The Wall Street Journal Online – Leisure & Arts Annotated
Warrie Price is a tireless advocate for Battery Park and its 23 acres of historic waterfront land with stunning views of the Harbor and Statue of Liberty.
Betsy Barlow, then president of the Central Park Conservancy, suggested that Warrie replicate the private-public partnership model so successful at Central Park and establish a similar Conservancy for Battery Park.
The Battery comes under the jurisdiction of the city, state and federal governments, unlike Central Park, where the conservancy’s only partner is the city.
When Warrie arrived on the scene, Battery Park was little more than a pass-through route to reach the embarkation point for the ferries to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island.
Her masterstroke perhaps has been hiring Piet Oudolf, the acclaimed Dutch garden designer–winner of the international competition to landscape the Lurie Garden of Chicago’s new Millennium Park–to design and implement a horticultural master plan for Battery Park.
It involves natural-looking gardens and swathes of grasses mixed with drifts of perennials chosen for their shape, color and hardiness. He designs beds that have yearlong interest and project broad sweeps of color and rhythmic structure. “I don’t want to copy nature but to give a feeling of nature,” he says.