Grove

Our Plans for the Memorial Hilltop Grove Presented in 2001 to NYC Parks Dept. and Community Board 10 Parks Committee

Taken with a zoom from Hilltop

Dec. 12th 2007. We are happy to announce that the Flowering Hilltop Memorial Grove has been planted. Due to the weather and the work being contracted out we were not sure of the planting days. We were not able to get photos of the planting but we will be bringing some photos to you by Monday to share the experience. Congratulations to the Forestry Depy. of Parks,

HILLTOP PROMENADE:

Back in 2001 I wanted the hilltop Promenade Restored and to remain a Public area with a Memorial Garden to the persons who had lost their lives Sept. 11th (at the site of the Twin Towers).This hilltop is a wonderful place where the air has been cleaned by the East River and comes up the hill to surround a person, (all people not just Golfers, or Soccer Players) while they watch the sun set behind the obviously changed Manhattan Skyline. The cascading stairways add a grace to this hilltop that is unique in a Bronx Park and should be cherished. (check our W. Grove and Views button)

The Grove is basically set up at this point. The fence is being repaired. One evergreen was stolen during the winter near Christmas and replaced by Parks. The area has been seeded and the view is fantastic.. The daffoldils the girlscouts plnated in Oct. are blooming and the surrounding sapling trees are doing fine.

Throggs Neck Feature: Bronx Times Reporter ..... May 3, 2007
9-11 GROVE TO BLOSSOM AT FERRY POINT
By Bret Nolan Collazzi
In a project meant to memorialize the victims of the September 11 terrorist attacks and provide a tranquil spot for reflection, the Parks Department will plant a grove of 20 to 30 white flowering redbud trees at the southern tip of Ferry Point Park West later this spring. (FALL)
A separate project will add nearly 3,000 saplings to the park later in the year, one to commemorate each victim of the attacks. That project is being funded by a donation from Prince Albert II of Monaco and carried out through the Parks Department.
The grove, located at a crescent-shaped outlook near the Whitestone Bridge , is the last of five(FOUR) in the city — one in each borough (that faces the — and follows a search by the Parks Department for green spaces that overlook Ground Zero. On a clear day, Ferry Point Park has a direct view of downtown Manhattan .
“Soon after September 11, people were really looking for places to grieve and come together as a community and they used their parks a lot,” said Jennifer Greenfeld, director of the New York Tree Trust, the Parks division overseeing the project. “We realized there was something we could do to give people a place to reflect.”
The memorial sites are called “viewshed groves,” a play on the term “watershed,” the spot where multiple streams empty into one body of water, Greenfeld said. In the case of the memorials, the various groves gaze upon a single spot: the former site of the World Trade Center and the future site of the Freedom Tower .
Typical trees in the grove will stand 10 to 20 feet and create a bold white blossom unlike any other in the mostly green park. A small plaque will explain the project and pay tribute to the victims, she said.
Community Board 10's Parks Committee announced at the last board meeting on April 19 that it had sent a letter to Greenfeld and the grove's designer to thank them for an earlier presentation on the project.
Supporters of Ferry Point Park West also said they are grateful for the project. In fact, the city's search for grove sites perfectly coincided with an independent campaign by the Ferry Point Park West Coalition to create a 9/11 memorial at the park.
“We had requested that since we have a beautiful view of the skyline and we were affected in Throggs Neck very badly as far as the firemen and the police that we lost, we felt that this would be a nice area for a memorial,” said Dorothea Poggi, co-founder of the coalition with --------.
In addition to the sentimental value of the grove, Poggi said the memorial would attract visitors to a rarely used but beautiful part of the park and absorb some of the noise from the bridge.
“It will make the whole area more tranquil,” she said.
The second 9/11-related planting at Ferry Point will add several thousand small flowering saplings in all areas of the park, especially in between athletic fields, around designated picnic areas and near the central parking lot.
“The saplings will create a flowering edge to some of the wild places in the park,” Greenfeld said.
The two planting projects join about $6 million in planned improvements to Ferry Point Park West, including a new comfort station with restrooms and a concession stand.
Funds for those upgrades come from the $220 million in park-improvement funds tied to the construction of a water filtration plant in Van Cortlandt Park. A master plan for the park is expected sometime this summer.

2008 brought about hundreds of volunteers giving hours of their time to paint the bbq tables on the South Hillside and plant hundreds of daffodils between the newly planted "viewshed grove" trees on the Southern Hilltop Grove.