The Blooming Bronx

Something for everyone in a refurbished glass garden

Over the burned-out tenements and crowded streets of The Bronx in New York City rises a stately crystal dome filled with subtropical orchids and a grove of graceful palms. A waterfall tumbles from fern-covered volcanic rocks, and the warm, aromatic scent of lemons and oranges fills the air. Last week one of the chilliest, dreariest; mushiest winters in years was refusing to let go. But New Yorkers could celebrate eternal spring sous verre. The New York Botanical Garden Conservatory had just opened after two years of costly restoration.

Inspired by the famed Palm House of England's Royal Botanic Gardens, the conservatory's 90-ft.-high dome and ten interconnecting pavilions cover nearly an acre. Within that glass palace, Horticulturist Carleton Lees has created what he calls "a living museum so that people can see what the real world was like in the past." After all, he explains, "we're more related to these things than we are to the automobile. They live and breathe like we do."

A number of the conservatory's pavilions are inspired by history or geography. The medieval herb garden, for instance, is complete with a bay tree surrounded by soft green turf. In the topiary garden, a hippo, giraffe, elephant and camel--sculpted in glossy English ivy--recall the playful conceits of Pliny's Rome. The American Desert House is studded with 100 kinds of desert plants, including a 20-ft. saguaro cactus. Children may prowl the Greenmuse, a special section with a "please touch" policy to give city kids an acquaintance with the look and feel of real corn and tomato plants. Beneath the conservatory, in the Green-school, they will also be able to study plants and seeds with microscopes.

The conservatory was not always such a garden of delights. It was completed in 1902 with Carnegie, Vanderbilt and Morgan money. But like the neighboring streets in The Bronx, it eventually fell victim to the city's financial woes. By the '60s, hundreds of the 17,000 glass panes had been replaced with plywood. Kids had shattered the crystal casements with bricks and BB guns and carved their initials into the trunks of the cacti. When the steam mains broke down along with the ventilation and heating systems, most of the rarer and more temperamental plants died. By 1971 the garden's board of managers was considering it for demolition.

In 1973, however, the building was declared a city landmark, and restoration began in 1976 under the direction of Architect Edward Larrabee Barnes. Philanthropist Enid A. Haupt funded the entire cost of the renovation with a gift of $5 million. The result is both handsome and ingenious. Even a new underground passageway, which left to its own devices would resemble nothing so much as a subway tunnel, will be put to pleasant use: in artificial light, aquarium plants, mushrooms and mosses will flourish.

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