High Line Blog

An aerial photo of our staff and volunteers hard at work between West 18th Street and West 20th Street. Photo by Rick Darke

We have just completed our second week of High Line Spring Cutback.

Spring Cutback is an intense six week-long process in which we cut back the High Line’s wild grasses, perennials, and shrubs to make way for new spring growth. It’s our biggest horticultural task of the year and High Line Gardeners couldn’t do it without the help of a dedicated group of volunteers. Stop by the park and see the transformation underway as spring bulbs and new green growth pop up, and follow us after the jump for an update on this week’s work.

The rail yards section will extend the High Line’s distinctive design vocabulary established south of West 30th Street, evoking the High Line’s history as an active freight rail line, and the unique self-seeded landscape that grew up between the tracks when the trains stopped running in the 1980s.

Last night we unveiled the initial design concepts for the rail yards section of the High Line at a community input meeting at Public School 11 in Chelsea.

More than 400 neighbors, supporters, members, and friends turned out to listen to James Corner and Ric Scofidio, of the High Line Design Team, present their concepts, share their feedback, and ask questions.

The never-before-seen images represent the first vision for the High Line’s unique landscape at the rail yards, which is still overgrown with wildflowers and grasses that grew up between the tracks when the trains stopped running in the 1980s.

Follow us after the jump to learn more and view the designs.

High Line Gardener John Gunderson advises Spring Cutback volunteers on the proper technique for cutting back the grasses during a volunteer orientation session on February 15.

In just a few days, we will begin what has become one of our favorite traditions since the High Line opened as a public park. Spring Cutback – it’s a six-week operation that involves hundreds of hours of hard work to trim back the park’s 100,000 plants to make way for the new growing season.

Spring Cutback is the biggest horticultural undertaking of the year – one that took us more than 1,200 hours to complete last year. With the recent opening of the new section of the High Line, this will be the first spring where we have one mile of parkland to prepare for spring. We can’t do it alone, so we have recruited more than 300 members, supporters, neighbors, and friends from our community to help us complete this monumental task.

The volunteers recently completed their orientation session, where they were introduced to the unique challenges of maintaining a park in the sky. Follow us after the jump for a recap.