What Copenhagen's Parks Can Learn From New York

"To its natives, New York may look like a city on the verge of a nervous breakdown. But to a team of Danes from the Copenhagen parks department, on a grand tour of New York's finest parks this week, everything appeared to be coming up roses. Or at least flowers."

"'In your parks, you have so many more flowers than we do,' said Jon Pape, the director the Copenhagen parks system, gesturing at a spray of burgundy buds in Hunts Point's Riverside Park in the Bronx. 'This is very expensive.'"

"In Copenhagen, flowering plants are particularly hard to maintain because the public parks are without pesticides."

"That Copenhagen could have dirtier parks than New York seems to subvert the natural order of things - next we'll start hearing that the Danes are also pushier in line and are even more insistent that they get better tables whenever they eat out. But the public-private model of funding for parks that has helped New York's green spaces thrive is a harder sell in Denmark, where high taxes quell spontaneous civic donations."