Battery Bosque by mobile phone

Although construction has virtually cut off direct access to the Piet Oudolf-designed Battery Bosque from the Financial District at the southern tip of Manhattan, you can still get to it from either end, most pleasingly via the Gardens of Remembrance (also designed by Oudolf), a contiguous walking parkway that extends the New Perennial-style plantings around the Battery waterfront. Finding myself downtown with time to spare a few days ago, I stopped by to see how the plantings are doing after a summer and fall of unusually severe weather.

Rather well, it appears. Here are some pics I took with my mobile phone camera.

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Chasmanthium latifolium

Symphyotrichum oblongifolium 'October Skies'

Amsonia hubrichtii

Salvia uliginosa

Persicaria amplexicaulis 'Rosea' with Trycirtis

Trycirtis - Toad Lily

Sesleria autumnalis and Hydrangea quercifolia

Symphyotrichum again, with switch grass and much construction in the background

Silphium terebinthinaceum, Eryngium yuccafolium, Symphyotrichum

View along Gardens of Remembrance toward towers of Jersey City, World Trade Center site off to the right

The Bosque and Gardens continue to be well maintained and a credit to the care of the Battery Conservancy and its staff. The construction is unfortunate but necessary, I suppose, and once it's complete the Bosque will regain the openness it originally had. I continue to be amazed that herbaceous perennials can maintain form and structure so well in this exposed coastal environment.

Battery Bosque: a follow-up from the Director of Horticulture

Following up my two posts on the Piet Oudolf's planting design for the Battery Bosque in New York City's Battery Park, Sigrid Gray, Director of Horticulture for the Battery Conservancy, sent me several clarifications about the design intent and maintenance practices at the garden. I had presented the Gardens of Remembrance (GOR) and Bosque Garden as essentially different parts of the same garden. Ms. Gray pointed out that "the Gardens of Remembrance are really not a waterside extension of the Bosque. The GOR, a sun garden, was planted in May 2003. The Bosque, a shade garden, was planted in May 2005. To further separate his first 2 gardens at the Battery, Piet requested a dividing wall, thus the curvy black granite stone wall between them.

Variety and distinct qualities between each project are the standard Piet requires of himself. Species are only repeated when the physical characteristics of the site are similar, even then hybrids often differ."

At the time of my visit in August, the London Planes in the Bosque had lost some of their foliage and the day was windy, even stormy, so the difference in the shade and sun gardens was less apparent. I need to visit the gardens more frequently and under different weather conditions to see these distinctions. Best to do that in the height of summer, when the plantings can more easily be compared.

I had made the obvious point that these, like other Oudolf gardens, look naturalistic but they are far from natural gardens. Ms. Gray explained a little about the maintenance practices required for this kind of garden.

"The gardens, as is typical of Oudolf designs, require a great deal of care because they are formal gardens of naturalistic style, not natural. Points of control are different from more traditional or uniform posing of plants by staking, deadheading, deadleafing. Mood in a naturalistic garden is very dependent on weather effects: the weight of rain, direction of wind, frost, snow, etc...so less time goes into counteracting nature and other work such as species-sustaining propagation and seedling selection during weeding becomes key. Species are relocated or removed if the site is hostile rather than forced to stay as per design. For example: Carex muskingumensis, a water-loving sedge, is not tricked with extra watering into remaining where tree root competition [creates] a hostile environment, but moved to a new location in the garden. A minimum of autumn leaves or cut chaff is removed, but excess is removed in some places. The gardens stand during the winter, but mechanical damage is removed if it looks unnatural.

Common wisdom in this type of garden is that it requires fewer gardeners with more knowledge."

Probably in response to my mention of Piet Oudolf alone, and neglecting to credit the many planners, landscape architects, architects, lighting designers and others involved in developing the concepts and designs for the Battery, Ms. Gray concludes by describing the work that has been accomplished and the work remaining to be done.

"Renovations are only 50% complete at Battery. The Battery Conservancy and NYC Parks began rebuilding the park 14 years ago using a 1986 renovation master plan by Philip Winslow. That plan continues to be built. $80 million of work has been completed. The Gardens of Remembrance project and Bosque project were created by a team that included architects, landscape architects, lighting designers, and landscape designer Piet. Projects in development: the Bikeway that will be designed by Quenell Rothschild & Partners landscape architects, architects, lighting designers, and landscape designer Piet; a glass carousel by George Tyspin surrounded by blue gardens funded by Tiffany and designed by Piet; a park playground renovation designed by Frank Gehry with landscape architects, local architects, and landscape designer Piet; main lawn renovation and Oval green (part of Bikeway project) funded by MTA mitigating park damage during 4 years of subway construction; and the Castle Clinton renovation."

If you've visiting New York City or live there, try to get to the Battery. The gardens will have much to offer even during winter. Since the Battery is the main site for viewing the Statue of Liberty and the Harbor, it's probably on most visitors' itineraries.

