Grow What You Love: The High Line, NYC

A couple short weeks ago I paid a visit to New York City, which also meant an afternoon of wandering the High Line. If you’re wondering what people in NYC do on a warm spring day, this is it. I think every able bodied person was out that day and half of them had to be here, on this old rail line turned open space. It was standing room only.

With seating a commodity, I kept moving — me and my little group — taking photos where I could, people watching and noticing things you would otherwise miss from the street below.

Top subjects for photos (besides selfies) appeared to be friends, the greater landscape and flowers. Actually, the number of people stopping to admire and photograph flowers was amazing. I’m glad it wasn’t just me holding up traffic.

It also reminded me of “learning to see”, a notion I threw out there in an earlier post (Finding New Life Through Gardening). In this case, the garden is the framework or context that helps us see the world with fresh eyes. Framing the city, flowers and how we fit into the surrounding environment.

If you look closely, you can just make out the statue of liberty, captured by the twists and turns of the walkway and perfectly outlined by the foreground of trees and buildings.

See the photo below for a better view.

In my mind this place is a wonderful example of where architecture and design come together to create a heightened sense of nature.

The fact that it’s an elevated, green space is like adding punctuation to an already dramatic and lively setting.

Thank you, Friends of the High Line and others for making this project a success. As Elizabeth Barlow Rogers was quoted saying in a recent Wall Street Journal article, “…nature is not the antithesis of urban.” Calling the High Line, “One of the most impressive chapters in recent [NYC] history.”

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