The Central Park Conservatory Garden
Located between 104th and 106th Streets off Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029
https://www.centralparknyc.org/
https://www.centralpark.com/visitor-info/central-park-conservancy/
Hours: Depends on the season and the Dawn to Dusk rule
Hours of Operation:
November-February (8:00am-5:00pm)
March (8:00am-6:00pm)
April (8:00am-7:00pm)
May (August 14th 8:00am-8:00pm)
August 15-31 (8:00am-7:30pm)
September (8:00am-7:30pm)
http://www.centralparknyc.org/things-to-see-and-do/#what_lawns-and-landscapes
Fee: Free
TripAdvisor Review:
The entrance to the Central Park Conservatory Garden in Winter 2023
*I want to note that in the Spring of 2022, the Gardens are going through a renovation and parts of the Gardens are closed off.
This time of the year (Spring) the Central Park Conservatory is in full bloom and its magnificence is at its finest in the Spring and Summer months. In May, the tulips and daffodils are just finishing their flowering and the lilacs are just finishing their blooming and still fragrant the garden. The lawns are all a deep green and the dogwood trees are just starting to bloom around the rings of the gardens.
Don’t miss walking around the Gardens off to the side closest to the Harlem Meir as they are open through the renovation. You will see beds of flowers along the fountain’s edge and can admire all the sculpture. What is most impressive is that in-between the Gardens is a vast green lawn surrounded by trees. The lawn of the Conservatory is nice to just admire with the trees lining it on all sides.
Central Park Conservatory Garden Winter 2023
The best time to come to the Conservatory Gardens is in early to late Spring and the early Summer when everything is in full bloom. This is when Mother Nature shows us her great magic.
The Central Park Conservatory in the Spring of 2023
The beauty of the Central Park Conservatory is that it blooms all year around except the winter and even then, there is a quiet elegance to the gardens.
History of The Central Park Conservatory:
The Central Park Conservatory Garden is the only formal garden in Central Park, New York City and is located approximately between 104th and 106th Street on Fifth Avenue in NYC. The Garden consists of about six acres of formal landscaping of trees, shrubs and flowers. The formal garden is divided into three smaller gardens each with a distinct style: Italian, French and English. The Central Conservatory Garden is an officially designated Quiet Zone and offers a calm and colorful setting for a leisurely stroll and intimate wedding.
The Central Park Conservatory in the Spring
It takes its name from a conservatory that stood on the site from 1898 to 1934. The park’s head gardener used the glasshouses to harden hardwood cuttings for the park’s plantings. After the conservatory was torn down, the garden was designed by Gilmore D. Clarke, landscape architect for Robert Moses, with planting plans by M. Betty Sprout and constructed and planted by WPA workers, it was opened to the public in 1937.
The Garden is composed of three distinct parts, skillfully restored since the 1980’s and is accessible through the Vanderbilt Gate at Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, a quarter south of the park’s northeast corner.
The Vanderbilt Gate at the Central Park Conservatory
The Vanderbilt Gate once gave access to the forecourt of Cornelius Vanderbilt II’s chateau designed by George Browne Post, the grandest of the Fifth Avenue mansions of the Gilded Age, at 58th Street and Fifth Avenue, sharing the Plaza with Plaza Hotel. The wrought iron gates with cast iron and repousse details, were designed by Post and executed in an iron foundry in Paris.
The fountain at the Central Park Conservatory
Below the steps flanked by Cornelian cherry, the central section of the Conservatory Garden is a symmetrical lawn outlined in clipped yew, with a single central fountain jet at the rear. It is flanked by twin aisles of crabapples and backed by a curved wisteria pergola against the steep natural slope, that is dominated at its skyline by a giant American Sycamore. Otherwise there is no flower color; instead on any fine Saturday afternoon in June, it is a scene of photography sessions for colorful wedding parties for which limousines pull up in rows on Fifth Avenue.
The Cherry Trees at the gardens
To the left of the south side is the garden of mixed herbaceous borders in wide concentric bands around The Secret Garden water lily pool, dedicated in 1936 to the memory of Frances Hodgson Burnett with sculpture by Bessie Potter Vonnoh. Some large shrubs, like tree lilac, magnolias, buddleias and Cornus alba ‘elegantissima’ provide vertical structure and offer light shade to offset the sunny locations, planted by Lynden Miller with a wide range of hardy perennials and decorative grasses, intermixed with annuals planted to seem naturalized. This garden has seasonal features to draw visitors from April through October.
To the right of the central formal plat is a garden also in concentric circles, round the Untermyer Fountain, which was donated by the family of Samuel Untermyer in 1947. The bronze figures, Three Dancing Maidens by Walter Schott (1861-1938) were executed in Germany about 1910 and formed a fountain at Utermyer’s estate “Greystone” in Yonkers, New York.
This section of the Conservatory Garden has two dramatic seasons of massed display of tulips in the spring and Korean chrysanthemums in the fall. Beds of satolina clipped in knotted designs with contrasting bronze-leaved bedding begonias surround the fountain and four rose arbor gates are planted with reblooming ‘Silver Moon’ and ‘Betty Prior’ roses.
After the Second World War the garden had become neglected and by the 1970’s became a wasteland. It was restored and partially replanted under the direction of horticulturist and urban landscape designer Lyden Miller to reopen in June 1987. The overgrown, top-heavy crabapples were freed of water shoots and pruned up to a higher scaffold for better form. The high-style mixed planting was the first to bring estate garden style to urban parks, part of the general of Central Park under Elizabeth Barlow Rogers of the Central Park Conservancy.
The Conservatory in the early Spring of 2023
(This information directly from Wikipedia and has many sources)
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This is the perfect time to visit the garden. Everything is in bloom and the weather is perfect.
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The gardens are just as elegant in the middle of the winter.
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