February 21, 2007
Robert Moses Reconsidered
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This month, Citygardenguide visited three linked exhibits about Robert Moses that opened at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University. Altogether, you get a terrific overview (quite literally, if you also take in the Panorama of the city at the Queens Museum) of the huge impact Moses made on the built environment of the city. And now that the city is engaged in two large-scale planning projects, in downtown Manhattan and Brooklyn, it is the perfect time to think about the impact he made. It is awfully hard to imagine anyone in this day and age having the kind of power and control that he wielded in New York for 34 years, from 1934 to 1968. His massive paw print can be seen everywhere.
Okay, don't roll your eyes and dismiss Moses as a bully who hated people and destroyed wholesale neighborhoods for the sake of his own vision of New York--which is pretty much the view that we have all grown up with. Instead, try imagining the city today without him. Take away the Triborough, the Bronx-Whitestone, the Throgs Neck and the Verrazano bridges for a start. Then erase the Cross Bronx, Brooklyn-Queens and Van Wyck expressways, and the Grand Central, Belt and Cross Island parkways. Do away with the good, the bad and the ugly of high-rise housing projects. And then, finally, for good measure, forget about Jones Beach and the many parks, scores of swimming pools, and literally hundreds of playgrounds that he scattered throughout the five boroughs. And now say where his legacy rests on the scale.
There is no doubt that Moses grabbed a moment--and lots of Federal dollars--and made hard, fast choices with a heavy hand and thick skin. His career included monumental successes--grand projects that opened on time and on budget. But there is also no doubt that some of his ideas and projects would have been disasters for the city. Think about what midtown Manhattan would be like if he had succeeded in building his Mid-Manhattan Expressway, or what Greenwich Village would have been like with Fifth Avenue running right through the middle of Washington Square. Think about the destruction of neighborhoods, mostly poor black neighborhoods. Think about the over-built park buildings that are impossible to maintain. Think about how much you wish he had cared as much about public transportation as he did about cars. You can argue endlessly about his mistakes, but the man clearly believed that "our big cities must be rebuilt, not abandoned" and he saw how important it was to connect the city to its surrounding region and he literally wrenched it firmly into the 20th century.
All massive building projects aside, for garden lovers the greatest Moses project of all is the Conservatory Garden, which was completed and opened in August 1937. Located on the site of greenhouses that Moses had demolished, the garden was designed by Betty Sprout and implemented by the parks department under the guidance of Gilmore Clarke. Come spring, we will all be thinking, Where would we be without it?
Accompanying the exhibits is an excellent new book about Moses's effect on the city's built environment--Robert Moses and the Modern City: The Transformation of New York. edited by Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T. Jackson.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 09:12 AM | Comments (0)
April 20, 2006
Flower Shows
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Spring has arrived so early this year that the Macy's Flower Show is a bit of an anti-climax. The forsythia is blooming strongly inside but it has already faded in Central Park. Likewise, the tropical opulence of the Orchid Show at Rockefeller Center is less enticing when it's 75 degrees outside and the fresh white petals of the Bradford pears are snowing throughout the city.
This hasn't stopped crowds from thronging the aisles at Macy's, where the Flower Show is wrapping up this weekend. The technical ability of the show organizers continues to amaze us; all the plants look fresh and perky ten days into the show. The topiary this year is a giant beehive made of kalichoas, with mechanical bees buzzing around it. This has been accompanied by lectures on honey varieties and honey making. We had noticed an increased interest in beekeeping among our friends and acquaintances but this honey theme at Macy's tells us that apiarists are going mainstream.
Macy's Flower Show until Sunday at Herald Square and Union Square.
Greater New York Orchid Show at Rockefeller Center. Admission to display area, $5.00; sales area, free
Thursday 12-5, Friday and Saturday 9-9, and Sunday 9-6
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 14, 2006
Dale Chihuly
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It appears that the Dale Chihuly traveling road show is coming to the New York Botanical Garden. The Washington State based glass sculptor, in the words of his web site, "deserves credit for establishing the blown glass form as an accepted vehicle for installation and environmental art." Recently he has worked with several botanical gardens to create elaborate installation pieces within the gardens. Chihuly's colorful, complex, multipart sculpture is strongly influenced by natural forms and works particularly well in the context of tropical or exotic gardens. There have been Chihuly installations at Kew, in Chicago, and in Atlanta. Right now his work is being featured at the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Garden in Coral Gables, Florida.
