Break the rules! Embrace the unplanned and serendipitous. Bury your mistakes. Perhaps unconventional gardening advice, but Wave Hill is no ordinary public garden. Here, on one of the last Hudson River estates within New York City’s boundaries, American gardening has been transformed. The story is shared in Nature into Art: The Gardens of Wave Hill.
A world-class garden and unique urban oasis, Wave Hill is located in the Bronx, just nine miles north of Manhattan. The site is stunning. Overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades, Wave Hill’s 28 acres of gardens and woodlands support a vibrant center for the arts, nature and environmental education. Here human connections to the natural world are fostered within a landscape enriched by horticultural innovation and beauty.
But it was not always so. When donated to the city of New York in 1960 the property, which included a pair of houses, was in a derelict state. Public funding was scarce. Yet, Wave Hill was slowly transformed under the guidance of its first director of horticulture, Marco Polo Stufano, his collaborator John Nally, and a dedicated gardening staff. Nature into Art: The Gardens of Wave Hill recounts this history with an exploration of the design principles and planting techniques that continue to make Wave Hill unique.
Different areas of the grounds are explored in individual chapters that detail their design evolution. Gardeners, most of which have worked at Wave Hill a very long time, provide information about planning and caring for each area through their distinct perspectives. Full-color annotated photographs adorn almost every page. Topical vignettes provide additional information that is both practical and inspirational.
Each chapter is a story unto itself to be read, savored and be bemused by. Early on we learn of the founder’s lack of, or aversion to, master planning and the incremental and organic manner in which Wave Hill evolved. Yes, there wasn’t very much money and American Horticulture was at a low ebb when the gardens were established. But no, that wasn’t necessarily a deterrent to success. Left to their own devices the gardeners at Wave Hill were forced to innovate and grow plants from seed on site. When established practice dictated things couldn’t be done “that way” they could. And, at Wave Hill, they did.
When frustrated by the City’s slow progress on the property, for three consecutive years $16.30 of annual seeds were purchased from a garden catalogue and planted in the Flower Garden to illustrate what could be achieved with minimal resources. The volunteer seedlings that proliferated, gave rise to one of Wave Hill’s foundational gardening philosophies and self-seeding flowers became a mainstay of the property. The $16.30 of annual plantings inspired the soft and undulating style of planting for which Wave Hill is known.
One of the earliest projects undertaken at Wave Hill was the rebuilding of the glass houses and the conservatory, which holds a central position in the garden and offers horticultural respite during the harsh winter months. This was followed by the planting of the Wild Garden, on beds designed when the property was a private estate.
While it is one of the most intensely maintained areas of the property, the Wild Garden, like the Flower Garden, embraces an element of unpredictability, allowing annuals to set seed and self-propagate. Originally only plants taken from the wild and not altered by breeders were planted here, but this rule, too, was broken by Stufano and Nally as the garden was designed, in what is described as a “fever of discovery.”
Do not, however, mistake a willingness to experiment, with a lack of rigor. Stufano and Nally originally trained in art history and printmaking and the principles of those disciplines underlie many of the gardening decisions made at Wave Hill. As an example, in the single-hued Gold Border, flowers are likened to sculptural elements enabling a range of rhythms, harmonies and contrasts to complement and serve as visual counterpoints to color. It is the fit and look of a plant that matters, with form and shape primary and color secondary.
Designed to embrace the seasons, Wave Hill is a work in progress. Change and unpredictability are embraced. As a whole, it is a carefully choreographed composition within which creative expression, artistic license and experimentation is celebrated. This is a refreshing concept for those of us who garden, plant what we love and hope for the best, no matter how idiosyncratic. For ultimately, nature will take its course and, thankfully, we can always bury our mistakes.
During the past 50 years Wave Hill pioneered a new way of American gardening within a public landscape, gifted to the City of New York. Nature into Art: The Gardens of Wave Hill, celebrates and humanizes the history, artistry and legacy of this remarkable accomplishment and is likewise a gift to the reader.
All photographs used in this post are by Ngoc Minh Ngo, courtesy of Timber Press. To download a seasonal map and guide of Wave Hill visit: https://www.wavehill.org/media/filer_public/5e/24/5e24b65e-6f45-47c8-bbe4-bd792b372d4e/wave_hill_map__guide_fall_2019.pdf.
This review appeared in Leaflet: A Massachusetts Horticultural Society Publication, September, 2019.
Copyright © 2019 Patrice Todisco — All Rights Reserved
