*Winter Break Re-Air* The New Yorkers Travel the High Line! -With Richard Hayden

0:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to The New Yorkers, a podcast by New York City Cop. I'm your host, Kelly Kopp, published photographer, New York City tour business owner, real estate content creator, podcaster, and above all else, a New Yorker. Ladies and gentlemen, the next book was found. Trace is now high. Stand clear of the closing doors, please.

0:36This is a time square.

0:54With me today, I have Richard Hayden. He is the Senior Director of Horticulture at the Highline and overall nature lover and plant nerd. But above all else, he is a New Yorker. Hey, Richard, welcome to the show. How are you today? I'm great, Kelly. I'm so excited to be here and talking to you today. I'm so excited to have you here today, too. I love the Highline. I'm there all the time. I do tours on the Highline. A lot of people that are listening have done tours with me on the Highline, and they themselves have gone to the Highline in general. Today's guest, Richard, has one of the most extraordinary jobs in New York City, everyone.

1:32He brings wild beauty to one of the most urban landscapes in the world. Richard Hayden is the Senior Director of Horticulture at the High Line, the stunning elevated park that has redefined what public green space can look and feel like. From managing seasonal plantings to navigating the challenges of climate, concrete, Richard's work is where nature meets design and where plants tell a story right in the heart of Manhattan. I'm super excited to have you here, Richard, today. Tell us about you. Kelly, it's great to be here with you today. And that was a great introduction of the Highline. It really is an amazing little sliver of green through the west side of Manhattan.

2:10So I've been at the Highline for a little over three years. I did all my horticulture work actually in Los Angeles on the west coast. But when I saw this job opportunity pop up, and I think the Highline is probably the most important public garden of the 21st century, It changed the way we think about landscapes, the idea that gardens can be for all four seasons. And obviously the fact that it's so incredibly famous gave us an opportunity to really dive into incredible gardens and also to represent how important those gardens are to the public. Wow. What did you do before you came to New York City?

2:48What led you to the High Line? Right. Good question. So, um, well, I lived in New York originally out of college. I moved to New York City. What neighborhood? I've been, I've been obsessed with New York since I was like little. I was drawing pictures of the New York skyline in like sixth grade. And when I first moved here, I lived in Chelsea. I lived on 21st between 8th and 9th. And I never knew the Highland was there. You know what? We just, you know, you didn't notice it. It was just this piece of, you would, you know, you'd drive underneath it or whatever, but you didn't know it was there. And what year was this, Richard?

3:21This was in the early 80s. Yeah, so it was just like this broken down, in a sense, dilapidated space. Well, at that point, you didn't really go much west of 10th Avenue. Oh, that's true. You know? And then I moved to Chicago for a little while. I studied improv at Second City. Really? Which makes it really easy for me to do these podcasts because I can just chat. I had no idea. Yeah. I was trying to dig up some stuff on you. I was actually in... I studied theater and film in college. So I had this background and then I moved back to New York in the late eighties. Um, and I worked in film production doing commercial films.

3:57I always say, if you can produce a television commercial, that's like a half a million dollar commercial on location in New York city. Yep. I can do anything. You know what I mean? Uh, and so then I moved to Los Angeles and got into horticulture and became a landscape designer for like 20 years and, um, kind of got tired of having clients and got into public horticulture at the Natural History Museum. The one in Los Angeles, they started this wonderful habitat garden and I was the head gardener there and really got into the idea of representing what nature can bring to the public, especially the urban public that doesn't really have access to nature.

4:35And then when I saw this, I just jumped at the opportunity to come back to New York, the city I love. And so you started right away as senior horticulturist, did I say it right? Yeah, horticulturist. Senior, yeah, I started actually as the director and then they were so happy with my work a year and a half and they made me the senior. So you have this, in my opinion, this amazing green thumb, you know, that most of us don't have because here you are, that's quite an accomplish here in New York City. One of the best, I think, best and most well-known parks in the world. Right. The New York Times actually recently, about six weeks ago, the style section came out with an article called The 25 Most Important Gardens to See in the World.

5:25Right. And the Highline was one of those. And it's inspired other parks around the world, I assume. Yeah. We actually have a program called the Highline Network that works with, I think, 47 different high line, sorry, infrastructure reuse projects around North America. So we're working to kind of help bring what we've learned about fundraising and community engagement and horticulture to other projects. Wow. And so what inspires you in the morning when you get up? What are you thinking? What are you thinking? Do you have these projects all on the line? Okay, so truthfully, what inspires me every morning is Central Park.

