Showing posts with label nyc parks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label nyc parks. Show all posts

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Friends of the High Line Metro Hort Tour Explores Garden in the Sky



Let me just get it out there.  This is one sexy garden park.

Not unlike a defining fashion statement in complete simpatico and homage, the couture boutiques and artisanal restaurants that now embrace it like style supplicants, the elevated park can be considered a Manolo on come-hither stilettos; kissing the clouds, embracing the sky-high neighborhoods nearby and flirting with the nearby Hudson River’s majestic vistas.
But would anyone expect anything less dramatic from a city of romantic glamour and garden passion?

Not on your High Life.

The early October evening was an auspicious start for the enthusiastic, over-subscribed Metro Hort tour.
It was rainy, kinda’ gloomy and a bit dark.  It was the beginning of autumn, after all. 
Yet the 65-plus New York Metro-area horticulturists paid no mind to that.
They couldn’t wait to gather at the High Line Park for a much-anticipated garden tour led by the High Line’s expert gardeners.
It’s embarrassing to admit, but this was my first tour of the private/public park. 
I guess you could say I am a “virgin” High Liner.

Rest assured, as any newbie would be, I was critical enough to see if all the hype and press were indeed warranted. 
In fact, I was enchanted, seduced and in love.
With Eden-like abandon, I will return to this garden in the sky so frequently, I hope it becomes second nature…

Sabine checked in the MetroHort gardeners
With hushed, barely concealed eagerness, the “cohort of metro horts” huddled under the Highline overpass, some with umbrellas, some with hoodies, at several access points.  





Mine was 23rd Street.  MetroHort's Sabine Stetzenbach checked us in.








Soon enough it was announced the garden tour was to begin. 
There is a palpable thrill climbing the steps up, up, up to --- to who knows what kind of garden paradise in the clouds. 


Friends of the High Line Gardener Maeve Turner
Our group’s masterful garden guide was Maeve Turner: she is articulate, knowledgeable, personable and oozes pride of place about her Park.   
Standing on a curvaceous park bench to talk to the cohort metrohorts, xx provided a quick, broad overview of the High Line’s story – the miracle of how the park got made.
It was a decades-long odyssey.  But community fortitude and love and a pursuit of preserving an unique historical, mise en place ultimately came resulted in success.

In fact, post Metro Hort tour, the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation announced plans to help fund the final segment of the Highline to the tune of $20 million – on top of the $15 million they already donated: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/nyregion/20-million-gift-to-high-line-park.html

Wowsy – that is some fashion statement!

Gardener Maeve Turner told us about the landscape architect: Javier Thorer Fuller and Piet Oldolf, noted Dutch landscape architect who provided the garden design and planting elements. Piet borrows from Midwest or prairie landscapes to design public gardens to incredible accolades.  
Maeve also noted that Kilco does all the plantings in NYC Parks and here too. Including the Brooklyn Bridge Park and the 9/11 Memorial. 

Our tour started at Section 7. The Highline needs more name monikers.
These section number/metrics sounds too like Area 51ish.
We journeyed up nine blocks to Gansevoort – 20th to 30th Street.

Everything is astonishing here. The plantings, the hardscapes, the design, the maintenance challenges and solutions – all guidance for urban gardens everywhere.

The Highline is undoubtedly sensory overload: the expansive sky (that city dwellers too often do not observe), the shimmering lights of the city, the trees, the variety of perennials, the spare hardscapes, mixed in with the history and the future and the sublime bliss of unlimited achievement and possibilities.

The utility of the elevated railroad tracks have been thoughtfully preserved – and incorporated in a creative, artistic way.  The tracks run throughout the park in a marked, subdued, elegant way.  The pathways undulate.


Not surprisingly, the Piet Oldof design uses a lot of self-seeding perennials and grasses.


The High Line’s garden sections or rooms, are charmingly labeled with names like the Meadow and the Chelsea Thicket.
The Chelsea Thicket provides a tunnel-like effect across the park’s path.
The drama is further amplified when the plantings seem to span the space between the buildings’ beckoning outreach.    

The verdant lawn area is sod, stretching green and lush like the first putting green at the country club.  


