By Yepoka Yeebo
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CENTRAL PARK — The end of summer in New York and the uptick in Manhattanites taking their leisure time indoors has turned Central Park into a bit of a ghost town — giving the Central Park Conservancy the perfect opportunity to whip the place back into shape.
As autumn descends on Central Park, nearly 100 gardeners and field staff have sprung into action to groom, repair and refurbish the park, which, after a summer of heavy use is in need of more than a little attention.
While the Parks Department has suffered budget cuts of late, resulting in New Yorkers worrying about future upkeep of the park, the Conservancy gets 85 percent of its funding from philanthropists, leaving its resources mainly intact.
There's a bench crew that goes around painting and repairing some of the 9,000 benches, a woodworking crew that tends to the bridges, a monument crew that looks after 55 sculptures and statues and a stonework crew that sets about retouching everything from stone arches to the Bethesda Terrace.
"He's actually got the molds for the stonework at Bethesda Terrace," said Regina Alvarez, the director of Horticulture and Woodland Management at the Central Park Conservancy, of the one-man stonework crew. "He's actually had to retouch little pieces. If you look closely, you can see the difference between the old stone and the new parts."
The biggest job is taking care of the fallen leaves from many of the park's 26,000 trees, which have to be blown from paths, raked from lawns and picked from flower beds from August to November, according to Alvarez.
The leaves — which can only be measured in tonnage — are taken to a massive compost heap on the east side of the park near 102nd Street. The pile gets turned a couple of times in the winter and by the spring is rich compost that gets returned to the park.
But some are left in the wooded areas, like the Ramble and the North Woods, where they create one of the most diverse habitats in New York State.
The grass fields of Central Park are a job in themselves.
"We aerate the lawns, there's a machine that goes around and pokes holes in the lawns, and we also spread fresh seed," said Alvarez.
The busiest lawns, like the Great Lawn and Sheep Meadow, are shuttered to give them a chance to grow back, and some lawns have to be reseeded from scratch, like the East Meadow near 97th Street, facing Mount Sinai Hospital.
"They stay closed unless we get around six inches of snow. Sheep Meadow gets opened for skiing, and people like to sled on the Great Lawn," said Alvarez.
Flower beds get pruned and planted with tulip and daffodil bulbs. The woodlands are left alone, but invasive plants get weeded out and after the massive storms in August 2009, the Conservancy is planting tree seedlings to replace over 100 trees toppled by winds, as well as adding shrubs and wildflowers.
And what of the wildlife?
"The raccoons are always out and about, they have their fur, they're fine," said Alvarez, before adding that during autumn, the park gets some new visitors, too, as it becomes a massive migration pit stop for roughly 160 species of bird, most notably hundreds of brightly colored Warblers.
In the park's ponds and reservoirs, Alvarez said that, as it gets colder, the fish and turtles disappear from view.
"They actually settle down at the lower levels of the water body. Because water freezes from the top down, it's still warm down there. The turtles actually hibernate in the mud at the bottom," she said.
It's a world of difference from when Alvarez started working for the park 17 years ago. She recalls dirt lawns, graffiti-covered monuments, broken benches, dry fountains and burned-out lights.
"To think, now we freak out when something small gets broken, or a fountain isn't working properly," Alvarez added.
"It's an amazing difference."
