Garden Futures Summit NYC tours

NYBG Native Plant Garden is one of the Garden Futures Summit tours

Saturday September 30

Earlier this summer we announced our inaugural Garden Futures Summit, a two-day event of talks and tours on September 29 and 30 in New York City. Now, we’re excited to announce the lineup of tours for day two of the Summit. Tours will go on sale at 12:00 P.M. Eastern this Thursday!

Only registered attendees of the Garden Futures Summit will be able to purchase tour tickets. If you haven’t already registered for the Summit, please visit: https://www.gardenconservancy.org/education/gfs-2023 

Tours are offered at one of two times, either in the morning (starting at 10 A.M.) or afternoon (starting at 2 P.M.). Attendees are welcome to participate in both morning and afternoon tours. Attendees are expected to make their own way to and from the tour sites.

Registration

$30 for each garden tour

Tickets on sale 12:00 P.M.
Thursday, September 7, 2023.

Tours are non-refundable, non-exchangeable, rain or shine.

Tickets are limited to Garden Futures Summit registered attendees only, and available on a first-come, first-served basis.

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Morning Tours
All morning tours begin at 10:00 a.m. sharp

Brooklyn Museum

Your guides: Rebecca McMackin, Horticulturist and Garden Designer, and Brook Klausing, Brook Landscape

Brooklyn has a new public garden for people and pollinators! Landscape designer Brook Klausing has rethought the entrance to the Brooklyn Museum and brought in ecological horticulturalist Rebecca McMackin to design a massive wildflower meadow that bursts with flowers for butterflies, beetles, and Brooklynites. This garden for the people, well outside of gates and fences, is located at one of the busiest intersections of Brooklyn and shows how native wildflowers are tough and beautiful enough for even the most difficult urban conditions. Brook also collaborated with architect Elizabeth Roberts to create a revitalized community garden space in the underutilized back of the museum building, with sustainably harvested wooden benches and planters brimming with native plants.

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Freshkills Park | Photo Credit: Jade Doskow

Your guides: Tatiana Choulika, Associate Partner at James Corner Field Operations, Mark Murphy, NYC Parks Administrator for Freshkills Park, and science and education staff from Freshkills Park Alliance

Freshkills was once the largest landfill in the world. Responding to community concerns about public health and wellbeing, the City selected James Corner Field Operations to create a master plan for its transformation and restoration into a beautiful natural space. Join us for a tour of the North Park Phase One area, the first interior section of the landfill to open to the public. Here you'll see grasses, shrubs, and wildflowers growing on the landfill cap. You'll also get to see the arc, an engineered earthwork that creates a new pathway and leads to an observation deck. The rewilding of the site since the landfill closed in 2001 has contributed to a dramatic increase in biodiversity in Staten Island.

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550 Madison Avenue | Photo Credit: Barret Doherty

Your guides: Jacqueline Martinez, Landscape Architect at Snøhetta, and Garden Conservancy President James Brayton Hall

At the landmarked 1980s tower originally designed by Philip Johnson and John Burgee for AT&T, Snøhetta has this year completed an award-winning redesign of the ground level public areas (POPS) to make them more transparent, accessible, and verdant with a lavishly planted, year-round garden. Uniting the canyon-like qualities of Midtown Manhattan and the Hudson River Palisades, the garden’s design expresses the physical energy, vibrant color, and the social energy of Midtown. In contrast to the transformation at 550 Madison, the POPS at 590 Madison appears much the same way as it did when the transparent trapezoidal atrium was designed for the IBM headquarters in 1983 by landscape architect Robert Zion. Stands of bamboo trees filter the sunlight coming through the sawtooth glass roof and into a space that offers abundant public seating.

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Rendering of Children's Garden, Prospect Park

Your guide: Christian Zimmerman, Vice President, Capital and Landscape Management, Prospect Park Alliance

We will stroll through the northeast section of Prospect Park, where the Prospect Park Alliance and the City of New York have incorporated community needs and desires into a forward-looking $40 million capital restoration plan that respects the historic design by Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux. With detailed plans and renderings, Christian Zimmerman will describe how these plans will make the park more welcoming and accessible to visitors, and how it's improving the environment for wildlife. The project will restore Brooklyn's last remaining forest, transform the Rose Garden into three distinct landscapes, and restore the Children's Pool.

This Garden Future Summit garden tour has been cancelled.