Gardener Maeve Turner says the urban park guests just can’t resist sitting or sunning on blankets there, like so many lawn jockeys.   
There is tiered, redeemed teak seating next to the lawn, ideal for reading, sitting and enjoying entertainment events.
Love the Vitex chaste tree there too.  

There is a charming, whimsical design element feature that includes a giant Frame, backed by a pretty big garden seat.  It was explained that for so long everyone took pictures of the Highline – a defining neighborhood streetscape.
So the concept is one of turning the tables, if you will. Visitors can now view the throbbing cityscape below and beyond, within the frame.  







The plantings include juniper, amelalchier – (that had some apple rust) and lots of native plants.
The entire plant list is available on the Highline web site

Gardener Maeve Turner said the Highline is really like a giant container garden. 
Sweet. And yet so apropos for an urban garden!

“There is the ‘Bridge freezes first affect in winter,” said Maeve  when referring to the park’s unique challenges.
And it’s extremely hot in the summer.  
Extreme weather is the norm despite the moderating influence of the Hudson. 
Harsh conditions are punctuated by the city’s concrete and oh-so-near buildings' radiant body heat. 

There is crushed gravel and sand and filter fabrics below the inches of soil for a sandy, loamy soil structure; 7% of the water runoff flows into the beds and so far there has been no flooding.

The Park leaves the seed heads on the perennials throughout the winter (birds like rose hips and hyssop) and cut it all in the spring – further contributing to a way too busy spring season. 

Maeve noted because the Highline Park is so new and unique, it’s all a learning process.
It is all rather amazing to learn there are only seven full time gardeners, three seasonal gardeners and two interns.  Thank goodness there are 75 volunteers. 
Sign up to be a garden volunteer. 
And say hello to my smart, lovely, talented garden friend, Pat Jonas, who volunteers as a Friend of the High Line.

All the MetroHorts met back at the starting point and chatted up the highlights of the High Line garden tour and many headed out for cocktails to further talk about – gardens and plants. How glamorous!























Thursday, August 25, 2011

Metro Hort Tours Brooklyn Bridge Park


Let’s just get it out there. 
The Brooklyn Bridge Park is breathtaking.
It’s a landscape architect’s loooonnnggg dream come true. 
More about that later.
Point here is that the time from “Let’s build a park” to what is gracing the Brooklyn waterfront is a gestation period worthy of a sci-fi epic. Or in other words, NYC politics.

Fast forward to the spectacular, park of today. 
The genius loci is one visitors can truly believe is the way it has always looked. 
Isn’t that a hallmark of great landscape design?
Not unlike Manhattan’s Central Park, where most people think the land was preserved the way it was rather than the real history of cleaning out tent cities and squatters to design a more healthy and beautiful city park in the tradition of the great urban European parks. 

One cannot over emphasize the current NYC Bloomberg admiration’s efforts to provide more parks, bike lanes and more “green” lifestyle alternatives. 

And so, after more than a decade of work, the Brooklyn Bridge Park is alive, real and enjoyed by so many citizens that it should’ve been deemed a crime that it wasn’t completed sooner.

On the recent tour of the Park with the Metro Hort professional association Park tour, (www.metrohort.org) we not only saw families and locals enjoying and using every bit of the Park, there was also a nighttime, open-air movie on the newly made hill/swale that looks out to the Statue of Liberty to the South and Manhattan to the west.
Who needs cinema with that kind of built-in view and skyline?  In any event, there were blankets hosting hordes of lucky lookers the night we were there!

The cloudless, summer evening started off swell enough. 
Emerging from the #2 subway at Clark Street, proceeding down to the waterfront to the Ice Cream Factory meeting point, one crosses over first Pineapple Street, (how cute you think!) then Orange and Cranberry Streets before blinking back the thought you are in a game of Shoots and Ladders. 

L-R: Regina McMyer, Matt Urbanski, Sabine Stezenbach
Landing at the assigned Pier 1 gathering place, we are greeted for the tour launch by garden enthusiast and Metro Hort organizer extraordinaire, Sabine Stezenbach, who introduces Regina McMyer, president of the Brooklyn Bridge Conservancy, Rebecca, director of Horticulture, and landscape architect, and passionate park planner, Matt Urbanski, a Principal of Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and a lead designer of the park.  

