PUMPKINS for spring? Groundbreaking — especially when they’re Yayoi Kusama’s. The polka-dotted gourd is as representative of the artist as her line-inducing Infinity Rooms, both of which can be experienced at New York Botanical Garden. Initially slated to open one year ago, “Kusama: Cosmic Nature,” which is set to run through Oct. 31, peppers both early and recent works by the artist throughout the site’s 250 acres.

While the Japanese icon has seen many recent retrospectives, none have specifically examined her relationship to nature like this one.

“Nature is much more of a visceral inspiration for her. There’s this constant mode of change — cycles of decay, death, or rebirth — that are constant themes that you can see throughout her work,” NYBG guest curator Mika Yoshitake says. “What was really thrilling for this exhibition was working with the artist in thinking about large-scale installations that were absolutely unique to the botanical garden and not something we could do in a museum.”

Among the garden’s blooming daffodils and cherry blossoms, visitors will find trees wrapped in red-and-white polka-dot fabric, as well as several monumental sculptures, beginning with “I Want to Fly to the Universe at the Reflecting Pool.” In the pool of the Native Plant Garden, Kusama’s 1966/2021 “Narcissus Garden” is one of the most tranquil works on display. Originally constructed as a critique of art world elitism, 1,400 reflective, stainless-steel spheres now sway gently, naturally rearranging themselves on account of the wind and flowing water.

Also on view is “Pumpkins Screaming About Love Beyond Infinity,” in which guests can enter a dark room to get lost in a luminous patch of golden gourds. This summer, a new Infinity Mirrored Room experience can be accessed in a cube in the Home Gardening Center. Another experiential highlight will undoubtedly be the ever-evolving “Flower Obsession,” Kusama’s first obliteration greenhouse. Inspired by her family’s seed nursery in her hometown of Matsumoto, Japan, the space has been furnished with live plants, gardening books, and more horticultural details, all of which will gradually turn coral, thanks to the silk flowers and stickers guests are given to place almost anywhere within the installation.

There are several Kusama gems found in and around NYBG’s prized Haupt Conservatory: Larger-than-life blooms are erected from both indoor and outdoor water features, and a glittering mosaic Starry Pumpkin presents a tiled twist on the generally primary-colored motif. But in terms of the curator Yoshitake’s embrace of the botanical context, one of the star features found within the conservatory is a flower bed pathway that reinterprets one of Kusama’s patchwork-style paintings, “Alone, Buried in a Flower Garden,” with concentrations of black pansies, blood-orange nemesia, golden jasmine, and more.

For a more traditional white-cube experience, visitors can stop by the Ross Gallery to view images from Kusama’s circa-1966/2021 performance “Walking Piece,” in which she saunters through crowded New York streets in a pink kimono and an umbrella adorned with artificial flowers. Next door in the Mertz Library Building are intimately scaled sculpture and two-dimensional works that span Kusama’s career. Among the earliest and rarest finds are the artist’s 1945 sketchbook from when she was just 16. Her photorealistic depictions of flora and fauna found at her family’s seed nursery evolve into the surrealist and highly expressionistic forms for which she is most known today.

(SD-Agencies)