6:03I start my day every morning in Central Park I have a dog I live on the west side just off the park and I'm in the park for my little nature walk every morning for like a half an hour and then I get up and go to work and I often will commute down the high line on my way to the office our office is down next to the Whitney Museum at the south end and I meet with all my staff as we're walking down and checking in and so I start I start in nature. I start in the garden. I always, I always said I'm, my favorite thing to do is like hike and to be, you know, be out in nature. Right. And I always said that I wanted to live somewhere where I could walk out my front door with my dog and he could have an off leash dog walk and I could check out the nature.

6:49I just didn't realize I was going to move to New York city and live in the middle of the biggest city in the country in order to achieve that. Exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Central Park is a, is a amazing inspiration. I completely understand that. It's one of the best parks in the world too, aside from the Highline. I'd say the Highline and Central Park are the two top parks I'm in New York City. Yeah. You know, I walk most of the time. Yeah. I love them both. It's amazing. But what first sparked your love of plants and landscapes? You know, I was always a gardener as a kid. I had, um, when I was little, we, I lived in a house that my great-great-grandfather had built.

7:27And my grandmother lived on one side and my great aunt lived on the other in this little town in the middle of Michigan. And so everybody was into gardening. So I would spend a lot of time with them out in the garden. We had a cherry tree picking cherries. And so I'd always had this experience, you know, kind of gardening. And it was just always there. And when I moved to LA to become a famous film producer, the universe had other ideas, right? and uh it was actually during the rodney king riots i got sent home from work and and you know there was ash falling down and the whole city was on fire and i was like if the they're going to burn the city down i'm going to plant a garden oh and it was that action that got me going and then somebody said well i could use a little help and so i helped out a friend and then they recommended me and the next thing you know i went back to school at ucla and and really just got into the passion of growing plants.

8:22Wow. That's fascinating. It's interesting that you said the universe had different plans for you because you're one of the only people I've ever met that has said that because I kind of feel that way here, that New York City did that for me too. You know, so it's interesting to, we have a plan, but sometimes the universe jumps in and says, no, this is what I want you to do. Right. And it's interesting, I'll be honest with you, a lot of my staff and a lot of people in horticulture come to it as a second career. Right. Right. Like I have, um, one of my staff members is a, a reformed lawyer and some of them have worked in finance and, and high school teachers, and they just have such a love of gardening that they've gone back to school.

9:04And, and now we're just trying to really with the Highline, we have interns that we're working with some high school folks trying to inspire the next generation to see if we can't get people really, you know, in a pipeline for, um, creating these, because these kinds of gardens take a lot of maintenance. They do. They take a lot of skill and kind of stewarding the evolution of what they're going to be. I'm glad you brought that up. So what is the maintenance of the High Line? Is there a structure? You know, how does this work? Yeah, that's a good question. So the interesting thing, when they designed the High Line, our garden designer is this Dutch nurseryman and designer named Pete Audolf.

9:41And Pete kind of is the poster child for the naturalistic garden world. He's really designed these gardens that, They don't imitate nature, but they evoke nature. And he likes to say that he's creating an emotional experience for people as they walk through the High Line. And so there's this framework of the High Line of these ecological habitats, like you're in a woodland, or you're in a grassland, or we even have a wetland bed, or you're in the woodland edge, the shrub thicket. And so because the High Line is about a mile and a half long, you go through these different garden styles that give you these different emotional experiences.

10:19In the grassland, it's wide open. The grasses are shorter. They're swaying in the breeze. And then you go into the woodland and you feel cooler and more encompassed. And so as the people that take care of that, we have to kind of manage the evolution, right? The trees are growing. The grasses, you know, some perennials only live a certain amount of years. And I always say, if you want to be a successful plant on the high line, you have to have a lot of will to grow. And we have to manage that because we have plants that want to kind of, you know, will take over. So we do a lot of editing. We call it curating.

