Time Landscape

Alan Sonfist, an environmental artist born in 1946, conceived Time Landscape in 1965 as a homage to Manhattan's lost forests. Working closely with local communities, he researched New York's botany, geology, and the site's historical records, and in 1978 a 200 × 40 site at La Guardia Place at West Houston Street was transformed into a living forest. Using native trees, shrubs, grasses, flowers, rocks, and earth, the project recreated a pre-colonial forest that once grew there and presented Manhattan's landscape of the early 17th century as experienced by Native Americans. It portrays three stages of indigenous forest growth in New York, from native grasses and flowers to saplings and then mature trees. The southern part includes red cedar trees and hazelnut shrubs with wildflowers, the center contains a small grove of beech trees rescued from a neglected childhood forest in the Bronx amid red cedar, black cherry, and witch hazel, and the northern area forms a mature woodland dominated by oaks with white ash, American elm, and many other species. Sonfist's original vision also sought to restore the rivers and marshlands that once characterized the city and the vegetation that flourished before colonization. On city-owned land first designated for Transportation, the site is now maintained by the Parks department through the Greenstreets program, established in 1986 and reinvigorated in 1994 to convert paved areas into green spaces with Parks and Recreation capital funding, while volunteers help keep the area clean and the plantings healthy.

New York, New York · United States