Friends of the High Line

It's been a happy holiday season all along—and off—the High Line! 🎁 Recently, the Friends of the High Line team donated gifts to the annual holiday toy drives organized by NYC Council Member Erik Bottcher and NY State Assemblyperson Tony Simone. Thank you to our friends from the local Chelsea family-owned toy store Kidding Around for such an incredible selection! It is a joy to be able to give back to our fellow New Yorkers whose exuberance, passion, and spirit power our park—both throughout the holiday season and year-round. 💝✨

It's time to step things up—online. We are thrilled to announce that we have been selected to participate in the Bloomberg Digital Accelerator Program! Through our participation in this unique program, Bloomberg Philanthropies will help organizations like ours invest in essential digital infrastructure. Friends of the High Line is one of 200 organizations from the U.S. and the U.K. in this cohort who will have additional support to strengthen our technology and management practices. Congratulations to our fellow cohort members who have also been selected to be a part of this program! Our team is excited to get to work alongside you all and the Bloomberg Philanthropies team to engage broader audiences and build on our work to serve New Yorkers and parkgoers.

Towering above the High Line's Northern Spur at 16th Street, you will find Arthur Simms’ "A Totem for the High Line." This 40-foot-tall monument to memory and history speaks directly to the High Line and New York City's industrial and wild past and deftly incorporates materials that have become core to Simms' body of work—wood, rope, and personal objects. Parkgoers may recognize a decommissioned utility pole sourced from Randall’s Island, assorted cables, and discarded license plates from various states woven together in the artwork. Simms builds on his practice of entangling and reusing objects to emphasize the various histories and meanings they carry. Over the course of the coming months, A Totem for the High Line. will pay homage to the perpetual transformation that has been core to our park's and city's past, present, and future. Recently, Cecilia Alemani, the Donald R. Mullen, Jr. Director & Chief Curator of High Line Art, sat down with Simms to dig into his inspiration and artistic process. Head to the High Line's blog read the full conversation: https://bit.ly/4gDeZut P.S. New Yorkers, want to hear directly from Simms and Alemani? Join us at Karma Bookstore on December 17, from 5-7pm, for a conversation between the two and the launch of Simms' latest book, "Sculpture." 📷 : Rowa Lee

One man's leaf litter is another pollinator's treasure. 🌱 Heading into the cooler months, you may notice an abundance of crunchy, dead leaf litter or dried seed heads throughout our gardens. You may not realize this, but leaving organic debris in our soil beds is a vital way we support wildlife on the park during the colder months. Our community then comes together in the spring to cut back our plants by hand with surgical selectivity, to be composted and returned to our organic soil. By leaving certain plants and material untouched in the park's soil beds from fall to spring, we can provide a reliable source of food and habitat for local and migrating bird and insects. Leaf litter and organic soil can provide a safe shelter for insects like young (larval) fireflies or cocoons of native Luna moths and Spicebush swallowtail butterfly, while our flowers' seedheads serve as a source of food for migrating and overwintering birds. From our horticulturists who are tending to the gardens year-round to friends like Con Edison who have supported our efforts to analyze and improve our soil health, it takes a community to keep our ecosystems thriving year-round. When you're in the park throughout the colder months, we hope you develop a sense of appreciation for practices to support biodiversity and for our original garden designer Piet Oudolf’s vision for our naturalistic, four-season gardens. 📸 : Timothy Schenck

As a truly people-powered park, the High Line is a gift for dreamers and doers *from* dreamers and doers. On the High Line, parkgoers can immerse themselves in 1.5 miles of naturalistic gardens, take in stunning works of art, or bring loved ones to relax and connect in this magical space. We are grateful to be able to share the jewels of our people-powered park with the city—and even more so with the supporters who make it possible to keep our park in the sky thriving. Every year, we must raise nearly 100% of the funding necessary to operate and keep our park vibrant and thriving with one-of-a-kind gardens and art. Keeping the High Line wild and alive with creativity is only possible through the direct contributions of our supporters, who make it possible for us to keep this treasured urban green space flourishing. Your gift of any size can make a real difference—and it goes three times as far this #GivingTuesday. Learn more about how supporters like you directly power the High Line, and give today. 🍃: https://bit.ly/3ViWB1G 📷: Liz Ligon, Timothy Schenck

It is always a privilege for us to bring some of the magic of the High Line's gardens to our fellow New Yorkers. 💫 During a recent visit to the Penn South housing community (the largest affordable co-op apartment complex on the West Side of Manhattan), our horticulture staff donated some of our propagations and leftover plants from the High Line's gardens to the local community garden. Our colleagues had the opportunity to plant a gorgeous selection of naturalistic plants in the gardens and shared some with the folks at Penn South. A pro-tip from our team—incorporate compost in your soil! 🌱 It was a joy to spend time in the gorgeous crisp autumn air! Thank you to Ambur Nicosia, Penn South's Board Chair, for the invitation and to our friends at Penn South for giving us such a warm welcome. We cannot wait to see how this resilient garden will flourish in the coming seasons!

