NYC.................Wisteria lane..............man oh man................Noon blue apples...........Central park........

“The story is, Robert Moses closed it off because he wanted it to turn into a bird sanctuary,” said Douglas Blonsky, who as president and chief executive of the Central Park Conservancy is the park’s administrator. Moses became the parks commissioner in 1934.

Photo

Sima Ghadamian, a dealer in rare gems, donated a small sanctuary within the sanctuary in honor of her parents.CreditRamsay de Give for The New York Times

So, yes, the birds made the sanctuary a stop on their way north in the spring or south in the fall. But the trees and plants that settled in were the wrong kind: Norway maples, black cherries, Japanese knotgrasses — invasives all.

“Wisteria was a huge problem, too,” Mr. Blonsky said. “In a woodland, it will strangle everything, and that’s what was happening here.” The sanctuary, on a big boulder made of Manhattan schist, was covered with wisteria, he said. Leading the way to the sanctuary on Wednesday, he said some root systems remain embedded in the creases in the rock, despite parks workers’ efforts to weed them out.