Icebreakers: 9 Eco-Friendly Tips to Clear Snow, from the High Line in NYC – Gardenista

If you live in a region where snow and ice are common in winter, you probably already know you shouldn’t scatter rock salt to make sidewalks and garden paths safe for pedestrians. Sure, salt (aka sodium chloride) is cheap and melts the ice, but it can wreak havoc on plants—not to mention your poor dog’s feet and your own footwear. It also erodes concrete and corrodes metal gates, fences, and your car. What’s worse, salt in runoff harms aquatic life in our streams, rivers, and lakes, and does further damage after it contaminates the earth’s groundwater supply.

For advice on environmentally friendly ways to clear ice and snow, we talked to Andi Pettis, director of horticulture at the High Line, the beloved New York City park that opened in 2009 atop an abandoned elevated railway and which stretches for almost a mile and a half on the west side of Manhattan.

Avoid Compaction

How do park staffers remove ice and snow from the High Line’s paths? According to Pettis, they do it the old-fashioned way. Step one: While snow is falling, they close off the park to keep people from walking on the paths and compacting the snow.

“The weather on the High Line is always more intense than at ground level,” says Pettis. “The park is essentially a bridge thirty feet in the air, so it freezes both from above and below. And the wind off the Hudson averages twenty miles per hour faster than at ground level.” That means that snowfall freezes quickly on the paths (made of pre-cast concrete pavers), especially if it gets compacted, and takes a long time to melt.

High Line caretakers are especially sensitive to issues of water pollution. “The grading is engineered so that precipitation runs straight into the planting beds,” says Pettis. “But any overflow drains into the city sewage system, and the less salt we put into that the better.”