Lights, camera, action! 🎥 This week, the High Line Network held its New York City premiere of Ezra Wube's "PROJECT ECOPOLIS," a compilation of four short films commissioned by the High Line Network, with support from High Line Art. Wube collaborated with the High Line and three other High Line Network partners—GROW GREATER ENGLEWOOD (Chicago, IL), Buffalo Bayou Partnership (Houston, TX), and Friends of Waterfront Park (Seattle, WA)—to produce a short stop-motion film inspired by each site. Thank you to our panelists Gabriella Malavé, Karen Farber, Jordan Remington, Gloria I Rivera, and Tanya Ward for joining us for the inaugural New York City screening of "PROJECT ECOPOLIS." It was an exuberent display of animations and scenes of daily life, and we are grateful to all the High Line Network representatives who showcased the spirit of their sites. The series of films will tour participating Network sites in 2024 and 2025, serving as a traveling exhibition to inspire conversations, forge connections, and celebrate community resilience. The Joint Art Initiative explores how High Line Network members can leverage local communities and artists to provoke conversations around public art. 📺 "PROJECT ECOPOLIS" 📍 On the High Line at 14th Street 📆 November 18, 2024 - January 7, 2025 🎫 https://bit.ly/4hAbHJD

In our 15-year history as a park, the High Line's gardens are currently experiencing our driest autumn ever. Amid the second-longest rainless streak since 1869 and the city’s first drought watch in over two decades, our horticulture team’s longtime practices to conserve water and cultivate resilient gardens have taken on even greater value. Our long-standing philosophy of prioritizing resilient and locally adapted plants, water-conscious irrigation practices, and organic and chemical-free pest management are proactive measures that can support our gardens’ survival in extreme conditions and reduce our consumption of critical resources. Although we can't precisely predict every future climate event that will happen on the park, we know our horticulturists remain dedicated to weathering these changes with expertise and a steadfast commitment to serve our fellow New Yorkers and parkgoers. Read our latest blog post to learn more about how we cultivate a resilient landscape—including some tips that can be incorporated into home gardens. 🌾 : https://bit.ly/3AVs8Qg 📷 : Liz Ligon

Detroit had so much to teach us during the High Line Network's 2024 symposium this fall, and we're eager to share everything we learned with cities across the country and the world. The High Line's executive director, Alan van Capelle, and High Line Network member Scott Kratz, director of the 11th Street Bridge Park, recently shared their reflections on the three-day event in a recent op-ed in Crain's Detroit Business. Their major takeaways included insights from Detroit into: 🫂 Involving communities in public placemaking 📜 Incorporating local history in industrial reuse projects 💡 Understanding use-based inclusivity 🎧 Leading by listening To read more about the best practices for public space development that we saw exhibited all across Detroit, check out Alan and Scott's full op-ed in Crain's Detroit today! 📰 https://lnkd.in/eVjsnR7s And thank you once again to our incredible host partners - the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and the Joe Louis Greenway Partnership (JLGP) - for welcoming our High Line Network members and introducing us to a city shimmering with energy and innovation. 📷: Nadir Ali

Remember, friends, kindness is key to resilience. 🤖🫶 We loved reading a recent piece in The New York Times on author, illustrator, and long-time High Line visitor (!) Peter Brown, who shared how the wild landscape of the High Line inspired the creation of his best-selling books, "The Wild Robot" and "The Curious Garden." With over 4.6 million copies sold globally, two sequels, and a movie adaptation, "The Wild Robot" has touched the hearts of readers and moviegoers everywhere with its prescient themes of friendship, connection, and wild-ness. “[The High Line is] about nature existing in an unlikely place, which got me thinking about the inverse: something unnatural existing in a natural place," said Brown. Peter, we feel lucky that the High Line has been able to serve as a source of inspiration throughout your career and for your readers. And to our fellow dreamers—we hope our park can continue to be a place for your creativity and curiosity to flourish. 🌿: https://lnkd.in/ebJazTQY 📷: Graham Dickie/The New York Times