We learn that Matt has worked on the Brooklyn Bridge Park (BBP) since it was conceived, approximately 15 years ago.  The ardor he feels about the making of this oasis is palpable, his love never waning over the course of its flight from CAD conception to a green, fun-filled place of beauty.   Matt should be named the patron saint of BBP as his husbandry of the space throughout the decades and the commitment to using history and native plants is evident.  He is therefore also the perfect tour guide.  

The large group followed our enthusiastic Pied Piper leader along the crushed granite walks that meander throughout the new Park for what was to have been a 90-minute tour. We were so captivated and Matt was so energized, we reluctantly disbanded at around 9 pm, forging on way past the original half-mile destination to Pier 6, and instead made it all the way South past the piers and Children’s Garden to Atlantic Avenue.

The first phase of the Park is approximately 1.3 miles along the street; 5 miles along the water, explained Mark, because the design team added crenellated shoreline, employing cuts and curves.  He also explained that Pier 1 is a “misnomer” as the area here is landfill.

The throbbing, beautiful “entrance” to the park is studded with the iconic restaurant, The River Café, the seafaring-picture-postcard-looking Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory and the old barge, that is now home to enchanting, ethereal musical performances – all perched “under” the visage of The Brooklyn Bridge and its cathedral-like buttresses and spider-web tension wires that have inspired artists, including Georgia O’Keefe, along with legions of foot travelers and tourists who walk the bridge as a rite of passage. 

It is pointed out the existing structures provided the reference for scale to the landscape designers, integrating the new pedestrian space to work with the existing scale: The Brooklyn Bridge, along with the Fulton Ferry Terminal.  
 
Pier 1 belonged to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
The area was used to unload food off the ships and boats.  (See, Brooklyn’s acclaimed food heritage is pedigree.) 
We could almost see the scene in our mind’s eye as described by Matt as he told the story.  “By the late 1950’s the stevedores could be found slinging the sacks on ropes into the sheds that were built on the piers to store the food from the containers.  By the time work started on the park, it was as if it had been in a time capsule or “time warp,” he said.  “The question was not so much to rebuild but to repair.” 
The design team was committed to preserving the spirit and history associated with the space, yet creating a park that served the communities needs now and going forward.  It is a brilliant, thoughtful design with great respect for the history of the space and its contribution to the life of the city. 
Before I could post this story, the NY Times ran a related piece today about the waterfront efforts. How timely! http://tiny.cc/l79q3

Matt shared a key landscape design consideration was how to introduce someone into the park and work with the view, he says while gesturing wide to sweep in the drama of the Manhattan’s “skyline-as-attitude” casts its sexy footprint just across the narrow East River.  “No park has that! So we had to parse it out,” he laughs knowingly/confidently, while gesturing in a theatrical hand swoop.   

Matt details how they took a flat site, made a 30-foot hill of stone excavated from an access project site in Long Island.  “There are thousands of cubic yards of soil” used to make one space into multiple, interesting spaces.

Big plantings were a challenge, particularly the scale of the trees.  The need to introduce shade was acute, yet so was the need to protect or preserve the bridges and harbor views.  The resulting strategy is a “designed hedgerow.”

The London Plane, multi-stemmed trees are dense along the pathways: “They won’t swallow up the lawn,” Matt commented, while pointing out the emerging “green tunnel” effect they created, quickly adding that the more than 1,000 in-the-ground plantings have only been here a mere 15 months, the park having opened June 2010.” 

The trees are full at eye level now.  They were spaced fairly close together: 20 feet apart, rather than the customary, accepted landscape design of spacing plants to allow for the full growth mature plant to inhabit.  There are also some Honey Locust and Kentucky Coffee trees added in as a twist.  There was some discussion about this as Matt said the needs of now: “look and shade,” outweighed the idea of designing the space for 20 or 30 years hence.  “The design is about anticipated attrition,” he stated with smile, anticipating some disagreement among the horticulturists.  “Otherwise, we are disappointing park-goers for 75 years.”  
In turn, everyone chuckled to think most landscape design is indeed planted for the long term, meaning today’s park patrons must endure teeny trees so that their grandchildren can enjoy the finished product. 
There is a third rail and it’s working just fine at BPP.

