I visited the High Line for the first time on Thursday, September 20th and I was quite amazed by what I saw. I started off at 23rd street and then walked up a few blocks, and then down to 20th street. I saw many different plants and pollinators, including different bees, small flies, and butterflies. The High Line is so different from the surrounding areas, with all the buildings, and stores and traffic and whenever I looked around and saw the buildings and then at the plants again, it felt like two different worlds. This, I thought, was a large part of the beauty of the High Line. It’s pretty amazing to see how a railroad could be transformed into a place filled with different plants and species and it really fits in with Marris’s concept of a rambunctious garden.
Marris believes that we shouldn’t try to restore ecosystems of the Earth into pristine wilderness that was supposed to have existed before humans disturbed it, but rather to have humans accept that they are in charge of nature and to mange it and make it so that we are creating environments where nature and humans can coexist and interact. The High Line is just that. It is not just a closed off space of nature, but rather a place where nature is being conserved and restored and people can go there and connect with nature. People restored and manage the place, but they aren’t just putting any plants and making their own ecosystem. Many of the species there are native species. Those species, along with many others might not be there if not for the management of humans. Having native species grow back while humans manage the area to fit into the urban environment is a good example of rambunctious gardening.
Stalter’s paper doesn’t change my view of the High Line, but it does make me appreciate it more. In his study, Stalter found that “species richness at the High Line is greater than species richness at four nearby New York City sites.” The High Line has 38.8 species/hectare while at Hoffman Island, it was 21.8 sp/ha, 37.9 sp/ha at Bayswater State Park, 19.8 sp/ha at Liberty Island, and 22.8 sp/ha at Ellis Island. I wouldn’t have thought that the High Line would have so much species richness since it’s in an urban environment and was created not so long ago. One of the possible reasons Stalter gives for the high level of plant species is “human disturbance including trash deposition, trampling, oil compaction and fire.” The disturbances in cause the habitats to keep on changing, but the species there are still able to adapt to it. Just as Marris said, nature is resistant and adaptable. I think the High Line is a great project and should be an example for future conservation projects, especially in cities.
