Winter in Riverside: Our Team’s Work
If you haven’t been out in the park on these blustery winter days, you may be surprised to know there is still much going on!
Ecological Horticulture
Riverside Park is located on unceded Lenni-Lenape land – Lenapehoking — which covers parts of today’s New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.
As supporters of a public green space in New York City, we recognize the devastating history of colonization on the land here, and the ongoing impact colonialism has on Native communities, their homelands, local ecologies, and the planet at large. In order to deliver truly holistic care to Riverside Park, we must move from an understanding of this land’s history – and look to Lenape-led efforts to inform and shape our land stewardship model.
Learn more
We encourage you to learn more about – and from – the native residents of this region. Lenapecenter.com is a place to start here in the City, as well as The Land We’re On: Living Lenapehoking from the New York Public Library.
We also recommend looking into the teachings of Robin Wall Kimmerer, and reading her book, Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants.
Our approach
Gardening with Native Plants
We strive to embrace creative approaches towards addressing invasive species in the park and other challenges. Utilizing native plants has a positive impact on the landscape and is a great way to help pollinators thrive. By being open-minded towards new approaches and flexible in improving old methods, we are better adapted to handle the unknown, especially those related to our changing climate.
Trees are vital structures of any park. Creating a canopy that provides shade, carbon storage and sequestration, water absorption and countless other benefits. Here at Riverside, we are committed to ensuring the health and maintenance of our current trees as well as welcoming in the next generation.
We are so lucky to have gorgeous Crabapple walks, Forever Wild trails, and allées of London Planes. No matter where you are along our 400 acres, there is always a sense of grandness when you walk amongst our thousands of arboreal statues.
Maintaining a healthy ecosystem
Riverside Park Conservancy is dedicated to creating a biodiverse landscape that complements our historical importance as well as issues facing public parks today. Being an Olmsted designed park, it is important that we preserve the vistas and grand views that were so important to some of the first park goers while incorporating plants that bring back local pollinators and new generations of park goers.
Biodiversity of meadows and other pollinator friendly areas
One way we achieve our goal of sustaining local pollinators is through our many meadows throughout the park. From Riverside Park South to the George Washington Bridge, we have turned lawns into biodiverse meadows with multi season interest. These areas are tended to differently, requiring less water and a lot less human intervention, after several years of development. We select plant species first based on the conditions of the location. We use a combination of planting container plants usually in gallon sizes and seeding. We have taken an approach recently that is based on using seed whenever the soil in these areas is disturbed. This ensures that the seed bank is full of species we want. This will hopefully help reduce the amount of intensive weeding we have been doing for years.
Many people become worried or concerned when they see plants being nibbled creating holes in the perfectly green leaves on shrubs and perennials. Most of the time this is positive sign that the plants we are planting are being utilized by insects. We are providing beauty to human visitors and vital food resources to our insect visitors. We want to make sure there are as many nectar and pollen resources as possible throughout the year. This type of gardening is called ecological horticulture, and it has become second nature to those of us working in the park. Perfect circles cut out of our native Redbud trees is a thrilling reminder that our native leafcutter bees are using these sheets of leaves to protect the eggs they are laying in cavities.
Sustainability
Sustainability is at the core of our horticultural ethos. Through composting, leaving the leaves, chipping our wood on site and soil testing, we develop better practices every day.
Leaving the leaves is a widely accepted strategy to ensure that pollinators have safe spaces to overwinter, and trees can utilize the little nutrient packets they spent all year creating. You may see staff using lawn mowers and leaf vacuums to move around and process leaves to create a broken-down leaf mulch that can be used in more formal areas like entrance gardens. In our natural areas we leave leaves in larger amounts to harbor any overwintering caterpillars (and fireflies!) Check out what NYC Parks has to say about leaves! This practice helps us reduce the need for water as the rich mulch helps to retain moisture in the soil and also suppresses weeds.
From the tree tops
A Riverside Blog
Horticulture focused blog & news articles, featuring content created by Conservancy staff.
Riverside Park Conservancy Completes Bird-Friendly Retrofit
In March 2024, Riverside Park Conservancy finished a bird-friendly retrofit of their Peter Jay Sharp Volunteer House, located at W. 107th St. in Riverside Park.
Horticulture Highlights