The Battery Bosque Garden by Piet Oudolf

The Gardens of Remembrance at Battery Park in New York City was the first phase of Piet Oudolf's master plan for the park. That garden lines the Promenade along the curving waterfront at the southernmost tip of Manhattan. The second phase of Oudolf's master plan, the Battery Bosque, was completed in 2005. It is a much larger 4 acre area created with sustainable plantings in the interior of the park, amid a grove of 140 plane trees. (The Battery Conservancy has a really good web site with maps, plant lists, slide shows, and lots of other information about the new park and future developments.)



A thunderstorm rapidly approaching from the west, with high winds and a short, heavy rain, quickly darkened the sky in the photo above, taken on a visit last Friday afternoon. In the distance you can see the white caps kicked up by the wind and some park visitors clearly enjoying the drama of the approaching storm from this exposed point. Fronting on the inner harbor, and subject to all types of inclement weather throughout the year, the plantings in this garden have to be "sustainable" in more than one sense.

Though I work in Manhattan, I have gotten to Battery Park to see the gardens only two times in the last six years (I'm ashamed to say, especially since I'm an admirer of Oudolf's work). So this was my first view of the Battery Bosque, and that only as part of an excursion by water taxi to see Olafur Eliasson's waterfalls installations. And I have only visited in August, when the plantings have already endured the heat and drought of a New York July. Oudolf's plantings, with few exceptions probably having more to do with maintenance - a real challenge in a New York City park - than plant choice, remain in good condition. As expected with any Oudolf garden, plants passed their blossoming time retain structural and color interest, and other plants are still flowering even in the heat, with more coming on for the end of summer and fall. Below is a part of a large planting of acanthus thriving near the waterfront. (This is either Acanthus spinosus or Acanthus mollis 'Rue Laden' according to the Conservancy's plant list.)



Nearby a planting of the all green form of Hakonechloa macra surprised me. This grass is used extensively in the Battery Bosque plantings, and it is among the best looking of the grasses even in the heat of summer. I would have thought it more delicate and less able to stand up to the stressful conditions in Battery Park. Even though the plane trees provide some shade, this is an exposed, hot and windy place in the summer. Perhaps the harbor water, only a few feet away, ameliorates the harsh conditions.


Toward the eastern end of the Bosque, Oudolf uses larger, bulky, tall, and geometrically interesting plants. Here prairie dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum), with its giant basal leaves and wiry flowering stems, emerges from a bunch of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yuccafolium) and, I believe, Little blue stem (Schizachrium scoparium 'The Blues'). Large mounds of Joe Pye Weed (Eupatorium maculatum 'Gateway') and Ironweed (Vernonia noveboracensis) block the view and add a sense of privacy in the background. This is like visual music.



Below the contrasting shapes, textures and colors of Shenandoah switch grass (Panicum virgatum 'Shenandoah') and Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum muticum) are a study in one Oudolf design technique...


as are the long-lasting button-shaped seed heads of a monarda.


A large mass of Persicaria filiformis 'Lance Corporal' runs off into yellow flowering Patrinia scabiosifolia in a very "loose" planting that is illustrative of the underlying conceptual framework of the garden. The plantings throughout are arranged in variously sized, island-like elongated shapes on a ground of sandy soil that serves as the walking surface, so you move from island to island, observing a constantly changing palette of plantings (if you're lucky enough to enjoy such a wealth of herbaceous perennials; most park visitors seem oblivious).



Two plants thriving in the sun and heat are Skullcap (Scutellaria incana and serrata) and the flowering onion (Allium angulosum). These are used extensively, and repeatedly, almost like a musical theme recurring throughout the garden.


Here the plants are combined with Panicum virgatum 'Dallas Blues', whose flowers will add their drama later in the fall.


More Eryngium yuccafolium backed by Vernonia ...


and a magnificent planting, with a Battery Park City building in the background, that captures the openness of the park and plantings.


Another dramatic, and playful, use of Silphium terebinthinaceum, Panicum 'Dallas Blues', Joe Pye Weed, Eryngium and, in the foreground, a white flowering plant I don't recognize, even using the Conservancy plant list.


An unusual pairing of oakleaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) and Sesleria autumnalis ...


and another unexpected pairing of cardinal flower (Lobelia cardinalis) with Amsonia tabernaemontana.


Molinia litoralis 'Transparent' tossing in the heavy wind before the approaching thunderstorm...


A beautiful study in texture and color: Crambe maritima. This appears tucked into only a few beds and is not on the Conservancy plant list, so it may be planted experimentally.



The distinctive form of toad lily (Tricyrtis 'Togen' or 'Empress'), another surprise; I know this as a woodland, shade plant, but here it's in almost full sun ...


and here combined with Panicum 'Dallas Blues' and Allium angulosum ...




And another big clump of Vernonia (above), just because I love this plant. I think this native captures so well the naturalistic effect Oudolf is striving for in this highly artificial garden, planted in an exposed location, overrun with tourists, at the edge of the harbor, in one of the most urban settings in the world - a setting marked by the nearby great hole in the earth that used to be the World Trade Center.

And last a groundcover, a low blanket on the earth, used next to some of the tallest perennials in the garden, Clematis x jouiniana 'Praecox'.




This is only a glimpse of the Bosque Garden in August, probably not at its best. I hope to get back this fall, and earlier in the season next year to see what's happening as the park's third phase comes into being.