Shakespeare Garden

Shakespeare Garden is a charming four-acre landscape named for the famed English poet and playwright. The garden is bursting with flowers mentioned in his poems and plays.

But the garden wasn’t an original feature of Central Park. It was first conceived in the 1880’s when park commissioner George Clausen asked the Park’s entomologist to create a garden adjacent to the nature study center in the Swedish Cottage. In 1913, Commissioner Gaynor dedicated it officially to the works of Shakespeare.

After years of neglect, Shakespeare Garden – just as most of Central Park – fell into disrepair. In 1987, the Central Park Conservancy restored and expanded the garden, repaving pathways and installing rustic wooden benches and bronze plaques with quotations from the Bard’s masterpieces.