Spring Walk to the Cloisters

My Fitbit inspired me to walk up to The Cloisters for another look on March 23, a beautiful, sunny day with a chilly north wind.  I wanted to visit the Herb Garden, which contains more than 250 species of herbs cultivated during the Middle Ages.  I was curious to see what, if anything, would be peaking up out of the ground. 

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art website (The Cloisters is part of The Met.),  the "Bonnefont" Cloister is pieced together from a destroyed monastery in Tarbes, France, in the high Pyrenees.  "Bonnefont", technically, is a misnomer. In any case, the Herb Garden within the cloister bears all of the hallmarks of a medieval monastic garden:   raised beds, a central wellhead, and wattle fences.  Medieval monasteries   preserved herbal knowledge that had been accumulated for centuries. Hidden from the world,  the monks grew the herbs in "physic" gardens, pounded them into medicines, and published the herbals that a few centuries later became the basis for botany and pharmacology.   The monasteries were factories unto themselves.

Bonnefont Cloister and Herb Garden;
the wellhead remains covered for now.

Helleborus in foreground,
gallanthus, in background

Sheltered by wattle in raised beds, a few herbs showed off their ability to shoot off  green, purple, and white while it's still cold outside:  

Perovskia, most likely

Primula, perhaps

Medicinally, Helleoborus, or Lenten rose, was used to treat gout and insanity during the Middle Ages.  Gallanthus, which we call snow drops, is an antidote to poison.  Today researchers are experimenting with Gallanthus to treat Alzheimer's disease.    Perovskia, commonly called Russian Sage, is used to reduce fever.  Primula, or primrose,   was used to cure rheumatism and gout. Primula is a sedative and is used today to ward off headaches.  All of these plants are commonly found in contemporary gardens.

This espaliered pear appearing in two photographs below was planted at the Cloisters in the 1940s and is a treasure of the collection. Espalier--training trees  in a flat plane--was first undertaken by the Romans and developed into a high art in France in the Middle Ages.  The plant is pruned extensively twice a year and is also tied to a wall to retain its shape.  

Pear tree, late March 2014

Cloisters pear tree  © 2004 Matthew Trump
Notice ten years' growth compared to the tree in the left photo?

A  second espalier pear tree--I don't know when it was planted--is starting to send off new growth, which, presumably, will be pruned when spring really arrives. This tree is in a more protected spot than the older one.   

For five years The Met  published a wonderful blog, The Medieval Garden Enclosed  http://blog.metmuseum.org/cloistersgardens/2013/12/,  but no posts have been entered since December, 2013.  Its main creator,  a woman named Deirdre, left the Cloisters and New York   City in 2013.   

Fort Tryon Park Snow Day

Today the park screamed:  get outside and walk!  From the stoop I knew it was going to be a beautiful walk.

Mare's tails and contrails 

Walking down one hill to climb another, with my Fitbit http://www.fitbit.com/store?gclid=CLCLw6mxurwCFU7xOgodDQ0A4Q securely fastened,  my goal was to do some serious walking and climbing. I chose to explore Fort Tryon Park. https://www.forttryonparktrust.org/ Unlike Central Park, which is a landscape created by man, Fort Tryon is a "natural" park.  Fort Tryon Park  was designed by Frederick Law Olmstead Jr.,  (son of the man who created Central Park) in the 1920s and built by workers during the Works Progress Administration.  The park contains 67 acres, much of it with breathtaking views of the Hudson River and the Palisades in New Jersey.  

Carriage road to the Cloisters built during the WPA.  Icy Hudson River on the right.

Fitbit clocked 14 floors climbing the hill to The Cloisters, a medieval museum that is part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and that sits on a bluff overlooking the Hudson. Housing a collection of some 2,000 pieces of medieval art, the Cloisters http://www.metmuseum.org/visit/visit-the-cloisters is a mélange of sacred and secular buildings from France and Spain, predominantly, that only some rich Americans, among them John D. Rockefeller, Jr.,  could have collected and glued together in an melting-pot way 75 years ago.         

12th-century apse from Spain reconstructed in NYC

South entrance of The Cloisters

Deeper in the Park lies the Heather Garden, the largest collection of heaths and heathers on the East Coast. The many plants in this three-acre site with stunning views of the Hudson and the Cloisters were blanketed in snow, disturbed only by a lonely jogger.

Heather Garden in Winter

Onward I walked, out of the Park,   south to West 181st Street, where I stopped in at a Russian grocery store to eye the caviar and other exotic foods.  Without a purchase, I turned 'round and headed back home via the city streets.  

By the end of the day I had taken 12,600 steps for 5.37 miles, had climbed 46 flights, and  burned 2050 calories.  Plus I got some much-needed Vitamin D with my time in the sunshine.  Yay, Fitbit!