Nothing gives you more bang for your public space improvement dollars than plants. When people ask me what the one thing they should do to improve public space, my response is always to institute a horticulture program. Improving the perception of public space is about providing visual cues to users that the space is under social control. Colorful, well-maintained plants send that message in a number of ways. The physical material isn’t very expensive and the skills to maintain horticultural materials are widespread and easy to find. Putting plantings in places where people don’t expect them sends a powerful message.

I knew absolutely nothing about gardening when I went to work for Bryant Park Restoration Corporation in 1991. My father grew some terrific tomatoes in the yard when I was growing up (it was New Jersey, after all) and for some reason there was always mint growing outside the backdoor of the house that we put into iced tea. And that was the sum total of my agricultural experience when I arrived in the Park. From that day to this, I haven’t had a personal garden or even a yard.

However, I had the good fortune to work at Bryant Park with Lynden Miller, who was a landscape painter, and who had designed the restored gardens at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park at the request of her friend, Central Park Administrator, Betsy Barlow Rogers. Dan Biederman brought Lynden on board as the gardens’ designer. Lynden taught me a tremendous amount – beginning with the difference between annuals and perennials, I’m sorry to say — and introduced me to New York’s growing horticultural world.

 

Lynden brings two things to the horticultural table. She knows plants and she has elegant taste. As a result of her experience in the Conservatory Garden she knew not only about what plants worked in the New York climate zone – but also what plants were hardy enough, and impressive enough to work in an urban environment. It was Lynden who selected the tulip, Pink Impressions, which has become one of Bryant Park’s trademarks. It was ideal for its purpose, and the first spring after we planted them, the tulips made a huge impact. They have a vibrant color, a huge head, and were sufficiently hardy to survive winter in the ground above the New York Public Library stack extension and the number 7 subway line. Lynden also knew that to get real visual pop we needed to plant thousands of them.

The perennial beds were the thing we most often heard would be impossible on 42^nd Street in the New York of the early 1990s. The plants were going to get stolen. The beds were going to be trampled and trashed. It seemed inconceivable that in the midst of the apparent urban chaos of Midtown Manhattan of 1992, two hundred-yard long planting beds would thrive. And that was the beauty part.

The fact that the plantings were large and sumptuous immediately defied expectations about the social conditions in the park and put out a marker of what was possible. The perennial beds and the lush, green lawn (once we got it to work, which took about three years after the opening of the park) were the most important initial elements that communicated subtly to the public the park’s success and that it was a safe place.

Most obviously, very presence of the flower beds communicated to people that someone cared about the space – that it was being taken care of. The fact that the flowers and plants were a constant presence told them they weren’t being stolen (more on that in a bit) and people took away that social norms were being maintained in the park, without being directly told and with or without an enforcement presence. The maintenance of the horticultural material in Bryant Park required staff who were always visible working in the park. They were eyes on the street and street corner mayors making people feel safe and were obvious evidence that the space was well ordered and being well maintained. Our first full-time gardener was a colorful character (many of them are), who developed his own following. And, everyone loves colorful flowers and a green lawn. They just give people pleasure. All of these factors are the key features of any urban horticultural program – and are transferable anywhere. And transfer them we did.

 

Once our team got good at planting and maintaining the Bryant Park gardens, we took our show on the road and with Dan Biederman’s encouragement, we went to work figuring out how to create an urban streetscape horticulture program. We determined that the key elements of that program were going to be hanging baskets, sidewalk planters and a van with a water tank and a watering wand. The baskets we bought from a catalog.

The story of the planters I told in my previous essay. And the watering truck was cobbled together from a beat-up old van by our landscaping firm, which also supplied the plants. Initially, the program was relatively simple, with two colors of one plant, planted in the spring and watered at night during the summer (to avoid traffic problems). The initiative required the cooperation and approval of the City’s Transportation Department for hanging the plants on the lamp stanchions, made easier by the fact that the stanchions were custom-installed by the BIDs; for placing the planters on the sidewalk, requiring a revocable consent from DOT; and a heads-up for the watering truck. It also required a sign off from the Art Commission (which needed to approve the design of stuff in public spaces). The Police Department was given notice of our plans to have a truck driving around at night.

 

That program made a huge impact and grew to include tree pits, seasonal displays (including holiday lighting in the baskets) and a much wider range of plantings.

Today, some of the designs – particularly of the planters in Bryant Park – done by horticulturalist Maureen Hackett – run to the showy and baroque; but they make an impression.

 

When I went to work in the lower density/lower income community of Jamaica, I took this idea with me and we did extensive plantings in the area around the Long Island Railroad transportation hub and the properties owned by Greater Jamaica Development Corporation and its parking affiliate, Jamaica First Parking. Working with the same landscape firm on Long Island, Starkie Brothers, we outfitted a watering truck and hired a local resident with a green thumb to staff it (the whole program cost less than $75,000 to start up). That employee has become the essence of a street corner mayor and takes real ownership of both the plantings and entire streetscape. Most of the plant material is now being purchased at the local Home Depot store.

 

My great regret is not having been able to persuade the boards of the three downtown Jamaica BIDs to participate in the program. I wasn’t able to convince them how much impact a horticultural program can have on how people think about of the Downtown. But what GJDC continues to do has made a huge difference in the perception of Jamaica and, I believe, has played a major role in attracting the private capital investment now flooding the community. The horticultural program gave people, subliminally, a deep vision of what is possible in a place long considered dangerous and chaotic.

One tip about maintenance – there is some sleight of hand at work here in a successful program. You need to buy about a third more plants than you plan to use and have a place to store and maintain them. The plants do get tend to get stolen, especially when you startup the program, and the key to the appearance of success is replacing the missing plants every night. The thieves eventually give up. But for the program to transmit the message you are trying to send, the baskets, planters and beds always have to appear to be full. In order for a horticultural program to work it has to be well maintained. Missing and or dead plants, and damaged or defaced planters are much, much worse than no program at all. One of the advantages of hanging baskets is that they are hard to reach – and therefore hard to steal from or vandalize. They also have tremendous visual impact because of how they catch the eye, and I’d do baskets before planters, if I had to choose due to limited resources, every time.