Central Park Blog

Central Park: A Research Guide

Since 1980, the Central Park Conservancy has worked to restore and manage Central Park. This effort has involved exploring and seeking to understand the Park’s various layers of cultural and natural history. As a result, Conservancy staff have become well-versed in the numerous archives, databases, and books that illuminate its landscapes and history. These can be found in many institutions — a variety that reflects the Park’s breadth of influence — including the Library of Congress, the New York City Municipal Archives, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, among others. The fact that this information is spread across the city, and now, across the internet, can be a challenge for researchers.

To better support and encourage continuing scholarship about the Park – by everyone from the fourth-grader writing a report to the Ph.D. researcher – the Conservancy prepared a Central Park Research Guide. This guide shares our decades of experience researching the Park and reflects the aim of the Central Park Conservancy Institute for Urban Parks to underscore the role urban parks play as cultural and environmental treasures that have extraordinary capacity to educate, enrich, and inspire.

Effective urban park management includes research, and our staff has taken on learning as much as they can about Central Park in order to better manage it.  The Park is complex, encompassing 150 years of New York City’s social and cultural history; the history of the park movement in the U.S.; the birth and evolutions of the professions of landscape architecture, city planning, and urban park management; and ever-changing notions about recreation and the role of public space.  The Research Guide gathers this breadth of information into an easy-to-use document.

The research material described in the guide is organized into several broad categories. Within each category, specific resources and collections are described, and the key location(s) where researchers may find them are referenced. The end of the document includes some appendices, including a timeline of Central Park history, brief biographies of important figures in Central Park history, and, for scholars who would like to access the Conservancy’s archives, the Conservancy’s research policy and inquiry form.

The Research Guide is available for download here.

Creating a Wildflower Meadow in the Dene

How do you establish a meadow of native wildflowers in an urban park that gets over 42 million visits annually? With patience and a plan! The Central Park Conservancy is creating a meadow in the Dene, a landscape in the southern part of Central Park just north of the Central Park Zoo.

A meadow is a field populated with grasses and non-woody (herbaceous) plants. Native meadows are a sustainable management solution for certain landscapes because once they are established to sufficiently prevent existing and self-seeding invasive species from taking over, they’re less resource-intensive to maintain than lawns. This makes them a practical, sustainable treatment for steeply sloped sites, and areas of poor soil quality, like the Dene.

Native meadows also provide essential habitat resources for a wide variety of birds and pollinating insects. Grassland bird species nest in the shelter provided by tall grasses and feed on the abundance of insects and seeds they produce. And the dozens of butterfly species that reside within the limits of New York City are attracted to the more brightly-colored wildflowers as a source of nectar. Meadows in urban parks not only improve park sites that are unable to support other kinds of landscapes, they also encourage wildlife diversity.

A wildflower meadow takes many years to establish. The process of making one begins with eliminating weeds and planting cover crops, like rye and wheat, to improve soil health and suppress regrowth of weeds. This is followed by seeding and planting of native grasses and wildflowers and, during the first growing season, three to four maintenance mows to combat annual weeds that grow taller than the young meadow seedlings. By the second season of growth, the meadow will have begun to establish. A supplemental planting of native grasses and wildflowers will reinforce the process, with a few very high mows and targeted removals that will knock back any weed invasions.  By the third growing season, weed pressure will be significantly reduced and the meadow will continue to mature with ongoing management and monitoring.  

Volunteer support is a key component of the Dene wildflower meadow’s management plan. Conservancy staff is training a corps of four volunteers to help care for it, starting now with weed identification so volunteers can help keep invasive species at bay until the meadow grasses and wildflowers take hold. This dedicated volunteer corps will support Conservancy gardeners over several seasons as the meadow establishes.

When complete, the meadow will be framed by new plantings around the edge of the landscape and feature a wood-chipped trail within.  Rustic seating will be constructed at the top of its slope for visitors to take in the sweeping views.  Come visit to see the transformation for yourself!

