Take the Flamenco Train

Take a sensuous day trip to Spain this summer. Immerse yourself in the sights, sounds, art, poetry and plants at New York Botanical Garden’s Spanish Paradise: Gardens of the Alhambra, a legendary, 14th-century Islamic palace and fortress in Granada, Spain.

First things first: FLAMENCO! To get there, hike on through the Ladies Border, past the Perennial Garden – well… not so fast. Stop and smell everything, small purple trees, obelisk tuteurs with flowering vines poking through fat hydrangea, spirea and the aptly named Ponytail Grass (Nassella tenuissima) that looks like silken hair. Touch it. Sky Pencil holly showboats above sword-shaped crocosmia, feathery cimicifuga, agastache and startling standards of silver Centaurea cineraria ‘Gloucester White’...

But hurry onward to the Arthur and Janet Ross Lecture Hall where FLAMENCO: inside/out, a musical and dance trio perform Flamenco Among the Flowers. Along the way you will certainly daudle in Daylily Walk, but tarry not for FLAMENCO awaits to transfix and transport you to Spain.

Silently, guitarist/vocalist, dancer and percussionist enter and face away. Slowly they turn to an almost primal wail, the a cappella lament of a Spanish blacksmith sung to the strike of his hammer. Excitement builds with Flamenco guitar and dancer clapping, straining to move, as percussionist beats a cajon. It is the song of the capitol of Andalusia danced by a pretty girl with a flower in her hair. An hour later – a heart-swelling, all-out, hot dang finale.