Landscape Information
Located immediately east of the West 72nd Street entrance of Central Park, this five-acre, tear- drop-shaped space commemorates British musician and activist John Lennon who was murdered outside the nearby Dakota Apartments in 1980. The following year, the city set aside the parkland—frequented by the artist and his family—to create a memorial. Landscape architect Bruce Kelly of the firm Bruce Kelly/David Varnell was engaged to design the landscape, seamlessly nesting its design within Olmsted and Vaux’s historic park design.
Kelly worked in collaboration with Lennon’s widow, Yoko Ono, transforming the degraded site into an “International Garden of Peace”— to both honor Lennon and symbolize unity. The design introduced 161 plant species (including 150 trees and thousands of shrubs and perennials), each representing a different country. Several governments donated plants emblematic of their respective nations (e.g., sugar maples from Canada, daffodils from the Netherlands); these were planted in irregular, naturalistic groups around two sloping lawn meadows. Plants from politically opposed nations, such as Israel and Jordan, were symbolically placed together.
Kelly utilized an existing path to create a looping circulation route in the memorial’s southern section. He positioned a circular, black-and-white mosaic, ten feet in diameter—given from the city of Naples, Italy—into the path’s groundplane. Embedded with the word “Imagine,” the artwork, inspired by a Pompeiian mosaic, references Lennon’s song and album (1971) envisioning peace between nations. Canopy-tree shaded walkways are lined with Victorian benches and frame the meadows, which are interspersed with deciduous trees, shrubs, and strategically placed boulders. Borrowed views outside the park to The Dakota serve as a reminder of Lennon.
Dedicated in 1985, the project received a Merit Award in Design from the American Society of Landscape Architects in 1989.
