Redwood the musical!
~ May 20, 2025
This past weekend, Becky and I took a last-minute whirlwind trip to New York City to catch the final showing of Idina Menzel’s Redwood on Broadway! To mark the occasion, we decided it was only fitting to center our entire trip around trees, parks, and urban forestry. This was our first time visiting NYC and we already can’t wait to go back – here’s a snapshot of our 36 hours in the Big Apple!
Bryant Park & NY Public Library
After landing at La Guardia (super nice airport, btw!) we headed to Bryant Park where our hotel, the Bryant Park Hotel, overlooked the bustling and gorgeous green space smack dab in the middle of it all. Tall and twisty London Planetree towered over the park, shading a cute makers market down below. Behind our hotel and the park was the beautiful NY Public Library. For any PBS kids/nerds out there, here’s a deep cut: the early 2000’s show “Between the Lions” was inspired by the iconic Lion sculptures out front!
From Bryant Park we made our way over to the High Line, which is a 1.45 mile public park on an old elevated train track running through Chelsea. Destined for demolition after decades of disuse and becoming overgrown, it was transformed into a thriving green space featuring over 500+ species of plants and trees. The High Line’s aesthetic reflects natural cycles of life and death, and evokes feelings of being in a wild space. According to Piet Oudolf, who designed our gardens, “My biggest inspiration is nature. I do not want to copy it, but to recreate the emotion.” We enjoyed strolling through the trees and the skyscrapers, a unique perspective of the city.
We grabbed a Lyft up to Central Park to meander along the dozens of miles of trails. It’s hard to comprehend how BIG Central Park is – we probably only covered ⅕ of the park in the time we had. Sheep’s Meadow was teeming with energy on the gorgeous 75-degree Saturday afternoon. Dancers, artists, friends, people on dates, birthday parties, dogs, babies, the elderly – all of humanity was on display enjoying Springtime in the city! We walked past a protected area of huge, mature American Elm and took a break under the shade of an old Oak tree before grabbing a refreshing Gin cocktail at the Tavern on the Green. Gin is made from Juniper berries, so we just had to grab a Gin cocktail to stay on tree-theme!
5th Avenue
Okay, I’ll admit, this part of the trip didn’t really include many trees aside from the occasional green-roof sighting, but we had to walk back to our hotel down the iconic 5th Avenue. We checked out the opulent and stunning St. Patrick’s Cathedral and breezed through Rockefeller Center & Plaza to nerd out about NBC studios and SNL. If you’ve never been down 5th Avenue think: Michigan Avenue on steroids and then some extra steroids for good measure.
Prior to the show, we grabbed another round of Gin cocktails (tree-theme!) at TALEA, NYC’s first women-owned brewery, before walking over to the Nederlander Theater. We honestly were not sure what to expect from the show. It was a completely original production co-created by Idina Menzel as a passion project after she became inspired by the Redwoods and environmental activist Julia Butterfly Hill’s harrowing 738 day stay up in a Redwood named Luna. The show was an incredibly moving production about grief, loss, self-discovery, the spirituality of nature, and the majesty of the Redwoods.
Queen/Superstar/Self-proclaimed tree hippie Idina Menzel is a Broadway powerhouse and it was amazing to see her in action. Literally in action – scaling the set design of a Redwood trunk in climbing gear with her fellow cast members, flipping, flying, and belting it out while hanging upside down. You can check out the acrobatics of the main song “In the Leaves” and listen to the soundtrack online!
After the show we were surprised and thrilled to learn that Julia Butterfly Hill was in attendance and that she was going to join Idina Menzel on stage for a “talk back” to discuss the show! You can catch their conversation on our Youtube page here: Redwood “Talk Back” with Julia Butterfly Hill & Idina Menzel. They both shared amazing insights and it was incredible to learn more about the inspiration behind the show and the driving forces in both Hill and Menzel’s work. This was truly an unforgettable experience!
9/11 Memorial & Survivor Tree
On Sunday morning we grabbed breakfast at a cafe down the street and went to the 9/11 Memorial. It’s hard to describe Ground Zero unless you’ve been there to see it. The 9/11 memorial is a very stark, moving, and emotional space. The sunken pools where the towers once stood were somber and ominous, as water flowed into a seemingly bottomless pit. Surrounding the pools were around 400 Swamp White Oak trees, creating a beautiful canopy and place of respite for visitors.
On one end of the memorial stood the Survivor Tree, which endured the tragedy and lives to this day. This spring, the Survivor Tree took on a special meaning for our family. After Joey’s accident, our cousin Sky and the kids at MVK elementary school gifted him a book about this remarkable tree. They made him inspiring and motivating cards of support and love and encouraged him to be strong like the Survivor Tree. It was so beautiful in so many ways! You can read more about that experience in our CaringBridge Post.
Brooklyn Bridge & Washington Square Park
From the 9/11 memorial, we walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, grabbed some coffee, and took some cute pictures in the Dumbo neighborhood before heading back over to Washington Square Park. It was NYU graduation and the park was full of grads and their families celebrating – so fun!
In the northwest corner of Washington Square stands a 300+ year old English Elm, called “Hangman’s Elm,” one of the oldest trees in Manhattan. Legend has it that traitors during the American Revolution were hung from the branches. While the name is a bit morbid and haunting, this tree also garners community support through interactive art projects. It’s a great example of community building, artistic expression, and fostering human connection to nature and urban forestry. We’re already scheming up some fun community art projects involving trees in our town!
We had to grab a slice of NY pizza and a bagel before we packed up to head home, and we’re so glad we did! A slice of pepperoni pizza from Joe’s on Carmine + a bagel with lox from the shop next door hit the spot and capped off our NYC experience! We had an AMAZING first trip to NYC and couldn’t believe neither of us had ever visited before! Shoutout to our friends who gave us recommendations on places to eat and things to do. And special thanks to James with NYC Parks for his expertise, recommendations, and sharing the NYC Tree Map with us, which is such a great resource! We can’t wait to plan our next trip back to explore more of the city – we barely scratched the surface in our short stint. Until next time!
~ Maggie Thomas Harper
Leave a Reply