The Alpine Garden
One of the original Olmsted Brothers design features of Fort Tryon Park, the Alpine Garden, on the park’s eastern expanse, was barely a memory as time and neglect had obscured its staircases and grotto, and the garden was long–buried beneath dense layers of overgrowth. Over the past five years, Parks Department gardeners have uncovered the secrets of the garden and restoration plans are being finalized.
When the Alpine Garden was constructed, it was the first of its kind. Until then, alpine gardens appeared on private estates in Europe and North America, but not in public parks.
Alpine gardens are generally characterized by extensive use of rocks or stones and plants native to rocky or alpine environments. Often they are designed to mimic natural rock outcrops. Because of harsh growing conditions, alpine plants are usually small, low growing, or creeping. Their diminutive form makes them desirable to the landscape designer because they do not obscure the rocks and other elements of the alpine garden.
The genius in the Olmsted Brothers’ design for the Fort Tryon Park Alpine Garden is their sublime realization of the potential for a rough, almost impenetrable rocky slope. They transformed the coarse terrain into a series of intriguing pathways and plantings that wander up and down the 150–foot rock–faced slope between Broadway and The Cloisters. Views from the Alpine Garden starkly contrast with those of the Hudson River and Palisades to the west.
The Alpine Garden’s decorative rocks – walls, boulders, and stone borders — part of a complex human design, compliment the outcroppings of metamorphic Manhattan schist, containing easily seen minerals such as quartz, feldspar, and mica, while garnet is found at scattered places. Some of the decorative stone used in the construction of the Alpine Garden came from rock excavated in the construction of Fort Tryon Park and the nearby subway tunnel.
The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation has provided the critical funding to initiate the Alpine Garden’s reclamation, extensive tree work, and engineering studies for reactivating the grotto water feature. The Foundation’s gift also has enabled historical research that will guide the garden’s ongoing restoration.
The Cleveland Dodge Foundation has provided funds for reinstating water service throughout the park’s Broadway expanse, thereby enabling horticulture and drinking fountains where there had been none since the 1950s.