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Afternoon Tours
All afternoon tours begin at 2:00 p.m. sharp

Hudson Yards

Your guide: Stephen Eich, Partner, Hollander Design

Like many public urban spaces, the gardens of Hudson Yards have been shaped by multiple visions and changing needs. Immersive and horticulturally rich, the gardens today are seasonally expressive and introduce visitors from around the world to a wide variety of garden experiences – from pollinator gardens to seasonal plantings referencing current color trends. Stephen Eich, the project designer, will talk about the firm’s design, its coordination with Related Co.’s horticulturalist, and fulfilling the expectations of urban public retail spaces.

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Rendering of The New York Climate Exchange

Your guide: Peter Lefkovits, Principal, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

Accept this rare invitation to visit SOM’s New York headquarters, where Peter Lefkovits will unveil plans to transform historic Governors Island in New York Harbor into a local and global hub for climate science, sustainable research, and green job training. This New York Climate Exchange partnership with the City of New York, the Trust for Governors Island, Stony Brook University, and others will add new buildings, repurpose historic architecture, and provide 4.5 acres of new outdoor public space. We will also learn about SOM’s recent collaboration with James Corner Field Operations on the Moynihan Connector. A fully accessible pathway for pedestrians, the elevated, timber truss structure above Dyer Avenue and the tree-lined bridge over West 30th Street link Moynihan Train Hall at Penn Station to the verdant gardens and historic structure of the High Line.

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Rooftop Farm at Brooklyn Navy Yard | Photo Credit: Anusha Andrew 

Your guides: Brooklyn Grange

The Brooklyn Grange is a pioneer and national leader in rooftop farming and intensive green roofing practices. The organization promotes sustainable urban living by building green spaces and openly sharing their design practices, hosting educational programming and events, and widening access to locally grown produce in New York City communities. During our private tour of their 1.5-acre farm high atop the Brooklyn Navy Yard, a modern industrial park owned by the City of New York on the site of the former naval shipbuilding facility, we will learn how green roofs reduce stormwater run-off and building energy use and support plants that benefit people and wildlife.

This Garden Future Summit garden tour has been cancelled.

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VIA 57 West | Photo Credit: Alex Fradkin

Your guide: Jeffrey Poor, Principal and Studio Director, Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners, PLLC

The courtyard at VIA 57 West is a private park within a pyramidal residential building on Manhattan’s West Side designed by Danish architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group. The tour will take us on a meandering path through three unique ecosystems, each with its own plants and animals representing a local habitat of the Hudson River Valley. We'll start in a grove of fern and birch, then climb up to a grassy knoll overlooking the river. Starr Whitehouse designed the project and received the 2017 Merit Award for Residential Design from ASLA’s NY Chapter. A LEED-certified professional, Poor’s dedication to the application of sustainability as part of design strategy is palpable in his simple and elemental landscapes.

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Park Slope

Your guide: Jeff Salcito, designer & owner of Brooklyn-based garden design company, Huntergreen

How do you re-wild a city one terrace at a time? Visit two very different private garden spaces in Brooklyn designed to provide single families a daily connection to nature and escape from the city’s bustle: A modern terrace in Park Slope with plantings inspired by the natural landscape of Cape Cod and the entrance to a live/work space in Prospect Heights designed to feel like a wooded trail. Jeff will discuss his design approach and the process of creating natural spaces on a small scale for private homeowners in the city - the rewards and challenges of garden design in New York City.

This Garden Future Summit garden tour has been cancelled.

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We are deeply grateful to the following for their sponsorship of the Garden Futures Summit.

UNDERWRITER
Phil and Shelley Belling
Perfect Earth Project

CHAMPION
Elizabeth Locke 

PARTNER
Eleanor Briggs
Howard Formby Garden Design, Inc.
Marilyn Lummis

FRIEND
Anonymous
Mrs. Coleman P. Burke
Camille Butrus
Diane and Jim Connelly
The Enchanted Edible Forest at Cross Island Farms
Elizabeth Giovine
Marsha L. Greenman
Michelle Griffith
Richard Motika and Jerrie Whitfield
Dr. and Mrs. Zebulon Taintor

CULTURAL SPONSORS

            

The Garden Conservancy educational programs are made possible in part by the Coleman and Susan Burke Distinguished Lecture Fund, Courtnay and Terrence Daniels, the Lenhardt Education Fund, and Susan and William McKinley.

Additional support is provided by The Celia Hegyi Matching Challenge Grant, Mrs. Ritchie Battle, the Antonia Breck Fund, Camille Butrus, Michelle and Perry Griffith, Rise S. Johnson, The Krehbiel Family Foundation, Sleepy Cat Farm Foundation, and John S. Troy, FASLA.