I performed some backtrack subway shenanigans this afternoon to get to the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx. On a map, it’s about a width of Central Park away from my apartment. But I had the Harlem River to contend with.
I took the A down to 145th Street then transferred to the D back uptown. All of the white people except me and one other token guy got off at 161st Street for the Yankees game. Eventually, near the end of the line, I exited at the Fordham Road stop and still had to walk 15 minutes east to the garden. Next time, I’ll try crossing the river on foot via University Heights Bridge, which I now know has a sidewalk.
Central Park is about 3 1/2 times bigger than the comparatively measly 250 acres of the New York Botanical Garden, but I saw a more diverse batch of wildlife than I’ve ever seen in Manhattan. Here is my checklist:
- regular grey squirrels
- freakish jet-black squirrel with brown tail
- rabbits
- chipmunks
- Monarch butterflies
- pigeons (of course)
- mourning dove (heard)
- robin
- worm (eaten by robin)
- a cardinal
- an entire wedding party (getting its photo taken)
I toured a small part of the grounds and didn’t get a chance to check out any of the indoor exhibits. But of what I did see, my favorite plants were these ornamental onions (allium hollandicum) poking out among the hemerocallis in the spruce sector of the Arthur and Janet Ross Conifer Arboretum. They’re tall with rounded heads, spheres of spokes tipped with vibrant puprle blossoms. It’s as if they were designed in wireframe on a computer.
The lawns in the gardens have many “Keep Off the Grass” signs, but this is more of a place for looking as opposed to the lazing and tromping you get on your average Central Park greenery. So the mood is sedate, the only bustle from slow-moving tour groups of old people. There are peaceful nooks on winding paths where I could pause to watch a stream or take a seat. One crafty arrangement I came across was a long and curved, 15-foot-tall hedge that had ground-level fireplace-sized chunks cut into it at regular intervals; secreted into each leafy alcove was a park bench.