Gardens

The Downing Park Planning Committee and several local Garden Clubs have been busy replanting gardens throughout the park.

The perennial garden located at the Carpenter Avenue and Third Street park entrance is a donation from the Garden Club of Orange and Dutchess Counties. Originally planted in the late 1990s, the grasses, shrubs and flowering plants in this garden represent the Downing Park Planning Committee's first collaborative landscape revitalization effort. Last year the

Garden Club donated a second garden on the corner of Robinson Avenue and Third Street, beautifying another park entrance.

The Iris and Daylily Society has been a generous supporter, donating a selection of ornamental day lilies. Downing Park boasts the only dedicated ornamental daylily garden in New York. Last year the Society helped split the lily bulbs and also donated a selection of iris plants for a small iris garden on the east shore of the Polly Pond.

The Downing Park Planning Committee has active gardeners serving on the Building and Grounds Committee. Two years ago, this committee planted a new perennial garden just north of the Visitors Center and added gardens around each of the park's memorials as well as pruning bushes and clearing brush. This year work was started at the Pergola. New gardens were installed along a new stone path that leads to the Pergola. The first set of stairs on the hill were reclaimed and formal bushes line the pathway. More work in that area is already being planned.