The Torreya Tree: Foreign Territory
Posted in Gardens and Collections on March 27 2013, by Matt Newman
After months of dedicated effort, the NYBG‘s Native Plant Garden is scheduled for a grand reopening in May of 2013. Until then, we’ll occasionally touch on the plants, landscapes, and landmark features that have gone into this classic space. Visit the official page for more information.
With the Native Plant Garden opening in May, it seemed only right to highlight some of the plants and trees that have gone into its reimagining. I kicked things off a while back with the Spiranthes orchids growing here and there about the space. This time around, I thought I’d go in a different direction–and highlight the only non-natives to be found in the Native Plant Garden. Stately and full with spiraled needles, the decades-old Torreya trees near the center of the garden are the only explicit outsiders to have kept their citizenship during the landscape’s sweeping revision. But before you throw your arms up in a huff of indignation, hear me out!
When Oehme von Sweden first envisioned the new Native Plant Garden’s layout, the Torreyas–Japanese natives, originally–were some of the more notable residents popping up in discussions. They stood three abreast, dense and squat, their thick evergreen needles shadowing what the designers pegged as the center of the new landscape. The broad path of the water feature would brush right past them on its way through the middle of the garden, so it’s not as though these conifers were inconspicuous. And that left a question: what would people think, seeing foreign growth in a native sanctuary?