The first plantings in Gramercy Park

A vision still taking shape

The deed established the idea of an ornamental garden in 1831, but John B. Pine’s 1921 history describes slow progress during its first thirteen years. By the first recorded meeting of the Trustees, on November 15, 1844, the grounds appear to have been fenced and graded. Much of the planting that would give the Park its character still lay ahead.

That meeting took place at the home of James W. Gerard. Changes among the original trustees had brought Gerard, Norman White and William Samuel Johnson into the group. Under Charles Augustus Davis’s presidency, the Trustees began placing specific orders for the garden’s development.

A thousand hedge plants

The Trustees contracted with James Virtue to supply one thousand healthy privet plants, enough to surround the Park inside its fence.

They also ordered one hundred trees. Pine’s list includes horse chestnuts, willows, lindens, maples, catalpas, elms, beech, ash, poplars, sycamores, walnuts and mulberries.

Trees become part of neighborhood memory

Writing in 1921, Pine identified an elm and a willow as survivors of those early plantings. His account includes Seabury Lawrence’s poem imagining what an old willow might remember of children, neighbors and the city beyond the gate. The surviving trees he described stood in the Park of 1921, ninety years after the founding deed.

Pine also notes that the early order for a hedge had been repeated by later trustees.

Ambition meets a budget

The planting program was accompanied by plans for a fountain. A proposal inspired by the fountains before St. Peter’s in Rome carried an estimated cost of $5,300, to be raised through voluntary contributions. The lot owners did not fund it, and the proposal was tabled in April 1846.

A smaller fountain was built in 1848.

Continue through the landscape

The Trustees care for the garden within the fence. Outside it, the Gramercy Park Block Association tends the 41 street trees and their planting beds.