10:55We curate this plant. We take out a little bit of this. We add a little bit of that. We trim the trees every couple of years. And the biggest compliment that we hear is, oh, you're so lucky. It's so natural. It must just grow this way. And in reality, I have a staff of 11 full-time horticulturists taking care of an individual zone. and we have three seasonal gardeners that help us. And so it really, it takes a lot of effort. Richard, how did the High Line become the High Line? You know. What was it before it was the High Line? Well, exactly. And I like to say, I like to start this conversation by saying everybody loves a redemption story, right?

11:36Right. And so the High Line was this amazing piece of American infrastructure that was built, started in 1934. So in the middle of the depression, and they decided it was so important to get the trains up off of 10th Avenue because they'd been running for 50 years. The trains had been running up the middle of 10th Avenue. Right. And over 400 people had been killed in train accidents. I did hear about that. Yeah. They used to call 10th Avenue death Avenue. Yeah. Yeah. And didn't they, didn't they, um, also bring in what was called like the West side, the West side cowboys. Yeah. They would have a, they would have a man on a horse going in front of the trains, trying to get people out of the way.

12:14And so the community finally got organized enough and, uh, they built in the middle of the depression, this amazing piece of two and a half mile long infrastructure to lift two freight trains passing side by side 30 feet in the air. And so it was amazing. It brought all of the produce, the meat, you know, the National Biscuit Company was making Oreo cookies. All of that came in by train. And so it was a really amazing thing that ran until 1981 was the last train that ran on the Highline because the highway system and trucks became much more efficient. And so from 1981 to 1999, the Highline set fallow and, you know, nature abhors a vacuum.

13:02So, you know, the railroad ties disintegrated and created a little bit of soil and the birds came along and deposited a few seeds and things blew in. And the next thing you know, there was this magic garden that popped up and it was this ribbon of green, this incredible garden that kind of, not many people were able to see unless you lived along the High Line or you snuck up there. Yeah. It wasn't a very desirable area at that time. No. Yeah. And so there were some community meetings, almost a mile of it was torn down during the Giuliani administration. And at the end of the Giuliani administration, they made, um, they were going out to the community to see what might happen.

13:44And our two founders, Josh David and Robert Hammond met and said, well, let's see if we can save it and turn it into a park. And that's how the Friends of the Highline was born in 1999. Wow. So it's, how old is the Highline? 26 years, 26 years since Friends of the Highline. And then it opened, uh, 16 years ago in 2009. Oh, wow. When I first moved here, um, is when you, you started the Hudson Yards, um, part of the High Line. Oh yeah. So I remember it was built from, where's the start of 14? A Gantivort. So like three or four blocks below 14. And then up to obviously 34th area, you know, which is now Hudson Yards, but it stopped there and it was just that old trail, you know, uh, uh train yard is that correct yeah yeah western and i remember i stayed at the at the um what's it called um i stayed at the the apartment building right there it was the only one the the eo i forget what it's called um but anyway there was the only apartment building standing there and i watched the uh them add the uh hudson yards on right there and it was amazing to watch it being built into what it is today.

15:00It's interesting to see the pictures of that section of the Highland at 30th Street when it was first installed. Yeah. And then seven years later, you know, eight or 10, 30 plus story buildings are just popping everywhere. Yeah. It's the own building. I don't know if you know which one is the own building. Oh yeah, the own building. It was the only, only high rise there. And then I saw the other ones come up and it's, it's truly incredible what they've done, what you guys have done with it. Well, and the design team originally, this is the cool thing, is that they were very focused on making the idea that the rail had always been there part of the design of the park.

15:35So they took all of the rails and numbered them, took them away. Oh, wow. And then, you know, the soil was contaminated because of the, there was asbestos in the brake pads. Oh, yeah. There was lead paint. So there was a tremendous remediation project. I would have never thought about this. They came in and poured a new shallow 18 inch deep, um, kind of, uh, almost like a pool, put in some drains, put the soil back in, put the rails back in and then created the gardens around that and had these aspects of the linear aspect kind of worked into the way the benches rise up and some of those design elements to, to make it really kind of recall the, the rail tracks that had always been there.

16:18And I love it because it's almost subtle too, because I'll point the railways out sometimes and people haven't seen them, you know, I'm like, and they're fascinated. And then I tell them about the history from what my little bit of history, I know of the Highline and people love it. You know, it's such a creative and smart idea. And it has really, truly inspired infrastructure reuse projects around the world. I agree. I agree. And also the part that joins now the West, what's that called? That area where the, past the pigeon, where they put that bridge. Oh, the Moynihan Connector. Yeah, I like that.

