March 6, 2017
Dear Friends of Untermyer Gardens:
Last week, I wandered over to the area overlooking the bottom of the Vista, normally overgrown with a jungle of hideous Japanese knotweed (mercifully dormant in the winter). This site will someday hold a wildflower garden. Imagine my surprise when I came upon this breathtaking view. Untermyer Gardens continue to delight the eye with unexpected sights.
Dear Friends of Untermyer Gardens:
Last week, I wandered over to the area overlooking the bottom of the Vista, normally overgrown with a jungle of hideous Japanese knotweed (mercifully dormant in the winter). This site will someday hold a wildflower garden. Imagine my surprise when I came upon this breathtaking view. Untermyer Gardens continue to delight the eye with unexpected sights.
Timothy and his crew took advantage of the mild weather two weeks ago and cleared the invasive Norway maples that crowded a particularly magnificent oak. Timothy is very good at spotting these diamonds in the rough, which pretty much symbolizes what we are doing in the gardens, teasing out the dormant greatness from its erstwhile slumber.
Let me remind you of our annual Winter Lecture, to be held on March 30 in New York City. This year it will be "Untermyer Gardens: Its Periods of Glory and Its Sack." It will feature extensive coverage of the magnificent sculptures and spectacular events in the garden during the Untermyer Era, 1917-1940. Many of the artworks were stolen or vandalized after 1946, including a reproduction of the famous Farnese Hercules. The best we can do today is depict our own Hercules, Head Gardener Timothy Tilghman.
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David Carmel, the great great-grandson of Samuel Untermyer, recently discovered this quotation from his great great-grandfather in the New York Times, referring in 1933 to the growing Nazi threat in Germany. It seems prescient in today's climate:
"We owe it not only to our persecuted brethren but to the entire world to now strike in self-defense a blow that will free humanity from a repetition of this incredible outrage. This time the Jews are the victims, next time it may be the Catholics or the Protestants. If we once admit, as is brazenly insisted by the German Government, that such fiendish persecution of the people of one race or creed is an internal domestic affair and not a world concern, how are we to know whose turn will be next?"
Kind regards,
Stephen F. Byrns
President, Untermyer Gardens Conservancy
"We owe it not only to our persecuted brethren but to the entire world to now strike in self-defense a blow that will free humanity from a repetition of this incredible outrage. This time the Jews are the victims, next time it may be the Catholics or the Protestants. If we once admit, as is brazenly insisted by the German Government, that such fiendish persecution of the people of one race or creed is an internal domestic affair and not a world concern, how are we to know whose turn will be next?"
Kind regards,
Stephen F. Byrns
President, Untermyer Gardens Conservancy
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