New York, New York: Part One

An album of the High Line and how it made me feel. Winter 2024

The High Line is an oasis of the living world, a river of warmth and texture that runs through the cold giants of steel it interrupts and reminds, what was here first.

Good day readers,

When we left New York close to Christmas Eve it was minus 8 and snow covered the rooftops of the Art Deco stone buildings near our hotel and the umbrellas of hotdog vendors, it was shoved up along the sides of streets and Central Park had become a glittering winter wonderland on a sunny December morning. We felt we’d woken onto the set of some Christmas classic and we thanked one of our most favourite cities for all the magical moments that she’d offered us on Hugo and my second trip to see her but this time with Nes.

Hugo and I first came to New York in 2011 when we had been together only a few years, we were working corporate roles in inner city Sydney and lived in a nearby shoebox studio in order to be walking distance to work. The dollar was on par and we had a lot of it as we were yet to have any real responsibilities. There was no mortgage yet, no debt (beyond HECS) and no children, so we spent two weeks on the end of spring exploring the boroughs and their parks, the bars and restaurants into the wee hours, riding the subways with not a care and in far less practical footwear than we donned this time, older and less concerned with fashion and more concerned with being able to keep up with a 5 year old who seemed to be feeding off the pulsing energy of a city she took to like a duck to water.

Back then, Nes was but a dream whispered in the great rooms of the Natural History Museum, of how, if we ever had any, we’d bring our kids back here, the High Line was still being built in sections and the impact it would have on this city was yet to be felt and I wouldn’t have ever stopped to think about travelling to the Bronx to visit the New York Botanical Gardens. In fact, I wouldn’t have known either of these places even existed but we marvelled at the great foresight it took to have built a green space the size of Central Park slap bang in the centre of a city that would evolve to become as densely populated as it did and we retreated to it many times as the locals did, after the stone and steel and asphalt trapped the heat of an approaching summer and beamed it back out onto the streets thick with souls.

She put her spell on us then, New York and we vowed to return as soon we could but it would take 14 years, a marriage proposal (that incidentally took place on our arrival home), a complete lifestyle change from city slickers to country homebodies, a full farmhouse and garden reno, a career change into the world of plants, offspring, another interstate move and a second farmhouse and garden, before we’d be back……a lot more tired but no less enthusiastic to see her and share her with Nes. So, by the time we stepped foot on her now slippery wintry pavements once again, we had changed and what we wanted to see, had to.

Below is my experience of these places, the first being the High Line, a garden I have dreamed of visiting for as many years as I have been a designer and a horticulturist. I think it is clear from reading this that I was deeply moved by this garden off the ground and where and how it sits in the world. It is also my first experience of being within the garden of my horticultural and garden design hero, Piet Oudolf. I hope you enjoy my images and reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Pip xo

Nes and I seated in a garden planted not much unlike parts of our own would look in winter but high above the thrumming streets of New York City, a meadow of sorts surrounded by a forest of stone and steel.