The intention is that the trees in the hedgerow will push each other out – “fight for the light, then to give more views than now” Matt said.   

The sleek wire fencing is New Zealand sheep farming fence wire; the posts are native Black Locust and park staff can readily close off any part of a lawn without bringing in unsightly snow fencing.  

The plantings are dense, with the under plantings utilized to make a linear garden.  Varieties including ‘Blue Muffin’ viburnum and ‘Hummingbird’ clethra were used because they are intended to stay low, requiring “no crazy pruning” Matt and Rebecca added.  

Repeated was the important landscape design mantra of “managed succession,” according to Matt.  The idea is that old-field plants such as sumac or bayberry would give way to successive plantings: “To keep the plantings in a state of disturbance.”

When talk of irrigation inevitably came up, Matt said it is a big strategy for this park, and in no small part fueled by conservation and the fact that wetlands and the river border the park.  The water is directed into a drainage system to the Park’s “Water Park” then back up to a cistern.  From the cistern, the water is pumped into traditional sprinkler system/watering heads.
The idea is to recycle rainwater that covers 70-80% of the park’s water needs without taking any city water. Very impressive engineering. 

After a brief stop to admire the thousands of blanket-toting, picnic-packing park fans who had set up a perch for the evening’s outdoor movie, the MetroHort group headed onto the seashore rose-lined path to the Granite Flow Prospect area of the park that graces the promenade and precipice on the East River waterfront. 










Here, it is a series of stepped seating stairs designed to take in the Manhattan skyline and the Statue of Liberty views, while embracing the cool water breezes.  It is gorgeous granite; that could have achieved an Elle Décor or Dwell magazine kitchen-design photo spread appearance already. 

Next up was back out to the point to descend down a rather steep, lush, lawn to the same East River water’s edge.  One feels in a green blanket hallow bed, surrounded on both sides by high hills dotted with dense plantings of ornamental grasses and trees including Dawn Redwood, Pine and Swallow.  The lawn was so rich-looking it brought up the question of what kind of soil was hosting this verdant space that would make a golf-course groundskeeper, well, pea-Green with envy!  Matt and Rebecca explained there were seven different mixes of soil used, inoculated with compost tea. Plus, they claim there are no pesticides or fungicides used!  Excellent for the families sitting on the grass.  Or those scantily-clad denizens communing with a higher authority J  











The tour took us next across a bridge and out to the water area near the Brooklyn waterfront closer to Brooklyn Heights and the god-awful BQE highway. (What were they thinking back when??)
Matt told how they performed an engineering analysis of this site and wanted to make a “Big Ba Boom” moment as one comes around off the pedestrian bridge and turns to see:  drum roll, please: The Statue of Liberty.  The park planners and landscape designers succeeded brilliantly. The drama created should earn them an Oscar.  

Here there are lots of big boulder rocks on either side of the path, with native plants punctuating the salt marsh borders.  We were told the builders cut back and shaped the riprap in order to make slopes and terraces.  Matt could hardly contain himself, exclaiming, “We made salt marshes in New York City!!”  He added they also had the not so surprising consequence of finding a muskrat had taken up residence there in Brooklyn….  

The plan here is to make 10 acres of area available by 2015 to be used for kayaking so that water sport adventurers can connect to the canals and bridges that embellish the city. He pointed out that curiously, there is presently no place to readily just walk from the city to get into the water.  Seems crazy for an island and shoreline landscape.

This area is part of a storm water infrastructure that was planted with aquatic plants, including pickerelweed, mallows, native rush, Matt said.

Meandering back to the Water Garden, the borders are lined with lots of bayberry and boneset.  “It’s a very intimate space,” commented Matt, the group nodding their agreement.  


