New York’s Best Two Gardens

August 11th, 2015

A small part of the New York Botanical Garden in summer.

The 250-acre New York Botanical Garden is on my top-5 short list of best U.S. public gardens that I’ve ever seen.

Wave Hill in the Bronx has great plants, stunning views and cracks my top-dozen public-gardens list.

You’ll have a chance to see both places in one day – without fighting New York traffic either – on a trip Lowee’s Group Tours and I are planning for Fri., Aug. 28.

We’ll be picking up at both East Shore and West Shore locations and busing to Wave Hill for a morning tour. After lunch overlooking the Hudson River on Wave Hill’s terrace, we’ll head over to the New York Botanical Garden for the afternoon.

Including lunch, transportation, admissions, guided tours at both gardens, prizes on the bus (plants and four $20 gift cards to Stauffers of Kissel Hill), plus tips and insights by yours truly, the cost is $139 per person.

See the detailed itinerary on Lowee’s website or call 717-657-9658 to sign up.

The vine-covered pergola and pots overlooking the Hudson — my favorite nook of Wave Hill.

Wave Hill covers 28 acres (slightly bigger than Hershey Gardens) and offers amazing views over the Hudson River to the Palisades cliffs of New Jersey on the other side.

It’s regarded as one of the most beautiful settings in New York City.

Investment banker George Perkins, a partner of J.P. Morgan, developed most of the gardens and greenhouses in the early 1900s before New York City took it over in 1960.

Wave Hill’s gardens now feature a “Wild Garden” of naturalistically designed trees, shrubs and flowers; a formal water garden; a “monocot” garden of plants with single seed leaves (grasses, cannas, bananas, etc.); an alpine plant house with succulents and alpine plants; an extensive herb garden; a nice variety of specimen trees, and a conservatory with three glasshouses.

One unusual type of garden that I’ve never seen anywhere else is Wave Hill’s Paisley Garden of flowers planted in a paisley pattern. It changes every year.

My favorite part of Wave Hill, though, is the vine-covered pergola, surrounded by tropical pots, that overlooks the Hudson below.

It’s one of my favorite all-time views in any public garden. (For my top 10 views of public gardens in Pennsylvania, check out the recent slide show I did for Pennlive.com.)

Minutes away, closer to the heart of the Bronx, is the New York Botanical Garden – the largest city botanic garden in the United States.

Here’s what New York City looked like before all of the buildings went up.

This diverse, spacious place has more than 1 million living plants as well as what’s arguably the world’s best horticultural library.

My favorite part here is seeing what New York City looked like hundreds of years ago before development took place. Fifty green acres of NYBG are set aside with native plants and a naturalistic style, complete with the Bronx River running through it.

You could never imagine that this is what Brooklyn, the Bronx and even Manhattan looked like before all of the asphalt went down and all of the skyscrapers went up.

NYBG turns 125 next year, and its roots go back to an idea of giving New York something akin to England’s Royal Botanic Garden.

I think the founders achieved that goal.

NYBG’s signature feature is the Enid Haupt Conservatory.

The garden’s signature feature is the Enid Haupt Conservatory, a 1-acre Lord and Burnham glasshouse that’s the biggest Victorian-era glasshouse in the United States. It’s as beautiful for the shining architecture outside as it is for the lush, tropical plant collection inside.

NYBG’s 50 gardens and plant collections include a 260-foot-long “Ladies Border” of unusual plants; a conifer arboretum of 1,500 trees of 300 species; a second 15-acre conifer garden with 500 more species and varieties; a Home Gardening Center that offers theme gardens and planting ideas; a 2½ acre rock garden with thousands of alpine plants and succulents; a large, formal rose garden with 4,000 rose bushes, and 30,000 trees of every imaginable species.

There’s also an excellent Children’s Adventure Garden with teaching lab surrounded by hands-on theme gardens.

It’ll all make for a plant-filled, garden-ogling day – which I think is the best kind of day. Spending it with a bus full of fellow plant geeks makes it even better. Come on along!