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June 14, 2006
Random Acts of Kindness
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Every now and then as we travel though the city, we come upon little garden moments that make the day brighter. Sometimes it's hard to tell if we're looking at the hand of God- or at a little gift left by a Good Samaritan gardener. For instance, south-bound on the Henry Hudson Parkway in Riverdale just before exit 22 there is a chain link fence running for a few dozen feet beside the highway. The fence, which seems to be protecting an impenetrable thicket of weeds and shrubs, has been covered in a riot of clematis for a month. The show is winding down now, but it started with a huge light blue flowered variety draped extravagantly over the fence - which is why we first noticed it - and seems to be concluding with a smaller flowered dark blue-purple variety, perhaps Etoile de Violette. You can only see this display if you are driving by, in fact you can only really appreciate it if you are a passenger in a car driving by, but it's horticultural eye candy for the initiated.
Further south on the access road to Riverside Drive from 125th street and the West Side Highway, someone has planted an entire hillside with orange and red lilies. People don't plant lilies much any more. They are fatally attractive to deer, which makes them a poor choice in the suburbs, and somehow their stiffness doesn't work in mixed borders. But there is clearly a lily lover somewhere in Harlem because this hillside gets more vibrant every year.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2006
Red Hook
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CityGardenGuide took a field trip yesterday to Red Hook, one of our favorite New York neighborhoods. No, we didn't go to check out the new Fairway, though we did drop in and do a little shopping (wide aisles, few people and friendly cashiers--it's not really a Fairway experience). We went to visit an outstanding bit of urban landscaping--the Waterfront Garden and Pier 44 Jetty. It is the first part of what will be a 1/2mile public walkway between the Beard Street Warehouse Promenade (beside Fairway) at the foot of Van Brunt Street and Pier 41 at Van Dyke.
The garden is right at the water's edge. A serpentine walk backed by fairly narrow beds culminates in a naturalized clover meadow and a rather bare windswept seating area. The beds are beautifully planted with species that do well in difficult seaside conditions. And they have. At this moment the nepeta, repeated continuously throughout the garden, is a stunning, vibrant blue and bears no resemblance to the washed-out stalwart that most of us grow in our own gardens. The plant palette is blue collar (although there are moments of gentrification), just like the neighborhood. Sturdy plants like goldenrod, willow, sedums, grasses, chokecherries, form an attractive matrix punctuated at the moment by the afore-mentioned nepeta and a delicate bearded iris.
This is a magical place. It helps that the view is wide open to the Statue of Liberty with the beautiful Civil War-era warehouses of Pier 44 in the foreground (the warehouses remind one of the Arsenale in Venice). As to the neighborhood, it has changed a little bit, but for the better. The Fairway building and the Beard Warehouse along with Pier 44 are three of the most beautiful buildings in the city (truly- -no hyperbole), and it is a relief that they are clearly in hands that will take care of them. The rest of the neighborhood seems to have just about the same mix of industrial buildings and small warehouses and row houses as on our last visit a couple of years ago--and that's great too.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 11:40 AM | Comments (0)