There is a lot of Dale Chihuly at the Fairchild. Some of it works, expecially the writhing forms in the tropical pavilions, and the huge glass spikes in the dry desert displays. Some of it doesn't--a series of turquoise ice cubes floating in a pond. According to the Chihuly web site, the installation at NYBG is scheduled for June 24th to October 29th, 2006. We can't wait to see what's in store for that venerable institution in the Bronx.
Link: www.Chihuly.com
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 04:05 PM | Comments (0)
February 27, 2006
Gramercy Garden Antiques Show
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The Gramercy Garden Antiques Show, which is coming up this Friday (March 3), features all sorts of garden ornaments, furniture, pots, planters, books and even a few (very few) plants. Last year there were enough ornate (read, uncomfortable) Victorian garden benches and chairs to make the point that something can be "antique" and "mass produced" at the same time. There are eighty exibitors, and in other years the booths have been decorated to evoke a romantic, slightly faded, garden fantasy. In the past, we at Citygardenguide have frequently found ourselves dreaming of how some of the truly beautiful pieces found at the show would look in our gardens. A glance at the price tags is always a sobering reality check. The $19 entrance fee includes a year's subscription to Garden Design magazine, and the proceeds from the Thursday night preview party (much more expensive) go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. (Their Bronx rival NYBG, sponsors its own garden ornament show in April.) Garden Design and BBG are co-sponsoring a series of garden seminars, at 12pm and 2pm each day.
Gramercy Garden Antiques Show March 3-4 11am-7pm, March 5 11am-5pm 69th Regiment Armory Lexington Ave @ 26th Street New YorkLink: Stella Shows
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:14 PM | Comments (0)
August 04, 2005
Down the Garden Path
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On these very hot summer days, a little cool respite is all we want, and if it is air conditioned so much the better. It would seem that air conditioning and gardens don't mix very well, but in fact you can combine the two perfectly by heading out to the Queens Museum of Art to see their new exhibit, Down the Garden Path. Don't go expecting to see photographs of pretty flowers and design plans of landscape architects and designers; this is an exhibit of artists' ideas about gardens. From the Modernist plans of the Japanese American artist and sculptor Isamu Noguchi and the Brazilian architect Roberto Burle Marx, to the work of contemporary artists Robert Smithson and Gordon Matta-Clark, the exhibition celebrates very different approaches to garden-making and garden meaning.
The Queens Botanical Garden is very near the Queens Museum of Art, and a visit to both makes a particularly satisfying outing. Right now, QBG is undergoing a multi-million dollar renovation to turn it into a model of green, sustainable design so the grounds are a bit topsy-turvy, but the wedding garden and some of the other display gardens are untouched and a delight to visit.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 11:37 AM | Comments (0)
July 12, 2005
Ken Smith at Cornerstone
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Found! in California's Sonoma Valley, a landscape installation by one of New York's most inventive and playful landscape architects. Ken Smith is one of an expanding group of landscape designers whose work is featured at "Cornerstone: festival of gardens" located about 3 miles south of Sonoma. The complex includes a cafe, a nursery and a garden artifacts shop, but the real purpose is exhibiting the work of forward thinking Landscape Architects and garden designers. The brochure explains that the gardens - 27 of them at this point - "have been envisioned as an inspiration and resource for everyone interested in gardens". The work here is about as far as you can get from the cozy "garden room" or the modernist city plaza that we usually associate with the discipline of garden design.
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Many of the designers are from the West Coast; Topher Delaney, Pamela Burton and Ancy Cao come to mind. But there are international stars like Martha Schwartz whose hilarious installation called Usual Suspects spoofs the work of the greats of landscape architecture, including her own.
