For many neighbors, Amando Flores is a familiar face among the flowers: pruning, planting, pausing for a wave. When the Gramercy Park Block Association sat down with him in May 2025, the conversation went well beyond gardening. He spoke about the father who brought him into Gramercy’s orbit, the wife he first knew as a child, and the children he has watched grow up on both sides of the Park fence.
His story begins with roses.
The work began long before Gramercy
Amando grew up in Puebla, Mexico. In his 2016 interview, he recalled taking his first job at fifteen, working with roses in a nearby town known as the “Town of the Flowers.”
His father, Alberto, spent more than thirty years as superintendent at 8 Gramercy Park South. Amando began helping him when he was old enough. “That’s how I got to know the Park,” he said. “It was just part of our life.”
He remembered a much less intensively gardened landscape in the early 1990s, with only a few shrubs. When the Trustees offered him a full-time position, he accepted eagerly. The chance to spend each working day outdoors, among plants, was exactly what he wanted.
“They saw something in me and gave me the chance to do what I love every single day,” he said of the Trustees. “I will always be grateful for that.”
A chance to learn, and a reason to stay
In 1996, when Amando was twenty-six, a Trustee offered to pay for horticultural classes if he would commit to staying in the Park. He studied at Brooklyn Botanic Garden and the Nature Conservancy. “It was a dream come true,” he said.
That appetite for learning has stayed with him. Earlier in 2025, Bartlett, the Park’s arborist, sponsored a visit to its research and learning center in North Carolina. He returned with new ideas for caring for the Park’s trees.
Some of his working relationships span decades. He first knew Mike Boag of Boag Landscaping as a youngster working alongside his father and brothers; by the time of the interview, Mike was running the company. “Some of these people, they’re like family,” Amando said.
The Trustees oversee the Park’s care, working with its caretakers and specialist contractors. For Amando, those arrangements are also personal: people who taught him, trusted him and have worked beside him season after season.
Every flower, someone in mind
Amando and his wife first met as children in Mexico. “I think I had a crush on her even then,” he said, laughing. Years later, they both came to New York, met again and made a life together.
“She’s my best friend,” he said. She sometimes visited the Park in spring to see the flowers. “Every flower I plant, I think of her.”
They raised two sons: Albert, named after Amando’s father, and Jeovanny. At the time of the interview, Albert worked in a pharmacy and Jeovanny was an attorney on Wall Street. Amando’s pride in them came with an immediate tribute to his wife: “She made them the men they are.”
He also spoke tenderly about Roury, his rescued cocker spaniel, who had recently died. After work, they had walked for hours through Brooklyn, exploring different neighborhoods. In May 2025, Amando was visiting kennels, hoping to find another rescue dog who needed a home. “There are so many out there who just need a chance,” he said. Roury, he added, would always be “my boy.”
Watching the children come back
After more than thirty years in the Park, Amando has watched children grow into adults and return with children of their own. He still remembers some of those parents as seven- or eight-year-olds.
“This Park is their front garden. I feel a responsibility to make it beautiful for them, to keep it a place they want to bring their kids and grandkids.”— Amando Flores
Those long relationships make loss the hardest part of his work. “Flowers and trees come back. But people don’t,” he said. Passing the bench where Michael Osheowitz used to sit still brought back memories of the man who had given him a job when he needed one. “You don’t forget that.”
A birthday in the Park
In June 2024, neighbors gathered in the Park to celebrate Amando’s birthday. There were green and white balloons, a table of cakes and pastries, and framed photographs of the garden on display. These photographs from Sean Brady’s collection show Amando taking a turn as the guest of honor in the place he cares for every day.
“There’s beauty everywhere here”
Ask Amando for his favorite spot in the Park and the answer is whichever place he happens to be standing. Ask him to choose a tree or flower and he resists altogether. He loves the ancient elm, but choosing among the plants feels, he said, like choosing a favorite child.
His favorite season is less predictable. Spring brings new life, summer its green abundance, autumn its colors. Yet he chose winter: the cold and quiet remind him of home.
He notices the garden through a camera, too. His flower photographs, shared in the Block Association’s newsletters, let neighbors see individual blossoms through the eyes of the person tending them.
Even on vacation, he told us, the Park is on his mind. After three decades, his ambition was wonderfully straightforward: “I just want to keep learning. Every day in the Park teaches me something new.”
The original profile
Adapted from the Block Association’s newsletter, “Amando Flores: The Heart Behind the Garden Gate,” May 27, 2025.
Earlier profiles: the thirtieth-anniversary tribute, August 2024; August 2016; and neighbors’ messages of thanks, August 2016.