The striking red lobelia here at the water’s edge stood out like a fashion model on the runway.  Sabine nailed it when she noted they looked liked skyscrapers, fronting as they do the not too distant Wall Street skyscrapers towering behind them.  It is as if they are trying to imitate their big shadow or brighten up their grey facades. 
The asclepia there was so pretty too. 



Matt explained they bio-engineered the site, using coir matting -- most often referred to as coco fiber -- around the pond’s edge, along with lining logs around the stream and pond.  The whole thing works like a relay wall, with water pumped into the planned perched wetland pond nestled between a lawn swale on one side a bike lane on the other.

At this point, the tour officially concluded.  Matt and Sabine offered to continue heading back south to explore more of the proposed completion of the BBP.  Most opted to continue to follow our exuberant Pied Piper: Matt. 
Besides, the breezes were so nice and the sun was a pearly, pink glow, just setting behind the Manhattan skyline to the west; so we were more than seduced to continue our arboreal and pastoral journey.  



We continued on to see what will be at the Heights.  Under the Brooklyn Heights area.
It is a very ambitious and smart design that will soon be here.  
Most important will be the 42-degree slope on the 30-foot high landscaped hill/wall needed to block out the noise created by the never-ending conga line of cars on the BQE above.  Matt says here and without the wall “The sound is a living hell.”
At Pier 2, Matt exudes his enduring love of the place, having worked on the design and sherpa-ing the project to completion since the 90”s.  Here he described a spiral pool and canal that will soon be gracing the site.

The lights at the skeletal structures on the piers provide illumination for the basketball, tetherball courts.  At night, it all looks like a surreal movie set. 
Matt says porch swings will soon dance from the ceiling of the structures. 





The landscape design genius here is the blending of industrial memory and invoking rural elements of the site, as Brooklyn is the beginning or start of Long Island – and according to the lore of Native Americans it is the head of the fish – with the Twin Forks of the East End being the fins. 

The industrial heritage of the site has been honored and preserved, with ribbons of light punctuating the piers like a lighted Etch A Sketch.  “It will become a signature of the park,” Matt said.   It’s very glamorous.   

Running down the list of soon-to-be parks from his park-o-meter memory, Matt said
*Pier 3 will look like nature took over
*Pier 4 will be made into a bird sanctuary. And a grand beach – with more access to the water.
* Pier 5 and 6 …. More to come

The Children’s Garden is a mosaic of gardens: each element of the children’s garden has its own identity. There is an enchanting Water Garden or Water Lab, with aquatic plants, including horsetails, water sprays, and a fun, huge sandbox village with animal critters and teak decking surround. It offers an intriguing, sense of play and discovery. There is a slide mountain – (German, custom-made for the site) with a “floor” of a spongy element that puts a spring in your step; surrounded by bamboo. 

Matt reported Adrian Beneppe says it’s the best playground in New York.  And who am I to disagree with the best-ever Parks Commissioner?  J

Only the dark of night made this amazing garden tour come to an end. 
We’d traveled a few miles of New York waterfront; and at the same time, traveled back in time more than a few decades. 
And what might be characterized as inspired garden magic, we learned that in order to maintain the park space there is a Hort staff of--drum roll please-- Two! Yes, just two full time people. Plus a seasonal staffer.  And the volunteers.  It’s not fair that just a teensy bit more taxes might go toward a better lifestyle for all… Volunteer if you can. 

Enjoy this amazing park. It’s a love letter from urban landscape architects to the citizens of this great city.  Hugs all ‘round. 

Horticulturist, blogger & artist, Phyliss  Odeyssey


Thursday, July 14, 2011

Metro Hort’s Chelsea Cove Garden Tour with Lynden Miller and Peter Kelly


It was a blistering hot day in Gotham, the thermostat pushing triple digits. 
But garden lovers are intrepid. Besides, Chelsea Cove in Hudson River Park hugs the waterway, offering cooling breezes that kiss the sinuous walkways and magnificent gardens.  


Perfect for a tour with fellow garden enthusiasts despite the equatorial inferno just beyond 23rd Street and the West Side Highway.  


