Highland Park natural areas

Bulwer Place Highland Park Greenway and Jamaica Ave to Jackie Robinson Parkway

Highland Park's 72-acre natural areas straddle the border between Brooklyn and Queens and host a wide array of habitats. The paved, approximately 3-mile-long greenway looping the reservoir atop the reservoirs walls allows birdwatchers to have eye-level views of songbirds foraging in the forest canopy and provides views of both Manhattan and Jamaica Bay on a clear day.

On the Queens side of the park, visitors can explore the historic Ridgewood Reservoir, which is both a marvel of human engineering and a thriving and unique ecological community. The reservoir is a decommissioned 19th-century facility that sits atop the Harbor Hill Moraine, formed during the Wisconsin glaciation about 18,000 years ago. From 1858 to 1959, the reservoir supplied water for Brooklyn before becoming a backup reservoir after the expansion of New York City's Catskill and Delaware water systems. In 2018, the reservoir was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and was designated by the New York State DEC as a Class I freshwater wetland.

The 13-acre central basin of the reservoir still contains standing water, while the 12-acre east basin and the 24-acre west basin were completely drained. As a result, the vegetation communities differ drastically. The shallow water in the central basin is surrounded by an extensive monoculture of common reed (Phragmites australis), a non-native grass that outcompetes native wetland species. Now fed exclusively by rainwater, the central basin serves as a valuable habitat for waterfowl. The ring-necked duck (Aythya collaris) and redhead duck (Aythya americana) are two notable species. The two basins without standing water are home to seasonally flooded wetland with dense canopy that mainly consists of red maple (Acer rubrum), gray birch (Betula populifolia) and gray willow (Salix cinerea), some of which were planted. Highly unusual to the urban environment, a ground cover of haircap moss (Polytrichum commune) is scattered throughout the wetland, a testament to Ridgewood Reservoir and its thriving biodiversity.

Between the three basins, raised embankments allow pedestrians to walk among recently planted goldenrods (Solidago spp.), asters (Symphyotrichum spp.), and many other grasses and wildflowers that support native bees and butterflies.

On the slope of the embankments and in canopy gaps of all basins introduced species such as knotweed (Reynoutria japonica), round-leaved bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus), and glossy buckthorn (Frangula alnus) abound. NYC Parks has worked to manage these problematic species and plant native trees and shrubs since 2010 through contracts and in partnership with community organizations.