Report on the New York Botanical Garden

by Olmsted Brothers

The embankment of the new road is in itself an ugly interruption of the valley, but it can and should be pierced by an ample archway through which the narrow sylvan portion of the valley and a pathway traversing it would debouch at the head of the broader glade, the embankment of the roadway being heavily embowered in trees. Such an arrangement would afford sweeping views of the open part of the valley from the road without letting the automobiles spoil the charm of the valley as enjoyed from the foot-paths within it or seriously impairing the intimacy of its connection with the narrow sylvan upper portion. The situation lends itself admirably to providing both the scenic and the cultural variety of conditions desirable for such an exhibition of rhododendrons and related plants.

An unfortunate obtrusion at present into this valley are the stables of the Park Department. It is of vital importance that these be removed from the scene, preferably to the undeveloped park lands just across Pelham Parkway. A portion, at least, of the site of these buildings would be included in the scheme, in order to reclaim the complete form of the valley and to complete the essential enclosing plantations.

In [Appendix B] we have developed somewhat more in detail, in a tentative way, the ideas which have occurred to us for the treatment of this Rhododendron Glade; and we believe it would be the best large new feature on which to concentrate first, after assuring increased funds for general maintenance and for the detailed improvement of existing features.

It must of course be borne in mind that the proper maintenance of such a Rhododendron Glade will cost much more per acre than the old lake with its borders of unsophisticated woodland, or than a simple meadow; and that such an improvement, however desirable from every point of view, ought not to be undertaken without seeing the way perfectly clear to obtaining the necessary additional maintenance funds. The principle, of course, is the same as that which has very properly led various institutions to refuse gifts of very much desired new buildings in the absence of endowment for their operation and maintenance.

2. A group or series of desirable new undertakings is that referred to in your report of April, 1923, under the heading “Model Gardens.” Some of the most valuable of these from the point of view of the general public, such as city back-yard gardens and typical good treatments for small suburban homes, present peculiar difficulties in that they would be rather lacking in realism and effectiveness unless associated with buildings which would be in themselves inharmonious with the general informal park-like landscape of the tract as a whole, and that most of them would need almost complete isolation from each other and from the general landscape.

There are along the Pelham Parkway frontage some rather isolated areas of moderate width, as yet undeveloped and cut off by rocky hills from the rest of the Botanical Garden which can be devoted in whole or in part to small detached Model Gardens.

But one of the assets of these sites is the fact that they do front on the Pelham Parkway and can be seen by the large numbers of motorists who use that route without ordinarily entering the Botanical Garden enclosure. So far as practicable, therefore, it would seem advantageous to use these sites for exhibits somewhat of the nature of “show-window displays”—bold, striking, adequate to arrest the attention and pleasantly arouse the interest of people going by at the rate of twenty miles an hour or more, despite the interposition of the enclosing fence and the trees of the Parkway itself. There seems no sufficient reason why this part of the grounds should not be thus thrown visually open to the outside, because the logical line of scenic enclosure for the main body of the ground lies for the most part on the height of land just north of this bordering strip. We are not prepared as yet to offer definite and well-considered suggestions for the kinds of Model Gardens most suitable to these sites, but it would seem that they might well include some of the more bold and striking types of display offering a succession of colorful effects through each season. On the other hand, it would be a pity to put only such exhibits in these “show windows.” Some other equally striking but perhaps more refined and quasi-naturalistic exhibits should be provided for, such, perhaps, as a show of lilacs and one of Crataegus and crab-apples and other so-called “flowering” trees.

For small special domestic gardens of urban and suburban types, places might be found, preferably in direct connection with small houses occupied by Garden employees or adapted to necessary uses other than residential which are capable of fitting into a dwelling-house structure, in accessible locations near the entrance closest to rapid transit stations but completely isolated from the general landscape by screen planting.

3. Iris Garden Region. What seems on preliminary inspection like an opportunity for an essentially new feature of much beauty and interest, if dealt with boldly and skilfully in a large way, is presented in the vicinity of the present Iris Garden and Horticultural Garden. Here is an open hillside sloping irregularly to the eastward from a bench at about elevation 90 near the Southern Boulevard, to a hollow at about elevation 60 near the interior road, and flanked on either side by bold well-wooded hills. Its landscape unit, however, is disturbed by the bulge of the rounding ridge occupied by the Horticultural Garden and by the fact that the open space, once quiet meadow or lawn, is cut up and spotted with paths and flower beds which are yet not sufficiently continuous to produce a unified texture of a richer sort.

Directly opposite to the east is the one important gap in the rocky ridges which border the Bronx River on the west for three quarters of a mile, and in and beyond this gap the natural woods are thin or altogether lacking, giving opportunity, at the sacrifice of a few trees, for a very lovely natural-seeming transverse vista extending to the ridge just west of the Rose Garden.