Restoring Manhattan as It Once Was
From left, interrupted fern, wild columbine and bloodroot.
IN 1609, when the English explorer Henry Hudson sailed the river that would be named after him, he looked out on an island of hilly forest and wetlands teeming with wildlife.
ROOTS George Reis checks out specimens planted at New York University as part of a project to reintroduce native plants that once thrived in Manhattan.
American beech.
Four hundred years later, that paradise has been crushed by steel and concrete, with pockets of green made up mostly of exotic plants like Norway maples and English ivy.
But a patch of that lost landscape, so eloquently described by the Mannahatta Project (themannahattaproject.org), is evoked by a 2,200-square-foot native woodland garden being planted at Schwartz Plaza next to the Bobst Library on the New York University campus, just south of Washington Square.
There, beneath the lindens and Japanese pagoda trees, are sweeps of native ferns, columbine and wild ginger. Young beech seedlings are barely taller than the mayapples.
“We’re not trying to recreate a woodland, it’s a stylized version of a woodland,” said George Reis, N.Y.U.’s supervisor of sustainable landscapes, who became a gardener at the university in 1995. He knew nothing about gardening, but the job included free tuition. “I couldn’t identify English ivy,” he said. “I came to study Portuguese literature.”
Nevertheless, he took a few classes at the New York Botanical Garden. And one day he heard Darrel Morrison, a landscape architect renowned for his use of native plants, speak at Columbia University.
“It was all about making a design suited for a specific place,” said Mr. Reis, 42. “How can we evoke the natural history and even the social history of that place through design.”
He started changing a few areas around campus, replacing the English ivy and leggy boxwoods in front of the admissions building with native azaleas that bloomed at graduation, and filling the sunny expanse around the sports center with swamp mallows and sea oats.
The Mannahatta Project also inspired him to imagine Manhattan before the rest of the world landed here with its seeds and its culture. And when the class of 2008 put out a call for a worthy project for its $25,000 legacy gift, Mr. Reis submitted a proposal — for a native woodland garden designed by Mr. Morrison.
The idea won hand’s down over a proposal for plasma TV’s for the gym.
So this spring, Mr. Reis and Mr. Morrison, with the help of a small student crew, began planting 2,000 plants that were all thriving on Manhattan in the 17th century.
Beneath the lindens and a Japanese maple, sweeps of hay-scented ferns undulate against waves of New York ferns, interrupted ferns and Christmas ferns, each species planted en masse to accentuate subtle differences in shape, texture and color.
Serviceberry (Amelanchier canadensis), a shrub that once turned the Eastern woods white with its blossoms in early spring, signaling that it was safe to journey into the mountains to hold services for those who had died in the winter, will bloom next spring over wild columbine and bloodroot.
A handful of American beech seedlings, grown from local seed by the Greenbelt Native Plant Center, on Staten Island, were only a foot tall. But those little trees are a sign that this urban native landscape is already taking hold.
Why not put a little Mannahatta in your own shady backyard, terrace or tiny front yard that faces the street? Columbine, wood phlox and wild geranium would do well in a small yard, in light to full shade, Mr. Morrison said, and would also work in large pots.
Bearberry, a low, rambling evergreen with pink or white flowers in the spring and red berries in summer, is a good ground cover for a sunny, sandy space. Partridge berry, another low-growing evergreen with red berries, prefers fertile soil and shade.
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