Accessible Improvement

Dear Friends of Untermyer Gardens,

Twenty-eight assorted large trees are now being installed as a screen between the Temple of Love and our less attractive service area. The mixture of deciduous and evergreen trees will form an attractive grove behind the Byrns Ferns (named after their donor, me!). There is a particularly interesting umbrella pine (Sciadopitys verticillata), which will in time become a most handsome specimen.

Just in time for this summer’s Minnie Untermyer Concert Series, we have installed an important improvement in the Walled Garden: a wheelchair ramp now leads to the northeast loggia and amphitheater. The garden’s steep landscape poses many challenges to accessibility, and over time we intend to make further improvements where possible. Nearby is a new bronze plaque expressing gratitude to Ann Carmel for her leadership as Chair of the Conservancy for six years.

The new fence around the Ornamental Vegetable Garden is nearly complete, and our high school interns are busily planting edging for the geometric beds. We are deploying perennial herbs to be trimmed as a hedge, avoiding the more traditional boxwood, which is now threatened by boxwood blight. Stay tuned for a riotous infill of many varieties of sunflowers later in the summer, a horticultural tribute to Ukraine. There is a large Ukrainian community in Yonkers.

The Temple of Love is looking quite splendid right now. Take a look at our patriotic plant combo near the cascades: Larkspur (blue and white) and butterfly weed (red).

Not to be outdone, the woodland features a huge native stand of bottlebrush buckeye in full bloom.

Kind regards,

​Stephen F. Byrns
President, Untermyer Gardens Conservancy