Wearing sun-shielding hats and tank tops, wielding parasols and umbrellas, nearly 50 Metro Hort members gathered like exotic birds gliding back to the flock, in pairs or solo, pockets of conversation floating like languid bubbles until eventually, a large group formed where Lynden and Metro Hort’s super-organized Sabine Stezenbach and her associate the pretty as a rare orchid and gardening presence, Hanna Packer, were seated under one of several umbrellas.  

There, members signed in, drank some much needed water, shared garden chat while eagerly waiting for the start of the discussion prior to the tour.  So many said they’d never been to the Park; it was such a nice surprise.  All agreed an added benefit of Metro Hort is it gets one out into new, undiscovered neighborhoods!  

Chelsea Cove is Pier 62 and along with Piers 63 and 64, forms the largest contiguous green space in Hudson River Park.  The piers here extend out into the water. The public gardens are located adjacent to the popular Chelsea Piers Sports and Entertainment complex to the south.  


The gardens were constructed in 2009, given a year-long soft opening allowing the plants and grounds to be monitored, officially opening in 2010.  The display gardens are still so new and our hosts generously shared the tribulations experienced by all gardens exposed to extreme weather, high visitation and lack of resources for horticultural maintenance.

Before too long, Sabine welcomed Metro Hort members as “true gardeners,” introduced Lynden Miller, landscape designer extraordinaire commenting, “New York horticulture without Lynden is unthinkable” and Peter Kelly, Project Manager in Design and Construction for the Hudson River Park Trust before handing the portable microphone over to the Peter.   
(I must add that Lynden has long been my landscape design idol. She is a cultural icon and a garden treasure.  There should be a park and a Lynden Miller award added to the Mayor’s annual Cultural Awards.)

Me & my idol, Lynden

Lynden (L) introducing Madeline
Metro Hort attendees benefited from an extended overview and discussion while “waiting” for Madeline Wils, president of the Hudson River Park Trust 



and Mark Boddewyn, landscape architect and vice president of design and construction at his own firm, who first worked with Lynden at Wagner Park in Battery Park City.




We learned so many interesting factoids, historical notes, and inside horticulture scoops! 

Did you know Pier 62 has the biggest piles along the Hudson?  The piles are 300 feet deep to reach bedrock vs. “just” 100 feet in TriBeCa?  Or now that Riverkeeper has cleaned up the Hudson, wildlife has returned, of course, but that means the worms have come back making the case for concrete piers?   At great expense. 
photo rendering of styrofoam base
Most curious is construction of the berms and the skateboard park.  They were carved into different shapes from a Styrofoam base – to aid in strength and drainage -- and then covered with a very sandy, lightweight soil depth of merely two and half feet.  
The Park practices Green Watering – the irrigation and storm water recycles and drains to the Hudson River.

Lynden explained she designed section 5, which extends from 26th Street to Gansevoort, Pier 54, from where the Lusitania sailed.  They plan to keep the heritage ironwork and historical significance there.  Thoughtful design.

Lynden and Peter shared a key design element at Chelsea Cove was the concept of gardens as “pass through” – a gateway to the water and great lawns that punctuate the park.   



Lynden worked with award-winning landscape architect, Michael Van Valkenburgh, www.mvvainc.com hoping to “bleed” some of the design bed plantings into his native, Capability Brown-styled landscape.  Van Valkenburgh’s firm used Kentucky Coffee, black locust, crabapple and cherry trees, and green grass to achieve a woody, natural look.  

Lynden noted several challenges: at present, there is no shade, so she requested the patio umbrellas. 
And in developing the color scheme, she had to recognize Chelsea Piers’ imposing influence of red, white and blue looming over the gardens.  (The Good To Go Organics red, red food truck is a welcome treat though J Jordon offered summertime lemonade that hit the spot.  www.goodtogoorganics.com  and @gtorganics) 

But she used it. 