Six Principles of Turf Care

With a steady stream of visitors from 6:00 am to 1:00 am daily, Central Park’s turf gets heavily used without a lot of time to rest. In fact, urban parks everywhere experience similar stresses on their turf, even if they don’t receive the 42 million annual visits that Central Park does. Guided by our mission of stewardship and effective management principles, the Central Park Conservancy has developed a set of horticultural practices to maintain healthy, attractive turf under the most challenging urban park conditions. In the busy summer season, the following Six Principles of Turf Care, which adapt industry standards and university findings to Central Park’s environment and level of use, can guide your own turf management for healthy lawns.

1. Mowing & String Trimming

Regular mowing is the first and most important practice in caring for turf in an urban park. Properly done, mowing encourages the vigorous growth of grass, reduces weed pressure, and results in safe, visually appealing lawns that indicate to the public that the park is well maintained. During the growing season, the Conservancy mows and trims lawns up to twice a week, depending on the lawn, and leaves grass clippings to decompose and return nutrients to the soil.

2. Irrigation

Many turf species survive dry summers by going dormant and coming back in cooler weather. Park lawns that receive considerable foot traffic need to keep growing to recover from extensive wear and tear. Irrigation is necessary when rainfall is not adequate to keep lawns actively growing. The Conservancy’s goal is to use the minimum amount of water needed to keep the grass actively growing for the public’s use and enjoyment.  

3. Fertilization

Fertilization provides nutrients for grass to develop root systems and grow consistently, as well as helps lawns recover from regular use and drought. The routine use of proper fertilization, in conjunction with other turf care practices, results in healthier root systems that can better absorb nutrients. This in turn may ultimately reduce the amount of fertilization needed. Soil testing is performed to evaluate nutrient content present in the soil.

4. Aeration

Millions of visits, concentrated foot traffic during special events, and back-to-back athletic activities lead to compacted soil. When soil is compacted, water, air, and nutrients may be sealed out. Aeration – creating spaces in the soil by mechanical means – alleviates soil compaction and promotes healthy growth. It opens up the surface of turf, including the thatch layer, and allows movement of air and water into the soil.  

5. Integrated Pest Management

The turfgrass environment hosts innumerable living organisms, including earthworms, insects, fungi, and microscopic bacteria.  Many of these organisms are beneficial to the health of turf, but some can cause damage. The Conservancy utilizes Integrated Pest Management (IPM) to control pests, relying on a range of strategies to keep pests at tolerable levels rather than attempting to eliminate them. Fundamental to IPM is monitoring for pest activity, identifying pests, and understanding the pest's lifecycle. We have continually decreased the use of synthetic pesticides through sound management practices that promote plant health and through integrating biopesticides where appropriate.

6. Restoration and Renovation

Managing turf in an urban park requires care beyond day-to-day maintenance. Two essential parts of the continual management of lawns are annual restoration and occasional full renovations. Annual lawn restorations include aeration and overseeding, usually yielding best results when performed in late summer and early fall. Making restoration an annual practice can end a cycle of decline and need for full-scale renovations.

Have questions or want more info on urban turf care?  Get in touch with the Central Park Conservancy Institute for Urban Parks at [email protected] and sign up for news about our upcoming urban park management events.

Field Notes from the Institute

Fostering Public Engagement with Urban Flora What would an urban park be without its flora? From the shade of a tree’s canopy to the sweet smell of a flower, urban flora delight our senses and enrich our experience of outdoor space in the city. But did you know that the healthy functioning of an urban environment critically depends on plant diversity?

Shanna Blanchard, Coordinator of Career Development Programs at the Central Park Conservancy Institute for Urban Parks, teamed up with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy (GCC) on April 27 to discuss the evolving value of plants in our urban spaces and offer a snapshot of some of the urban flora work happening in New York City. Three urban flora experts – Daniel Atha of the New York Botanical Garden, David Burg of WildMetro, and David Seiter of Future Green Studio – shared their unique approaches to urban plant assessment.