16:56That's nice. Wasn't that an amazing idea? So the High Line ended at 10th Avenue and 30th Street. And they had this idea to create a brand new construction walkway to connect over to Manhattan West so that you could go literally across the street at 9th Avenue from the Moynihan Train Hall. So smart. And you could roll a roller bag all the way down to the West Village without ever going down the street level. I walk from Moynihan Train Hall, especially the food hall right there. I'll eat there sometimes. And I walk right out across, what is that, 9th Avenue, to the connector, past the pigeon. You know, I love it.

17:32It's my commute many days. I mean, I'll get off the A train right there, too, at Moynihan Train Hall, and then walk through it and up to the connector. And it's so easy. I think that's brilliant. Yeah, it's a great way to start your day. You cut through the Moynihan, which is this amazing, another infrastructure reuse. It used to be a postal building and now it's a train hall and there's all that food in there. It's one of my favorite food courts, actually. I say it all the time. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's beautiful, my friend. You guys, you have done an amazing job. Thank you. And your team. I love it.

18:04Like I said, I think I walk it at least once or twice a week. Oh, wow. You know, and I actually do tours there too, but by myself. Yeah, definitely. Well, when I was there a couple of weeks ago for the kickoff of the summer on the High Line, Yeah, it was great to meet you. Yeah, it was great to meet you too. And I'm so happy you're here because of that. Yeah. And one of the gardeners, you know, took us, took a few of us, you know, here and there to explain what the High Line is and about the plants and the trees. And just that little bit of time, I learned so much because the High Line is 30 feet above ground and then the root system have hardly any room to work, right?

18:43That's right. There's primarily 18 inches of soil. 18 inches? 18 inches of soil. So, and then you have flowers and shrubs and trees all kind of mingled together, correct? Yeah. And the root system. 30 foot tall oak trees and birch trees growing in 18 inches of soil. That's fascinating. And the Highline is complex in this planting. So not only are there 30 foot tall birch trees, but underneath that are flowering dogwoods or red buds or these, you know, kind of spring flowering trees. And then below that is this complex layer of grasses and perennials and ferns that kind to make up a tapestry of ground cover.

19:19And that's, you know, I think why the Highline is so beloved is because there is this incredible complexity of plants that look very natural. And to get all of that to be happy in 18 inches of soil where it can be hot, we're a bridge, right? So it's hot air on top and hot air underneath and the weather like we're having now or cold air in the winter. So if you want to know the kind of plants you should be planting in the face of climate change, come to the high line because the plants on the high line are so resilient. They really know how to kind of survive and they're going to have the will to kind of really make do with kind of the climate chaos that may be coming.

19:58I was specifically going to ask you about climate change and if the plants are affected, but they've learned to adapt in a sense. Yeah. And, you know, we do make substitutions. Like Pete comes every couple of years. In fact, he's doing a project in Philadelphia right now. So he's been through New York a couple of times this year already. And, uh, he gives us a lot of feedback and tells us, so this is working. We got some new plants when he was here last October, we got 12 new plants that we're trying on the Highline. So if people have been coming to the Highline and they think it continues to look the same, they should come back in the fall after our plants have had a chance to grow in.

20:35There's some really fun new things to look at. Do you have a favorite plant or tree or anything like that? You know, I get asked that question a lot and it depends on the season. Yeah. Um, right now, I think my favorite thing is this plant that's called Culver's root. It's a North American perennial. It's kind of from the prairie and it has, um, these beautiful kind of world leaves, but it's very kind of tall, spiky flowers that kind of look like a turkey foot and the bees love it. But you know, what makes it such a great plant for, uh, the way Pete out off designs is that it looks great in all the seasons.

21:14so that flower ages to this wonderful rusty chocolate brown and then it stays up all winter. So yeah, you get this beautiful kind of structure. It's a great bee plant. And Pete calls those the skeletons, the seed skeletons. Oh, wow. And that's one of the things about his design is that he's designing for the winter garden, that he wants everyone to understand the beauty of decay, that we can see a plant isn't worth growing unless it looks good dead, he likes to say. And that really changed the way we do horticulture. You know, people were, you know, putting their gardens to bed in September or October.

