New York City is the most densely populated city in the U.S., but along Broadway, a thoroughfare on the northern half of Manhattan’s west side, a series of small parks, known as malls, are providing a green corridor of trees, shrubs and flowers for birds and insects. The Broadway Malls are a series of small parks each measuring roughly 73 by 6 meters (240 by 20 feet). They serve as a median in the middle of the road and together comprise more than 4 hectares (10 acres) of green space, running 8 kilometers (5 miles) long. The malls were established in the 1850s, around the same time as Central Park. “The idea was to imitate the boulevards of Europe, namely France, create that grandiosity of a very wide avenue with a pedestrian path in the middle,” Ian Olson, director of horticulture with the nonprofit Broadway Mall Association (BMA), told Mongabay in a video call. By the 1960s, the malls were neglected “tubs of dirt,” Olson said. In the ’80s, the BMA began to revitalize the spaces, largely with nonnative plants like English ivy. “Things that look nice on a median but don’t have a lot of ecological value,” Olson said. Now, Olson and his team are removing the nonnative species and replacing them with native plants including golden rod, columbine, aster and sedge. They’ve so far given the native plant facelift to six of the 83 malls and they’re seeing results. Jay Holmes, a naturalist with the American Museum of…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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