Part of GCC’s Urban Ecology Lecture Series, the event explored the angles of advocacy (Burg), design (Seiter) and research (Atha), such as the Central Park Flora Project, which, according to Blanchard, are all necessary perspectives in advancing the valuation of plant diversity. But all three panelists believe that public engagement on why plants matter to cities is both lacking and challenging to achieve. In order to reach a wider audience, they stressed the importance of approaching public engagement from the various perspectives of park managers, landscape architects, activists, and researchers.

Field Notes from the Institute

ROOTS in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary

Surrounded by the Pond at the southeast corner of Central Park is the four-acre Hallett Nature Sanctuary, a peaceful haven just feet away from some of the city’s busiest streets. Like all of Central Park’s woodlands, the Hallett provides an intimate and immersive experience with nature and a valuable wildlife habitat. Though these areas look and feel like natural woodlands, it takes careful planning and constant upkeep to maintain a seemingly-wild sanctuary for plants, animals, and people in the middle of New York City. This ongoing work includes removing invasive species, monitoring soil and water health, and planting and maintaining a diverse array of native plant communities.

The Hallett was enclosed and designated a bird sanctuary under New York City Parks Commissioner Robert Moses in 1934, limiting maintenance and public access. In the decades following the Hallett’s closing, the lack of consistent management resulted in erosion, overgrowth of invasive species, and the deterioration of infrastructure. Invasive species installed in the early Park design for their exotic, decorative characteristics, such as Chinese and Japanese wisteria (Wisteria sinensis and W. floribunda), glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus), Japanese knotweed (Fallopia japonica), and jetbead (Rhodotypos scandens), had taken hold in the absence of regular maintenance, choking out other plantings and creating monocultures of only a few types of flora.

The Central Park Conservancy began restoration work in the Hallett in 2001. Key to the ongoing management of the Hallett is ROOTS (Restoration of the Outdoors Organized by Teen Students), one of the Central Park Conservancy’s important service-learning programs, which takes place every spring and fall. ROOTS was created by the Conservancy in 2003 as a way for high school students to gain an early look into the value of urban parks through active participation in restoration practices. ROOTS students have been instrumental to the Hallett’s restoration, building its wood-chipped trail loop in the program’s early stages.  Some of the other work that ROOTS students have done includes removing invasive plants, maintaining trails, and planting native shrubs, trees, wildflowers, and ferns.

Through such work, ROOTS students create habitat for wildlife and increase the biodiversity of the Park. The ROOTS program, in turn, gives students insight into careers in urban park management, creates strong connections with urban nature, and allows students with an interest in the environment to meet similarly-minded teens. One participant noted how the program changed his perspective on Central Park:

Before I started participating in ROOTS programs I believed that the park naturally looked beautiful and that there wasn't a ton of work that people did to make this the case.  But I have learned from my two experiences in the Hallett that in fact it takes a ton of work, and work that isn't just done for a paycheck but work that is done because you love doing it.  From these experiences I have gained a new appreciation for the park and for the people who work there. This also makes me understand that the park should not be taken for granted.

Field Notes from the Institute 

Cultivating a Pollinator Garden in an Urban Park  

Sometimes I save a weed if its leaves  are spread fern-like, hand-like,  or if it grows with a certain impertinence.  I let the goldenrod stay and the wild asters.  I save the violets in spring.   People who kill violets  will do anything.

It is the park in it entirety that never ceases to delight me, and within it, the Ramble--this wholly contrived little woodland--is where I feel most amazed by nature's omnipresence throughout the green metropolis that is New York City. - Elizabeth Barlow Rogers, Green Metropolis

In the 1980s, Elizabeth Barlow Rogers helped launch the restoration of Central Park. In her new book, out today, Rogers looks at Central Park, and also at incredible green spaces throughout New York City’s five boroughs, exploring them through the lenses of time, space, and design.