Garden Recommendations

Talking with Richard Hayden - Senior Director of Horticulture on the New York High Line

I love the way that if you get talking to gardeners who are passionate about plants, they will recommend other gardens that you should visit. That has been happening to us a lot since we landed in the States a week ago and so far we have been to 6 very different gardens. Mostly the temperatures have been around 100 degrees, which can be challenging for plants and people!

In New York we had such a wonderful time chatting to ‘the garden people’ in the 91st Street Garden. Located in the Riverside park by the Hudson River, it is a riot of colour but back in 1981 it was a derelict patch, covered by weeds and rubbish. Within the garden are 36 plots, some are communal but most are assigned to specific members. As you wander through it along simple brick paths there is some topiary, some areas of beautiful foliage plants, others plots with exuberant hisbiscus flowers but it all hangs together as a wonderful garden. Anyone can volunteer to help with the work and if you hang around and commit then, in time, you may be asked to take on a plot. It is also clearly a haven for conversation, people stop and chat about the flowers and you realise here in this small garden is a whole community. And there’s cake! Curtis told me he never needs a second excuse to bake and always brings cake for everyone.

I have written before about finding gardens in urban spaces and another recommendation led us to the recently renovated Conservatory Garden in Central Park. Here the roads lead back to Lynden Miller who we first met in Constance and the 9/11 Daffodils. In the late 70s and early 80s the garden, which had been designed in the 1930’s by a designer called Betty Sprout, had fallen into disrepair. Lynden Miller was asked to renovate it and as someone who believed in the power of gardens to ‘enhance city life’ she created the most beautiful space. Today as you enter the garden you are asked to respect that this is a ‘quiet zone designated for visitors to enjoy the peaceful sounds of nature’. I thought immediately of Liz Ware’s work with her charity Silent Space.

A more modern take on the need to find garden spaces in an urban landscape is of course the New York High Line. On Monday I was lucky enough to record an episode up there for the podcast. As I walked along the High Line with Richard Hayden, who is the Senior Director of Horticulture, his passion for this project was so clear to see. I loved hearing that when the original founders first began to think about the potential of the High Line, they commissioned a photographer to go up and take pictures of the plants that were already growing up there and so revealed this magical space to others.

Apparently Piet Oudolf who designed the original planting visits every couple of years to see how its doing and advise on planting and just this Spring he was there. Richard pointed to a small triangular plot, populated by the plants that were originally found growing along the disused railway tracks, explaining that this was one of Oudolf’s favourite spots along the High Line.

I will share this episode this Autumn when I am also hoping to return to the Camden High Line project and the Castlefield Viaduct in Manchester to see how both have faired over the past 12 months since my visits in 2024. I am a little obsessed by these gardens in the sky.

Our visits have also led us to the extraordinary Untermyer Gardens, designed in 1917 by Samuel Untermyer. The walled Indo-Persian garden with its beautiful water channels and views out over the Hudson River was extraordinary and apparently was once called America’s ‘most spectacular garden’. There were once 60 greenhouses and 60 gardeners on the whole estate. (We did find a Monkey Puzzle tree hiding in plain site in the Indo-Persian garden - they do seem to get everywhere!)

And then yesterday, thanks to our lovely friends Bill and Jane, we visited Hollister House in Connecticut. It belongs to George Schoellkopf. As we left George’s house for a garden tour, (the answer to my question how old is this house being - “we still had a King when it was built,” ) there was the most enormous clap of thunder and suddenly the heavens opened. Our first rain in a week! George grabbed some umbrellas and we picked our way through the garden rooms, accompanied by thunder, lightening and torrential rain! So it was a somewhat of a curtailed visit but fascinating to see a garden that was inspired by George’s visits to Sissinghurst and Great Dixter back in the 70s. He said in a recent podcast with Margaret Roach on A Way to Garden: “one of the great learning curves for me, wanting to make an English garden here in Connecticut, I came back and at least half of the plants that I was in love with that I’d seen in England do not like Connecticut”. As we left, the most enormous truck was drawing up to his driveway delivering 500 copies of his new book: A Horticultural Heretic.

A garden tour in the rain!

Each garden we have visited has led to recommendations of other gardens we should seek out. And maybe sometimes word of mouth is the best way to find new places.…so I will be stopping to chat wherever I see someone tending a garden - seeing where it leads us.

Have a lovely weekend

Sally

x