Red Knockout Roses; 

Nepeta, backed by Knockout Roses with Natchez Crape Myrtle 


red Japanese Barberry Berberis thunbergii and box that appear to go over and under each other in ribbons of color,            


Ribbons of Color



Hibiscus 'Aphrodite' Deep Purple blossoms
Japanese Blood grasses Imperata cylindricawhite Natchez crepe myrtles, Lagerstroemia indica, deep purple Hibiscus ‘Aphrodite’  and waves of Amsonia hubrichtii Blue Star used as hedge; sedums, Nepeta/Catmint, “Walkers Low” and Salvia ‘Blue Hill’ she refers to as College because it blooms blue in time for graduation, and following a summer haircut, it blooms again in time for student orientation in the fall.  Lovely bright Coreopsis ‘Moonbeam’ smiles throughout the beds. 

Lynden positively rhapsodizes about her use of Oakleaf Hydrangea, Hydrangea quercifolia.  “I wouldn’t do a garden without them,” Lynden states with utmost fidelity.  “They make other plants look good” she adds.  
Oakleaf Hydrangea is a signature plant used in all her designs. 

As is Heuchera ‘Plum Pudding.’ She adores dark purple. But alas, the Heuchera is not doing well in this garden much to her distress due to a weevil. She is quick to point out the heuchera is doing marvelous up in Fort Tyron Park!
Not to be undone, Lynden solicited the hort group for replacement suggestions and there ensued a lively exchange of plant design ideas, with Lynden asking, “Is someone writing all this down?”
She also adores Euphorbia.  “As soon as you get to a good euphorbia – especially Euphorbia robbiae in a garden, you know that’s me,” she jokingly claims.

Known for her exuberant plantings and luscious garden beds that delight the senses with color, texture, movement and a keen eye for winter beauty. 
Her attention to decorative tree bark, winter color, evergreens in all colors especially the Montgomery Blue Spruce, picea pungens ‘Montgomery’ along with plant forms that hold the snow or form winter patterns all make her gardens a work of art that beckon and delight even in what I refer to as the ‘other” garden season.  There is so much beauty in the garden in winter if we just know what to look for and take the time to see.  (The beautiful book, “A Garden In Winter,” by author and gardener Suzy Bales, is a good place to start.)  














Lynden designed raised concrete beds, providing lots and lots of seating, allowing people to feel engaged with the garden and plants.  An added benefit of the raised beds prevents park goers from walking or trampling through the garden beds. 

The stone walkways – that need to be 40’ wide to allow for fire trucks -- are concrete pavers made by Hannover Designs. The Honey Locust trees are already providing a good screening between the beds and the skateboard area and fencing.

Lynden enthusiastically admits she always over-plants a garden, citing Russell Paige’s admonishment to “always plant a little too close, otherwise the plants will sulk.” 
How adorable is that?  Good advice too. I follow this rule but will now quote Lynden and Paige.  Good company to be in…

Some problems cited by both have been the Sky Pencils—dead after two plantings (replaced by guarantee), spider mite on the persacaris, but they are coming back after thinning out in some spots and dodgy watering, most likely caused by a combination of the height of the sprinkler heads and the size of the berms. 

We broke up into three groups to tour the garden beds.  Peter, Lynden and Mimi, a special gardener with the Hudson River Park Trust– who also was recruiting for Gardening help Volunteers.  If you are interested, please contact The Hudson River Park Trust.)


The three led the Metro Hort members throughout the gardens, pointing out the variety of plants, telling their stories.  Gardeners love to learn why the plant was included, how it is faring, and to see the plant combinations. 


It's Official! Photo captures Lynden's divine, enlightened garden magic!  Here she is pointing out great spot for the Lady's Mantle.
Indefatigable Sabine Stezenbach helping garden tour

The garden tour was a sensory delight.  
Don’t miss these gardens.  The combination of landscape design, water views and historical interest makes the exploration and discovery a fascinating experience that will change with every visit.  

Small group of friends working out to music in a "hidden" glen
To see the Park being enjoyed by so many citizens is sheer joy. 




Plants are transporting.  

Many of the Metro Hort members retreated to the nearby Frying Pan boat cum restaurant for refreshments and what else? More garden talk!
Want to learn more about joining Metro Hort?  It is a professional association.  Contact our wonderful organization: http://metrohort.org/


Me thanking Sabine before the group heads off for cool cocktails

 Be sure to have Lynden Miller's book on your book shelf or coffee table!