21:53And Pete said, no, let's, so the grasses stay up and there's fall color and, you know, there's seed heads that look great with a little snow dusting on them. And so it really extends the ability to be in the garden and see the beauty of it. That day of the summer event that morning too, when I was walking on the High Line, I saw these huge magnolia blossoms I've never seen there was one kind of towards the north end um can't really think of what street it would be it's like 26th yeah right around there and it was literally on top of the high line to the left of what would be that building with those amazing fire escapes that go up the side of the building yeah that's and but I was actually touched I was touching it because people were walking under it and didn't see it but they saw me you know taking a picture of it and people are you know gasping it was like the size of honestly it's been the second most asked question on the High Line is about that's called the big leaf magnolia oh is that yeah really and it's this big white saucer flower that's probably about 12 inches across it's huge I had never seen it and they can be they can sometimes smell sweet but they're also pollinated by beetles in their native habitat so beetles don't need sweet smells to find them right but it it's and the leaves it's big leaf magnolia.

23:12So the leaves look tropical. Yeah, they do. And it's actually a plant native to, you know, like Virginia, kind of in the middle of the mid-Atlantic. It's fascinating. And that was... Yeah, you get to walk on the flyover, that kind of elevated, kind of canopy walk. So you get really up close and personal with those flowers and those leaves. It's a beauty. I was like, I'd never seen it. And I was surprised and just blowed away by its beauty. And the smell. The smell was, to me, I thought it was really... really, um, fragrant. It was, um, do you want to know what the first most asked question on the Highline is?

23:46What is? How do you get to Chelsea Market? Oh, we get that a lot. Yeah. But you know, Chelsea Market's a really cool place and we're happy to have that next to the Highline as well. So do you just tell them to go down the stairs? You go down at 16th or at 14th Street. Exactly. So everybody does how you get to the Highline and it's on 16th up the Highline. Do you have a favorite area on the Highline that you like to walk? Wow. You know, for me, I think, depending on the season, and hopefully my staff isn't listening, because it's like having a favorite child. And I don't want them to think I'm favoring one over the other.

24:19But the Gansevoort Woodland, which is the very south end of the High Line, we call it our front porch, because our headquarters is right there near the Whitney Museum. And it's the birches, right? These beautiful forest of gray birch trees, which is a tree that was native to New York City. it was originally known to be growing right here where we live oh wow and it's just a tough plant um and it reminds me of my childhood in michigan running around the woods seeing the amazing you know birch forest it's just a really lush environment on the highline the gansport woodland so i think that's kind of my favorite that's a pretty area the whole thing is the whole highline is beautiful from from top to bottom and one of my favorite views too with all the um the plants and the flowers and everything and the buildings too, is when you're kind of standing, you can help me with the street probably.

25:13I think it's where like cook shop is, where that entrance is. Yeah, it's 20th Street. Is that 20th? Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. And all the cars are kind of on that big old vending machine, I call it. Yes. You know, but if you look south and then you see all the beautiful lush greenery along the sidewalks. The Chelsea Grasslands. Is that the Chelsea Grasslands? Yeah. I think that's, I call it the most iconic section of the Highland. Oh yeah. Because it's, it's based kind of on what we call a, a tall grass, North American prairie. So lots of flowering perennials, um, you know, this little, um, sunflower that gets very tall, a lot of tall grasses, the Culver's root I was talking about grows in that section.

25:54So pretty. Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's really lush and, and, uh, really evocative. Yeah. But every, every inch of the Highland though is, is stunning. I, You know, it's just such a pretty beautiful space in New York City. Well, we have our challenges. I always say I'm the keeper of the list of what's wrong on the High Line. And I don't share that with everybody, but it's a big responsibility because we're always trying to make it the best we can. So we're working on certain sections. We're really excited that Pete Adolf has designed a brand new garden for the very north end of the High Line at 34th Street.

26:28Really? So there's the last section of the High Line, which we call the, well, it was called the interim walkway. I think we're calling it the Western Rail Yards now. Like the Pigeon area? North of the Pigeon. North of the Pigeon. As it curls around to the West Side Highway, all the way up to 34th Street across the street from Javits Center. Oh, wow. Oh, yes. It's kind of self-seeded. We haven't remediated all the soil. So it's the original ballast rock of the railway. And soil has formed. and things have sprouted up, but we haven't planted them. So now with construction and everything moving forward, I think they're going to build more buildings at the top there.