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One of the most visually striking pieces is by Claude Cormier of Montreal. He has covered a dying tree with thousands of aqua colored Christmas tree balls. The resulting sculpture is both arresting and though provoking. Much of the work is serious and beautiful as in Pamela Burton's meditation on soil and earth called Earth Walk. Into this mix comes Ken Smith's Daisy Border, a series of plastic pinwheel daisies set in a green grid. It's incongruous in the middle of the dry California landscape but also funny. Smith, whose sometimes whimsical work grows out of a deep knowledge and love of historical landscape, often focuses on the distinction between artificial, metaphorical and real. His work varies from the clean modernist Lever Brothers Plaza in Manhattan to a schoolyard at PS 19 in Queens where he created a woodland educational garden and a play area with mini dumpsters used as planters. Smith proposed a similar grid of daisy pinwheels for a garden commissioned by the Museum of Modern Art for the Museum Tower. The daisy idea was shot down and replaced by an equally artificial but slightly more traditional design. It’s great to see them growing so well in California.
Link: Cornerstone
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
June 02, 2005
More Chelsea 2005
The variety of design styles, and the finish and complexity of the gardens at Chelsea was incredible.
The pictures below, a "Sussex Village" on the left, and TV personality Diarmuid Gavin's playful "Hanover Quay Garden" on the right, give an idea of the range.
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All the gardens emphasized ecological responsibility. Below left, Kate Frey's "Feltzer Wine" inspired by organic vineyards of Mendocino County California, and on the right, Chris Beardshaw's "Trailfinders Recycled Garden" where all the hardscape was created from recycled materials.
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Posted by gardenguidenyc at 01:30 PM | Comments (0)
May 25, 2005
Chelsea 2005
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We at Citygardenguide have developed a peculiar fascination with flower shows, and have been to the Philadelphia Show as well as New York's own Macy's Flower Show this year. Both visits left us exhausted, but not particularly horticultural enriched. So we thought we should go to the mother of them all, the Royal Horticultural Society's Chelsea Flower Show in London to see if we could get a grip on the flower show syndrome. What did we learn? First, Chelsea is an unbelievably (to Americans) huge deal in the UK. The BBC devotes an hour every evening of the five-day show to its Chelsea broadcast. The papers are full it, with articles on gossip and gardening personalities as well as plants and gardens.
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We all know that gardening in the UK is more than a national pastime, but it's hard to understand the obsession until you rub shoulders with the hundred thousand visitors to Chelsea. It's so crowded that pedestrian flow in the aisles inside the big display tents are all one way to keep the traffic moving. There are hundreds of exhibitors, and an endless number of plants. The big show gardens, and there are about 19 of them, cost in the area of 100,000 pounds each. It's all a little overwhelming for a New York gardener who is used to encountering puzzled or condescending looks when explaining her passion for gardens. At Chelsea, everyone is a gardener, from tweedy couples down from the country for the day and smart young thirty somethings keen to be part of the latest trend, to our personal favorite, two middle aged guys, obviously a couple, dressed in full black leather, with studs and chains, many piercings and black leather cowboy hats, who were standing in front of a particularly old fashioned cottage garden display, earnestly discussing its combination of perennials and wondering whether they could replicate it at home.
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There are three main categories at Chelsea. There are the show gardens, there are the plant displays, and there is the stuff. The stuff ranges from tractors to bespoke leather gardening boots, with every range of garden tchocke in between. The plants, in a huge (really huge) central tent, are abundant, luxurious and addicting. This is where the specialty nurseries make their new introductions and display their choicest treasures. The big hit this year are some new Clematis that only grow to about four feet so are ideal for patio pots. It’s a little frustrating for North Americans because some of the introductions won't be available to us this year, but it certainly makes plant lovers drool.
The show gardens are over wrought, from sentimentally traditional to, if not quite cutting edge, at least contemporary. But the focus is on plants and it's good sport to try and spot overall trends in planting design.
Herewith are a few trends Cityardenguide spotted at Chelsea:
1.Naturalistic planting is very big. Modified meadow planting is everywhere, no more traditional English borders. There are lots of wand like flowers waving in the wind and lots of spikes and balls floating above a green base. Aquilegia, astrantia, and iris, are used frequently as dots of color above the green. Grass is used very sparingly and rarely mowed. (Bad for the mower salesmen)
2. Recycled materials are used extensively, especially for paving materials. All the gardens stress ecological awareness.
3. Color- Dark burgundy is in. The darkest red aquilegia, Barlow Black and the darkest red astrantia are particular favorites.
4. Iris are back. (You might not have known they had gone)
5.Every garden has a pool- most often a rectangular one.
6. Sadly this seemed to be a universal trend - bad garden art. Every garden seemed to have to have an "art" object, and most would have been much better without it
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)
May 05, 2005
The High Line Exhibition
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For all of us who are following the story of the transformation of the High Line from an abandoned elevated highway to a ribbon of park, this little exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art perfectly captures our excitement and also ambivalence about the project. The installation in the third floor Architecture and Design galleries includes a model, axonometric drawings, and planting plans. We think it's by far the most poetic, site sensitive and inspiring urban project we have seen in some time. The plans and models are admirably readable for the lay person, so visitors can appreciate the linear quality of the park, which is about progression through but above the city. The implication of movement is reinforced by the planting, which transforms itself along the way from wetland to woodland to grassland, retaining the wild dimension of the present High Line. Plant nuts (we are guilty) will love the planting plans; they are only preliminary but help furnish the site in the imagination. The access points to the park are cleverly managed; not too intrusive but effectively changing the mood from the street to the park.
The ambivalence comes with the other parts of the exhibition, which focus on the present, Joel Sternfeld's four marvelous, melancholic photos and a video of the High Line. These are so poignant, and so evocative of the ephemeral and decayed beauty of the site, one has to ask, should we loose this? The answer is sadly- yes. It's going to be a beautiful park. In any case, as the signs all over the exhibition emphasize...we're talking private property here, and those of us who make up the general public are not permitted up.
The question occurs, will this actually get built? As always in New York, only if enough money can be raised, but The Friends of the High Line seem to be gathering steam and the City of New York has already committed funds.
Exhibition: April 20 to July 18, 2005
Links: Friends of the High Line and MoMA
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 03:46 PM | Comments (0)
April 15, 2005
25th New York International Orchid Show
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Citygardenguide approached the New York Orchid Show in Rockefeller Center with some trepidation. We don't really "get" flower shows and how many Phalanopsis does one really need to see anyway? The answer at the Orchid Show is that you need to see every one of them! When you step into the display tent after paying your $5, the confusion of color and form is overwhelming, but once you start examining the individual specimens wonder and enchantment take over.
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There are orchids of every size, color and shape, from giants the size of a dinner plate to the tiniest of dainty specimens. The colors range from blues, pinks and purples of such intensity that you'd swear that they weren't from nature, to the scary black, brown and green of the Cerasetum "Black Night" pictured here.
This is a flower show, and a big one at that: 600 ribbons, 25 trophies and 52 plaques awarded, and only a true expert can figure out why one variety gets a blue ribbon and an equally or even more beautiful one only deserves third place. We soon gave up trying to understand the ranking system and focused on examining the exotic, the bizarre, and the beautiful. For those of us with no willpower this is a dangerous place; behind the orchid tent there is the biggest orchid mart imaginable, with thousands of the usual and unusual for sale, as well as an awful lot of orchid paraphernalia (who knew?).
The orchid show, located in a tent set up over the Rockefeller Center skating rink, runs from April 12 to 17th.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 12:04 PM | Comments (0)
March 29, 2005
Contemporary Photography and the Garden: Deceits & Fantasies
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At last, a book of garden photographs that moves beyond, way beyond, tasteful plant combinations and pleasing vistas. "Contemporary Photography and the Garden: Deceits & Fantasies" displays the work of 16 artists who have taken the garden as a subject. The photographs range from Geoffrey James's moody, haunting black-and-white images of Italian gardens, to Linda Hackett's softly focused Alium Gigantum (the cover photograph), to the vivid but creepy pictures of New York artist Gregory Crewdson. While many of these photographs are almost unbearably beautiful, they are all the work of contemporary artists, and there is a world of difference between their vision, and the usual output of shelter magazines and most garden books. It is good to remind ourselves that the garden as a work of art or as inspiration for a work of art can be more than a cliche.
Sadly, the accompanying exhibition organized by Thomas Paddon for the American Federation of the Arts will not be shown in New York. The show is at the Middlebury College Museum of Art until April 17th, when it moves to The Parrish Art Museum in Southampton, where you can see it from May 22 to July 17. From Southampton it travels to Columbia, South Carolina and then to the Tacoma Art Museum. Fortunately for those who can't make any of the venues, the book is terrific and in addition to the photographs, features several excellent essays; a thoughtful introductory piece by Mr. Paddon as well as essays by artists Shirin Nishat, Ronald Jones and Robert Harrison.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 05:21 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
Macy's Flower Show, or A Better Way to Sell Handbags
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Flower shows inspire citygardenguide with a kind of horrified fascination. Just what is it about them that draws thousands of visitors? As one bewildered Englishwoman said to us as she surveyed the flower bedecked expanse of Macy's ground floor, "It's a hodgepodge really..I don't get the point."
If the point is to see over a million exceedingly well-grown plants all at once, then this is the venue for you. The plant material is incredibly vibrant and varied. Everything from rare and exotic orchids to the
latest, fashionable variegated hydrangea has been squished together on platforms above the merchandise counters. Just consider the trees; we saw specimen Japanese maples, birch, weeping birch, pine, and weeping spruce, as well as cherries, dogwood and crab apples in full bloom. There are hundreds of shrubs, with rhododendron, azalea, forsythia and hydrangea just the most obvious species. The flowers are even more abundant. It is as if the entire seasonal contents of a superior garden center were displayed together, which seems to be pretty much what happens. Matterhorn Nursery of Spring Valley, one of the region's premier nurseries, is Macy's growing and design partner for the show. The sheer skill and effort required to get all those plants ready and perky for their two-week appearance is mindboggling.
The theme of the Flower Show this year is Gardens of Fantasy...and therein lies the problem for garden nuts. Fantasy yes, but would you call these gardens? No, to think of them as gardens, places of beauty and contemplation, is to set yourself up for disappointment and even revulsion. Think of them as theatre, or novelty. Enjoy the crowds reveling in the displays, and laugh at the adorable succulent topiaries. There's a cheerful fish at the Herald Square entrance, entirely made of kalanchoe, sedum and hens-and-chicks, and an engaging unicorn that is the centerpiece of the White Garden. We also enjoyed the dinosaur made from hens-and-chicks which prowls over the Bromeliads.
The show is organized into 17 themed displays. By far the most attractive is the Orchid Arcade. Orchids lend themselves to lavish and luxuriant display, and their feminine aura kind of works with the cosmetics counters underneath them. Also there are some amazing specimens, like a Dendrobium "Thongchai Gold" which apparently has never before been seen in the US. The other displays are, to quote our English friend again, more of a hodgepodge of generally huge and brightly colored blossoms. Subtlety is not a quality aspired to here.
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The opulent floral explosions amplified by the frantic retail activity on the floor is enough to send a garden lover straight to the loneliest corner of Central Park, where as we mentioned, the first crocuses are blooming amid the grey brown detritus of last year's ferns....now that's spring.
Macy's Flower show runs until April 3. There are events and demonstrations each day, as well as free 30-minute tours of the show.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2005
Philadelphia Flower Show
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If you are into gardens and live in New York and it is still winter, the Philadelphia Flower Show would seem to be an obvious destination: spring flowers, show gardens and a real taste of the coming season. But the show has less to do with gardening than with display and shopping--more than one-third of the 33-acre Pennsylvania Convention Center site is devoted to vendors' booths, with everything from deer fencing to garden tchotchkes (lots of those) for sale.
The main displays are "Alice though the Looking Glass" extravaganzas of horticultural showmanship, which are elaborate floral exhibits--our favorite "A Motorcycle Wedding" featured a flower-lined blacktop "road" as the aisle, terminating in an altar with two motorcycles in front. The Best In Show was a huge display titled "Artist's Pallete," featuring a pond in the shape of a painter's pallete,
surrounded by banks of flowers and trees. Islands of colored roses mimicked paint on the pallet…it’s not actually beautiful, but it does leave you open-mouthed
The landscape displays are equally elaborate. The Best In Show is a landscape created entirely of different kinds of willow, including a very sweet willow pavilion. The most popular landscape is Bartlett Tree's installation of several treehouses in a woodland setting. You might have to suspend belief as you admire the exhibits. In the "What's wrong with this picture?" category, in one spring scene the blooms of the redbud match those of the astilbe perfectly...
We enjoyed the hobby exhibits and competitions most. There is flower-arranging, window-box arranging, etc. One of the categories is for pictures made entirely from flower parts, mostly petals. They are all ingenious, and some are exquisite. The other category we loved, and the second most popular venue in the show after the treehouse exhibit, is the dioramas. These are miniature landscapes that have the appeal of the most meticulously constructed dollhouses. Best in Show for this category is titled "Love thy neighbor." It is a replica of two row houses, one meticulously kept up with a perfect front lawn and blooming window boxes, its neighbor is a wreck, with a motorcycle parked on the scruffy front lawn. The whole scene, complete with real plants, is no more than 12"high.
If you go and you are not in a hurry you can save $70 dollars off the Amtrak fair (that's right seventy) by using NJ Transit and Septa. The combined ticket is about $29 but it takes two and a half hours to get there. Regular Amtrak takes an hour and a half and costs $100. The high speed Acela express is $197, the price of a cut-rate ticket to Europe!
The Philadelphia Flower show runs from March 6 to March 13.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 06:29 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2005
Groundswell
Groundswell, an exhibition featuring 23 contemporary landscape projects, opened this past weekend at the Museum of Modern Art. Whether you like the projects or not, they provide a fascinating scan of what is happening in the world of landscape architecture and design and a welcome affirmation of the importance of the discipline.
The projects range from a richly textured linear plaza proposed for a new University in Shanghai (Shanghai Carpet) and a playful urban plaza in Rotterdam (Schouwburgplein) to a visionary plan to develop the Fresh Kills landfill site in Staten Island (Fresh Kills Lifescape). Asia, Europe and the US are well represented, but there is nothing from the Southern hemisphere.
A major theme of the show is the recycling of abused, discarded or superannuated landscapes. The most moving and optimistic projects are ones that reclaim public spaces from the ravages of war or industry.
Two particularly inspirational sites are the Gardens of Forgiveness in Central Beirut and the Duisburg Nord Landscape Park in Druisberg Germany. The Gardens of Forgiveness (Hadiqat As-Samah), designed by Kathryn Gustavson and Neil Porter, are being created in a 16-block area that was ravaged in Lebanon's 16-year civil war. The cleanup of the area uncovered ruins from Roman to medieval times, and these have been incorporated into the master plan. The gardens were conceived as a place of reconciliation and a sign of the country's rebirth. Each garden is laden with reference and symbolism. An archeological garden is being planted with herbs grown in Roman times. Elsewhere, the plant pallet is drawn from all of the regions that make up modern Lebanon. This project seems particularly relevant in view of the tumultuous but hopeful events occurring there now.
Duisburg Nord Landscape Park in Germany took 12 years to complete. Peter Latz and Partners transformed the old Thyssen Steelworks into a hugely successful landscape park incorporating the industrial buildings to create a new park where the past is freely acknowledged and in come cases recycled. Nature is sometimes used to beautify, sometimes used to remediate and sometimes just allowed to exist. This is a place where rock climbers use abandoned ore bunkers to practice, where a grid of cherry trees creates a serene plaza in the shadow of the former blast furnace and where scuba divers practice in the old water-cooling pool.
These are new kinds of landscapes. Each in its own way grapples with the harsh reality of the environmental, ecological, and aesthetic havoc we have wreaked in our communities. Instead of trying to recreate an idealized form of nature, the designers here are using metaphor and are acknowledging and often incorporating the many levels of the past into their projects. Plants are frequently used allegorically in formal settings or else as part of natural systems used to remediate severely polluted land.
The show is an acknowledgement that there are no clean starts anymore, and that the past for better or worse cannot or maybe should not be eradicated. These projects grapple with the results of the worst impulses of humanity----it is encouraging that many of the solutions here are so beautiful.
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 02:47 PM | Comments (0)
February 12, 2005
The Gates
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The Gates by Christo and Jeanne Claude are open at last...and they will remain up in Central Park for two weeks. Over 7500 gates have been installed on 23 miles of walkways in the park, beautifully delineating the topography of the park and highlighting the design of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's masterpiece. Visitors from all over the world and the United States are flocking to the park, at a time of year when the midwinter grayness would not usually beckon many others beside the usual dogwalkers and joggers.
Link: The Gates
Posted by gardenguidenyc at 10:02 PM | Comments (0)