Sabbatical Blog 1: New York - A Hidden Garden

 Ray Anglesea is sharing his blog from his recent sabbatical. This first installment is labelled "New York: April 2014". Ray promises further postings each week.

Tucked away in the shady recesses of New York’s financial district is a small, understated garden. It took a while for me to find it amongst the dense architecture of Lower Manhattan, but when I did, what a joy. No bigger than an average size British allotment the garden is called The Queen Elizabeth II September 11th Garden; the garden’s namesake together with the Dean of Westminster Abbey made a visit to the garden on July 6th, 2010. Made to order by the British Memorial Garden Trust it was given to the City of New York in memory of British and Commonwealth citizens who lost their lives during the attacks of September 11th 2001 and in the ensuing wars.

Before finding the garden I had been to a communion service (Easter 1) at one of the oldest church’s in Manhatten, St Paul’s Chapel (1766), a Georgian chapel modelled on St Martin in the Field, London. St Paul’s remained miraculous unharmed church during the 9/11 attack; it served as a place of rest and refuge for recovery workers at the World Trade Centre. For eight months, hundreds of volunteers worked 12-hour shifts around the clock, serving meals, making beds, counseling and praying with fire fighters, construction workers, police and others. The church survived without even a broken window.

After communion I visited the World Trade Centre Memorial Garden, a stone’s throw away from the chapel. The Memorial Garden features two massive square waterfall pools that are set within the footprints of the Twin Towers, and bear the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed in the 9/11 attacks and the 1993 bombing of the North Tower. A Memorial Museum stands in between the two fountains. The plaza surrounding the fountains and museum is filled with hundreds of oak trees. One tree, however, is different: a single pear tree stands out from the rest. This Survivor Tree was saved from the original World Trade Centre site after the attacks and nursed back to health. It now stands proudly at the plaza once more, and has even bloomed again. Visitors gather here just to touch the bark of the “miracle tree”, which has inspired hope and stands as a vision of rebirth. And there on the north west corner of the new World Trade Complex stands Freedom Tower, a glass 104 storey super-tall structure, its spire allows the building to reach a symbolic height of 1,776 feet (541m), a reference to the year of the United States Declaration of Independence.

In comparison to the calm and beauty of the World Trade Memorial Garden the English Garden which I visited later in the day and dedicated to the memory of the 67 British victims of the terrorist attack is a very practical walk-through “living” garden. Situated in Hanover Square the rich tradition of English gardens meets the hard urban American skyscraper landscape. New York based garden designers Lynden Miller and Ronda Brands worked with the English landscape designers Julian and Isabel Bannerman to create an enduring garden for all seasons, with plants that capture the spirit of an English garden. The park’s footprint is the shape of the British Isles; wrapping around the island is a ribbon of Morayshire sandstone. This ribbon of stone is inscribed from north to south with the shires of the British Isles, County Durham is named and my home Welsh County (in Welsh) Sir y Fflint. A large, rounded “Braemar’ stone, from a riverbed near the HM The Queen’s home in Balmoral, sits at the south end of the garden - in the spirit of a cairn.  

Four evergreen hollies derived from an English holly parent, stand as entry pillars at the north and south ends of the garden. They are linked to the vertical spires of other holly species by a winding row of 67 evergreen shrubs with foliage that turns red and orange in the colder months, each signifying one of the 67 British victims. Along the backs of the serpentine benches - made of white Portland stone quarried in southern England and carved in Northern Ireland - are rounded yew shrubs, an iconic feature of English churchyards, embodying I imagine the natural link between the living and the dead. These plants are the backbone of the garden, perhaps suggesting the narrative that led to its making.

Nestled within the garden borders are a range of herbaceous and woody flowering plants that recall the plant palette of an English garden, ranging from the tiny blue flower of the Siberian bugloss and the pink blossom of pig squeak to a host of hydrangeas, spireas, rhododendrons and azaleas; my favourite the flowering lady’s mantle often found in English gardens, bears lime-green florets in early summer. At the southern reach of the planting beds - rises a yellow magnolia tree, fortuitously called Magnolia “Elizabeth.’ The Magnolia was planted by Prince Harry on May 29, 2009. With fragrant yellow flowers, it is an early bloomer, catching the first rays of spring light as the sun rises over the tops of the skyscrapers and into the garden (the bar opposite the magnolia tree is called the Prince Harry!). The four national flowers of the British Isles, a rose for England, daffodil for Wales, thistle for Scotland and flax for Northern Ireland are embossed on the finials that top the Eastern Memorial Fence.

As I sat in the garden in the warm April sunshine I remembered the 67 people who had lost their lives in a reckless act of evil. Remembering, after all, is at the heart of the gospel, “remember me” are some of the last recorded words of Jesus. When we remember we bring out of the past and into the present those people whom we have loved and lost; those whom we still love, yet see no longer; those to whom we owe a debt, yet cannot repay – or thank enough. I remembered such people that I knew. One act of remembering it seems to me is making sure we don’t forget such people and in particular the people for whom this garden was designed and created. In an act of creativity this garden symbolises another act of remembering - an attempt to put something together that has come apart or has become dismembered. Remembrance is not only an act that brings memories of the past to the present, an act to remember individuals, a society, a country or a nation, it is can also be an invitation to remake something that has been broken. By remembering we are inviting God to re-shape not only our environment but also our lives, so that our world and our lives can be re-fashioned, re-made and re-deemed. Gardens it seems to me help in this process, they help to signify the possibility of a new and better created world. Gardens can be read like letters, each flower, shrub or stone capturing a part of a human story, a human individual. Here amongst the quarried stone and plantings, sent from the English to the Americans in a time of mutual loss, this garden can be read and re-read in the days after, remembering loved ones, re-creating bonds of peace and providing a space for healing.

Ray Anglesea - April 2014