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The
Conservatory Garden offers a peaceful and colorful setting
throughout the seasons. The six-acre Conservatory Garden is Central
Park's only formal garden. It takes its name from the huge glass
conservatory that once stood on this same spot, built in 1898. In
1934, when maintenance of the facility had become too costly, the
conservatory was demolished and replaced with the present Garden,
which opened to the public in 1937. The Conservatory Garden is in
fact three gardens representing different landscape styles: Italian,
French, and English.
To
enter the six-acre Garden from Fifth Avenue and 105th Street, you
must pass through the Vanderbilt Gate, which originally stood before
the Vanderbilt Mansion at Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, the site of
today's Bergdorf Goodman store. An Italian-style garden opens
immediately before you. It is a restful oasis of formal green lawn
and clipped hedges. It is bordered to the north and south by
alleés of crabapple trees; their bloom times vary from
mid-April through the first week of May, depending on the weather. On
the west side is a wrought-iron wisteria pergola that sits atop a
series of tiered yew and spiraea hedges. An elegant geyser fountain
in front of the pergola provides a vertical contrast to the rows of hedges.
Few
visitors know that on the walkway under the pergola are medallions
inscribed with the names of the original thirteen states. The Italian
garden is the site of many wedding photography sessions and, in the
spring, of the Central Park Conservancy's Women's Committee Frederick
Law Olmsted Luncheon.
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To
the north is the classical French-style garden. At its center is
German sculptor Walter Schott's Three Dancing Maidens , which dates
from approximately 1910. (It is also called "The Untermyer
Fountain," after the family who presented it to the City in
1947.) Three smiling young women in bronze link hands as they dance
around the fountain's spray. Each young woman depicted is distinct,
but their gestures and swirling dresses combine to express joie de
vivre. Surrounding the fountain is a parterre bed with clipped
germander in elaborate scrolls. And around the parterres are sloped
beds planted for two dazzling floral displays. In the spring, 20,000
tulips bloom; bulbs are planted anew each fall and the prior year's
bulbs are given to neighborhood gardening groups. In late October,
2,000 Korean chrysanthemums bloom in an ever-changing but always
brilliant palette. |
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The
southern garden is English in style and planted for year-round
interest. Sheltered in the center is the Burnett Fountain, a bronze
sculpture of two children, Mary and Dickon, characters attributed to
Frances Hodgson Burnett's book The Secret Garden. The fountain was
created by Bessie Potter Vonnoh and installed in 1936. The children
are on a pedestal -- Dickon playing a flute and Mary listening -- in
the center of a reflecting pool where water lilies float in the
summer. Surrounding the pool are seasonal planting beds, with
thousands of daffodils and other bulbs in spring, and over 100 annual
plant varieties in summer. The outer ring of beds is planted with an
outstanding selection of perennial plants, shrubs, trees, and grasses
that bloom in succession from early spring through fall. The newest
horticulture addition to the southern garden is a woodland slope
along its outer perimeter -- a shade garden using native and
non-native plant species. The woodland slope is particularly lovely
in the spring when thousands of daffodils and other blooming plants
dot the slope. |
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