Attend enough big garden and flower shows and you quickly learn that the most intriguing part of the experience is not always the most obvious. Yes, the carefully crafted arrangements and designed environments draw—and deserve—the lion’s share of attention, but equally fascinating are the individual plants, which are often the product of months of meticulous and obsessive preparation by breeders and growers.

Nowhere is this more apparent than at the New York Botanical Garden’s "Kiku: The Art of the Japanese Garden," an annual show featuring chrysanthemums that have been coaxed into mind-boggling perfection by the garden’s talented staff.

The tradition of training chrysanthemums (called kiku in Japan) into circuslike acts of beauty pays homage to hanami, the Japanese custom of appreciating the beauty of flowers. The fall-blooming flower is widely celebrated in Japan, where over many centuries techniques have been refined to painstakingly entice plants into various forms, such as bonsai, walls, bridges, and topiary.

At the New York Botanical Garden, experts pinch, train, and nurture the young plants until they burst into a wide range of color in October. "The intense training elevates the simple chrysanthemum into an art form," says Karen Daubmann, associate vice president of exhibitions. "The kiku are elegant and fragile. The diversity of chrysanthemum types and training styles that we exhibit is staggering."

Through October 26 at the New York Botanical Garden’s Enid A. Haupt Conservatory; nybgrg

* *