A Visit to the New York Botanical Garden
Carole Obernesser
The weekend of June 17th found me in Manhattan with a few bucket list items I wanted to do. One especially was a trip to the Bronx. Living in the City 40 years ago, one of the places I never got to visit was The New York Botanical Garden. Since I was with my husband and our son, my leverage for doing this was my birthday wish from a few days prior. If you get a chance, put it on your bucket list if you've never visited.
The NYBG is something that was well worth the trip to the Bronx. Spectacular is an understatement. Starting with the Conservatory and ending with the Rose Garden, we chose to walk the five and half miles but well worth it so we didn’t miss things. The Rose Garden was the highlight of our visit.
Initially designed by renowned landscape architect Beatrix Farrand (1872–1959) in 1916, this garden was not completed until decades later. Iron shortages during World War I made the completion of the fence and gazebo, central design features of the garden, impossible. In the mid-1980s Garden Board member Beth Strauss saw the original designs and showed them to David Rockefeller, who then generously supported the completion of Farrand’s fully realized designs in 1988. The garden is named after his wife Peggy, a horticulturist and conservationist who loved roses.
