Garden Club of Englewood Maintains National Historic Landmark

February 28, 2024

Projects include herb garden, restoration work at Palisades Interstate Park
Tracy Johnson, Member of the Communications Committee

For over 75 years, the Garden Club of Englewood (GCE) has worked in close partnership with the Palisades Interstate Park (PIP) Commission to maintain the park’s gardens. In 1948, with the help of a GCA Founders Fund grant, GCE created a Sphagnum Bog in the Greenbrook Sanctuary, located on top of the famous Palisades. More recently, the club developed an herb garden at The Kearney House, an original 1760s family homestead and tavern that sits on the Hudson’s shoreline within the park.

After the damage caused by Hurricane Ida in 2021, GCE received a GCA Restoration Initiative Grant. During the restoration work, the PIP Trail Crew asked the club to consider the restoration of the Englewood Grove Garden located along the Hudson River just north of the George Washington Bridge. A perfect example of one good thing leading to another!

Club members planted nearly 1,000 tender native plugs in the garden’s various beds, including four different varieties of ferns, Cranesbill (Geranium maculatum), Foam Flower (Tiarella cordifolia), Wild Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis), two Sedges (Carex amphibola and Carex rosea), Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata) and Creeping Phlox (Phlox stolonifera).  The club plans to plant more native species this spring.

PIP is a National Historic Landmark with 2,500 acres of wild Hudson River shoreline, uplands, and cliffs, across the Hudson River from midtown Manhattan. Theodore Roosevelt called it “emphatically a people’s park.” Today the park is part of a system that receives more than 9 million visitors a year. Truly a people’s park! 

See All News