New York Botanical Garden 35th Holiday Train Show features plant-based replicas of NYC
New York City Tourism expects 8 million travelers to visit the Big Apple between Thanksgiving and New Year's this holiday season, but one holiday attraction will resonate even more with those who call the city home.
For its 35th annual Holiday Train Show, the New York Botanical Garden has around 200 replicas of NYC landmarks on display.
Throughout the conservatory, visitors will see miniature, intricate recreations of iconic sites like Grand Central Terminal, Upper Manhattan's Little Red Lighthouse, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library with its lions out front, Coney Island's Wonder Wheel, the Statue of Liberty, and One Vanderbilt complete with a working elevator. Trains run throughout and between each display, delighting the smallest New Yorkers especially.
Each replica is constructed out of sustainable material like bark, pinecones and cinnamon sticks.
"The beauty of this show is that it's a celebration of New York City, all made out of plant parts, plant material, and so it's a celebration of our great city through the lens of nature," said Jennifer Bernstein, CEO of New York Botanical Garden.
The show takes months of planning and a team of dozens.
"Every single one of those pieces of that spandrel is a bamboo piece laid at a 13-degree angle," said Laura Busse Dolan, the president and CEO of Applied Imagination. "One Vanderbilt, that's our new crown jewel for the show this year. It took our team over 1,000 hours to create ... And there's these gorgeous ceramic-fluted tiles that create the spandrels on that building that are actually paying tribute to the vaulted ceilings in Grand Central."
Dolan remembers watching her father, Paul Busse, help bring the holiday train shows to life since the 1990s as the founder of Applied Imagination, a creative architecture studio.
"He started working with New York Botanical Gardens in 1992, so I've grown up amongst this exhibit, and it was really just this organic evolution of a pretty small and humble beginning of trains coming to life at the New York Botanical Gardens," said Dolan. "Growing up amongst such a whimsical father that taught me to love architecture and to love nature and just bring it all together in a beautiful celebration like we do here."
Supporters say of the many holiday attractions in the city, the NYBG Holiday Train Show is an experience beloved even more by everyday New Yorkers.
"This [show] has always been an iconic experience and very important to New York City because it shows New York City's history, its past, but also its future," said Robert Schiffer, executive vice president of SL Green and who is responsible for the development of One Vanderbilt.
The show runs Nov. 14, 2026, through Jan. 10, 2027.