The River Garden at the Union Square Greenmarket and in Martha Stewart Living

By West Village Bill

Before I moved to Manhattan, I was only slightly acquainted with The River Garden, which has, hands down, the most beautiful display of flowers at the Union Square Greenmarket. I'd occasionally catch these flower farmers at the market on a Friday when I was off or able to leave work early. Now that Union Square is my local Greenmarket, I've come to realize that TRG is here every day the market is open: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday.

The August issue of Martha Stewart Living has a wonderful, eight-page article on TRG, which is in South Cairo, New York, and its owners, Bernadette and Walter Kowalski, who met cute while manning neighboring stands at a farmers market 20 years ago. (There's no link to the story on marthastewart.com. And TRG doesn't seem to have a website of its own.)

TRG's Union Square stand compels you to approach. There's such a tremendous variety of beautiful colors, and the mixed bouquets are so striking and imaginative. At today's market, I bought a bouquet of pink and green zinnias for my bedroom and some sunflowers, which I paired with some unusual-looking rudbeckia from another stand, for my living room.

Here are some pix of today's display of flowers at TRG:

Here's the bouquet of zinnias:

Here's a couple of photos of the rudbeckia I bought at the other stand, which I'm not going to be giving my business to anymore. While looking for some information on that farm, I discovered this article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about the farmer. I'd never seen black-eyed Susans with thin petals that widened at the ends before.

And here are two shots of the mixed bouquet in my living room: