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.

Once we had fallen in love with Patrick Blanc's "Mur Vegetal" in Paris, (citygardenguide 2.5) green architecture here at home seemed especially unadventurous and drab. There was a possibility of a green wall as part of the High Line, and a mockup was built last summer, but according to the people at Field Operations (landscape architects in charge of project), they aren't going to go forward with it. It isn't that there aren't hundreds of greening projects all over the city. Green roofs are the hottest issue in New York horticulture. There are at least two major lectures coming up on the subject, one at the Horticultural Society on February 12th (hsny.org) and an all-day symposium at the New York Botanical Garden on April 13th (nybg.org). Even more to the point, there are loads of actual green roofs either just installed or in the works (some say over 100). The two new buildings at Battery Park come to mind as well as the roof of the Bronx Courthouse and the old Silvercup studio building in Queens. All these roofs are definitely 'A GOOD THING', although we do worry about the world supply of low-growing sedums, which must be under some strain. However, as city dwellers we can't get that excited about this very worthy greening method because--and this might sound a tad selfish--all the good stuff is on the roof. The pedestrian, the basic building block of New York City's urban life, doesn't get to see those roofs. Green roofs might have lots of positives from an environmental viewpoint, but they do nothing for the streetscape or for improving our experience as we walk--and so many of us do--through the city. We don't see any of those uber-green apartment dwellers inviting the public to enjoy their ecologically correct roof gardens any time soon. The beauty of green walls is that it gives the urban wanderer a garden they can see--a real garden--on the slimmest possible footprint--the wall of a building.

Exterior Phyto Spa

We were rapturously describing the 'Mur Vegetal" to a friend who said that it sounded just like something he had seen on Lexington in Midtown. "There is nothing green on Lexington Avenue", we said confidently. But he was right. The Phyto Spa on Lexington at 58th street commissioned Patrick Blanc to create a large (9000 plants) interior Mur Vegetal. He made a vertical garden on both sides of a wall, one side forms the interior rear wall of the 3rd floor spa, and the other side forms a kind of gorgeous window display, perfectly visible from Lexington Avenue. The staff at the Phyto Spa couldn't be nicer about letting visitors see the wall close up- it's well worth a visit- it might even be worth a hair treatment!

Citygardenguide has become obsessed with vertical gardens. We have always appreciated Robert Zion's brilliant vision of '"vertical lawns," as articulated in the iconic Paley Park, with its ivy-hung side walls, but when we saw the green-haired botanist Patrick Blanc's sublime "Mur Vegetal" at the new Musee du Quai Branly in Paris we were blown away. An entire building covered in plants. This takes the concept of "green walls" to a whole new level.

The museum, designed by French architect Jean Nouvel, consists of a central structure and three satellite buildings. Blanc, with whom Nouvel had worked at the Fondation Cartier, was commissioned to create the facade of the administration building, which fronts directly on the sidewalk of the Quai Branly and buts up against an elegant row of Haussman-era apartment buildings.

The proportion and scale of the facade and the placement and size of the windows work surprisingly well with its nineteenth-century neighbors, but it is the sheer profusion of amazing plants growing out of the wall that makes this bit of contemporary architecture such a delight. The Times critic Nicolai Ouroussoff describes it as "a vertical carpet of exotic plants"(New York Times 6.27.06), which shows that even the Times isn't always right. The fascinating thing about this wall is that the plants are not exotic at all; they are familiar garden favorites, things we buy at local garden centers and plant in our gardens all the time. Sedums and iris and heucheras and periwinkle and tiarella and thalictrum-we could go on and on. They just look different when grown on a wall, they look kind of--exotic. We found the Mur Vegetal a fresh and inspiring way to look at planting.

Blanc, who has finished more than 150 green wall projects over the past 15 years, works mostly in Europe and the Far East. He creates both indoor and outdoor walls. Passionate about plants from childhood, he went to Asia at 19 to study plants. There, in tropical forests, he observed that understory plants seem to cling to rocks and trunks, and live without soil. He created his first wall or "Mur Vegelal" at 25 and has developed a technique to grow plants on vertical surfaces without soil. He exploded onto the garden scene in 1994 when he made a vertical garden at the Festival at Chaumont. Since then he seems to divide his time between studying tropical plants--he is a distinguished scientist at the CNRS (Centre National de Recherche Scientifique)--and making his fabulous walls. He has a beautiful web site. Check it out.

Link: verticalgardenpatrickblanc

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.

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.

On Saturday June 4th, stop by LaGuardia Corner Gardens and join the community gardeners as they celebrate their 25th anniversary of making the busy corner of Bleecker Street and LaGuardia Place a whole lot more beautiful and liveable. Enjoy music and refreshments from 4-8pm, and, although the giant peony pictured at right has just finished blooming, there are now masses of roses to enjoy. Rain date: June 11.

Wisteria at BBG

Allium at Columbus Circle

Is purple or mauve a particularly fashionable color this year? May is generally a purple month. The pale purple Wisteria has just bloomed, it comes in pink and white as well, but mauve is the default color. NYC has some amazing wisteria, not only draped over stately landmarks like the pergola at the Conservatory Garden or the Osbourne Terrace at BBG, but eating townhouses from the Upper East Side to Greenwich Village! In the fight between man and nature, wisteria often wins.

It is also lilac season. Although the common lilacs have finished blooming, their peak was the first week of May this year, the little leafs continue the cycle. Lilac "Miss Kim" and Lilac meyeri, Palibin although not as well known, are both exceptionally fragrant, and still blooming in parks.

In addition to these old stanbys, this year we have noticed a craze, a wave, of giant Alliums. Alliums of course, are onions and it's the purple flowered ornamental ones we're talking about here, not garlic, leeks, or scallions. Purple spheres are hovering over plantings from the Bronx to Brooklyn. Used to be that Alliums were quite recherche, and knowledgeable gardeners would include a few in their annual bulb order, and the following spring, less knowledgeable gardeners would exclaim at the sight of softball size flowers held up by a single slender 3-5 foot stem. Well, you know a plant has arrived when it is the featured spring planting around Columbus Circle. John Scheepers' bulb catalogue offers 29 different varieties of ornamental Allium, they come in white, greenish white and all shades of purple. There is clearly an Allium for every occasion, but the purple balls have become ubiquitous.

What's blooming in May along with a brilliant tulip display, the early perennials and the first annuals, is a healthy crop of Weeds. Two particularly ubiquitous varieties are all over our park woodlands, Garlic Mustard and Celandine Poppies. Although if you are pulling them up they are both thugs, one, the Garlic Mustard, is an invasive species, and univerally condemned as a threat to our environment, the other, the Celandine Poppy, is a native woodland plant that "self sows and naturalizes readily". The old saw that a weed is just a plant you don't want is proved once again.

Garlic Mustard (Alliaria petiolata) is a European import. It is a biennial, rosettes of heart shaped leaves appear to be followed in year two by the small white flower atop a tall (2 to 3-1/2ft.) stem. We have never found it particularly fussy, but its preferred habitat is moist, shaded soil and disturbed areas. Blooming in May and June, it can rapidly take over a woodland or field, out-competing both natives and introduced species. The seed, which is copious, can remain viable for up to 5 years, so the goal should be to remove the plant before it sets seed. Annoyingly deer, which can be relied upon to eat any number of desirable species, are not fond of Garlic Mustard. Luckily it does pull up quite easily especially when it is young.

The Celandine Poppy (Stylophorum diphyllum) is a very different case. It has an attractive yellow flower and lobbed blue green foliage. Garden in the Woods, the magnificent woodland created by the New England Wildflower Society in Framingham MA, sells it in its nursery- with no disclaimer or warning. It spreads very easily and looks sad and weedy the minute it stops blooming, not to mention the fact that it has a knack for infesting many areas where its color or habit is wrong- wrong- wrong. Remember, when you are struggling to pull it out of your garden or woodland, and the fat, brittle, orange root has broken off in your hands and stained them deep orange, that this is not a weed, it is a precious native wild flower.

Columbus Circle has won its designers, Olin Partners of Philadelphia, an ASLA (American Society of Landscape Architects) design award. Each year the ASLA chooses thirty or so projects to honor, and there is usually a New York City site somewhere in the mix. Last year Tom Balsley's Capital Plaza was one of the winners.

In its citation of the project the jury said, "Finally, a traffic island worth the effort," and went on to say that Columbus Circle "animates the urban landscape." The jury was reaching. The best thing about Columbus Circle is that it is FINALLY FINISHED, after years of construction and inconvenience. We yearn for more contemporary approaches to landscape design in the city, but this traffic island is considerably less appealing than Herald or Greeley Squares, where the turn of the century Beaux Arts aura has been considerably enhanced by the 34rth Street Partnership's abundant planting.

The newly configured Columbus Circle does not really invite you to bring a book at lunchtime and smell the flowers. The concentric rings of planting, fountain jets, and seating, do provide shelter from the traffic, but they are not enough of a buffer to make the center of the circle an agreeable place to sit. Olin Partners' description of the project refers to it as "a place to pause and refresh in the midst of a busy neighborhood." Perhaps as you struggle across the busy intersection laden with goods from Whole Foods (located in the basement of the AOL Time Warner building across from the circle) it might be a good place to readjust your grocery bags--but anyone with half a brain would trot across the street to Central Park if they really wanted to "pause and refresh." The planting, which is described as "providing concentric rings of beauty," is workmanlike and sensible--but we wouldn't call collars of liriope and cotoneaster "concentric rings of beauty."

Columbus Circle does come alive at night. The slim band of neon light on the exterior of the fountain is very effective as you wiz around the intersection. Lighting was one of the designers' main area of concern and they have done a good job. The lighting is perfectly adequate for safety, but atmospheric enough to make the circle seem glamourous, especially when the panoramic windows of Jazz at Lincoln Center, overlooking the circle, are filled with the silhouettes of Jazz greats in concert.

Link: ASLA

Rock gardeners are a little out of the mainstream. They slave over finicky alpines that, to the generalist, look from insignificant to downright homely most of the year. It's hard for regular gardeners to see the point--except now when many of the delicate specimens are at peak bloom. At this moment the Alpine House at Wave Hill is full of delicious surprises in wonderful colors. Most of the plants are displayed on raised benches, which makes for easy viewing, in contrast to their natural habitats. The lewisias, named for Captain Meriwether Lewis of Lewis and Clark fame, are in full glory right now. These tiny gems, with colorful umbels springing from basal rosettes, hail from the mountains of the American West. The National Audubon Society Field Guide to Wild Flowers describes their habitat this way, "this plant forms beautiful bouquets on precipitous cliffs, to which it clings by a massive root tightly wedged in a tiny cleft"--so much easier to go to Wave Hill and admire them in safety and comfort!

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In a city where parking garages can charge as much as twenty dollars an hour and the minute you leave your hard-won parking space on the street, a car has already pulled up to replace you, it is clear that parking is at a premium. Still, the notion of this portable park, however unrealistic it might be, captured our fancy. Imagine all those barren midtown streets peppered with patches of green. Imagine a whole street lined with turf on either side...flower boxes...trees...benches...beach umbrellas. The possibilities are endless.

Link: Rebar

There is one fragrance that says early spring to us, and no, it is not lilacs, which actually will follow in a week or so, depending on the weather: it is the incredibly strong, heady fragrance of the Viburnum x carlcephalum, which right now is blooming in many of our public spaces. Though not a particularly outstanding shrub in terms of its shape, the blossoms can be smelled from ten feet away, There is a lovely stand of them on the west side of the reservoir, underplanted with tiarella cordifolia, another next to the entrance to Riverside Park at 83rd Street, and yet another near the Fifth Avenue & 60th St. entrance to Central Park. The unusual choice of the viburnums for the Park are a reminder that the Conservancy continues to create stunning horticultural displays, not just routine municipal plantings. We promise that, once you have smelled the viburnum, you will be hooked!

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

Whether zooming up the West Side Highway or taking a leisurely stroll through the Conservatory Garden, you can't help noticing the crabapples blooming all over the city this week. Their abundant, slightly fragrant pink and white flowers are synonymous with the graceful beauty of old-fashioned gardens. New York City happens to have an unusually large collection of mature heritage crabapples, and the Parks Department has taken on the job of cataloging them and keeping them healthy. Simultaneously, Parks has embarked on a campaign to find sources for the old varieties so that they can continue to be planted and enjoyed. A particularly spectacular double allee of sixty trees can be seen framing either side of the central lawn at the Conservatory Garden (yes, as seen on the front cover of the New York Times on Monday, April 17), and another spectacular showing is in Riverside Park in the 90s. But there are more: up and down Broadway, and in front of scores of brownstones. Check out the Parks Department webpage for a document entitled Painting with Crabapples, which will give you the history and varieties of trees all over the city.

The most seasonal store window in New York this week is not the kitschy giant mechanical bugs and birds flying though forests of neon azaleas at Macy's Herald Square (although that is definitely the most popular one), it's the 57th Street windows at Bergdorf Goodman, where the window-display elves have created a slight, gentle, yet poetic installation that captures all the promise of the growing season. Working from what look like good photocopies, the installers have taken decoupeed birds, fragments of botanical manuscripts, and old flower catalogs and pinned them informally on the backdrop of the display, as if it were a giant "idea" board. The windows are fresh and whimsical and make you long for nature, and oh yes--there are some pretty dresses there too.