes “a spiky, kind of mystical plant,” said Brian Sullivan, the garden’s vice president for glasshouses and landscape. Some species will change over the run, he added, becoming deeper in color because of temperature changes, or, like some chrysanthemums, coming into full bloom later.
Although this is not the Bronx garden’s first collaboration with the theater world — it devoted its entire Orchid Show to Broadway imagery in 2011 and, most recently, produced an Instagram post revolving around HwaBoon, the houseplant in “Maybe Happy Ending” — this is the first time it has featured a Broadway partnership in its Home Gardening Center. The project will offer information to help visitors (even those without Elphaba’s green thumbs) create their own “Wicked” garden.
“These are pretty hardy, pretty standard gardening plants,” Sullivan said.
Signs featuring flying monkeys will point the way to and from the garden area, which is about 4,000 square feet. Its focal point will be a 10-foot-tall pink-and-green “Wicked” wall, featuring silhouettes of Elphaba and Glinda, where fans can take photos. The graphic designs come from the Broadway production, whose staff eagerly became the garden’s partners, said Diana Salameh, the executive vice president at Serino Coyne, the show’s advertising and marketing agency.
“Plants play a subtle but very powerful role in ‘Wicked,’” she said in a telephone interview, symbolizing “growth and transformation.”
Salameh noted that the Broadway team had also worked with the New York Restoration Project in 2007, remaking a neglected neighborhood garden in Upper Manhattan into the Wicked Friendship Garden, which remains open to the public.
For this Saturday, the show has enlisted alumnae of its second national tour — Natalia Vivino, a standby for Elphaba, and Hayley Podschun, who played Glinda — to sing “Wicked” numbers in the botanical garden’s conservatory plaza. The production is also supplying the trivia contests’ secret prizes. Fans at the celebration can have their faces painted and, while supplies last, take home a free memento: a pink carnation.
The Wicked garden will offer new perspectives, Crowley observed. “It is not a quiet space where the lights go down for two hours,” he said. “This is a place where the sun is out, and it’s all about fostering connection between people and plants.”
The post What Would Elphaba Grow? The Botanical Garden Has Some Ideas. appeared first on New York Times.
