Where to See the Best Fall Foliage in Manhattan

What’s your favorite season in NYC?  For many of us, it’s Autumn and Fall Foliage season, when the city’s parks and gardens turn technicolor shades of yellow, red and orange.

Here are the best places in Central Park and elsewhere in Manhattan to see fall foliage, including special guided walks, fall color cams and more.

Where to see the best fall foliage in Central Park

Great places to start are Central Park’s Literary Walk and the Bow Bridge.

Here are more suggestions from The Central Park Conservancy, the organization which oversees the maintenance of the park:

Where to see the

best fall foliage in Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island

The Mall

Featuring a quadruple row of American elms, the Mall is home to one of the largest and last remaining stands of these trees in North America. Did you know the Mall is also the Park’s only intentional straight line? American elms form a cathedral-like canopy above this wide pedestrian pathway, and this time of year, that canopy is bright yellow.

• photo of The Mall courtesy The Central Park Conservancy

The Pool

The Pool serves as a stunning location to admire the foliage turn of trees like red oak, hickory, tupelo, bald cypress, and sugar maple. It also doubles as a great spot to see turtles, birds, fish, and other wildlife. Be sure to admire the rustic bridge just east of the Pool — continuing east from here, you’ll enter the North Woods.

The North Woods

It’s hard to miss the reds, oranges, and yellows in the North Woods this time of year. As one of the Park’s three woodlands, it offers people and wildlife an oasis of nature in the middle of New York City. Earlier this year, the Conservancy completed a restoration of the Ravine, a smaller landscape within the North Woods. This means you can take in amazing views of the restored Loch (Scottish for “lake”) against a backdrop of fall colors.

Conservatory Garden

You may associate Conservatory Garden’s crabapple allees with springtime, but these trees also turn reddish-orange in the fall. Combined with the Garden’s glorious chrysanthemum display that is in full bloom around the time of peak fall foliage, this part of the Park makes for a must-see destination this season.

North Meadow and the Reservoir

From certain vantage points, the North Meadow feels limitless. Take in the combination of colorful leaves from the hickory, sugar maple, and flowering dogwood, while admiring this area’s rocky outcrops and hilltops.

From here, it’s a short walk to the Reservoir. On the Reservoir’s west side, you’ll find the Kwanzan cherry, which turns bronze and red in the fall. On the east side, you’ll see the yoshino cherry, which becomes yellow and features sharply contrasting bark.

The Ramble

Make your way to the Ramble for a dense explosion of color. The Park’s most popular woodland features colors of the red oak, sweet gum, pin oak, sassafras, and more. Don’t forget to visit the beautiful three-stemmed black tupelo in Tupelo Meadow, which is north of Azalea Pond. (Last year, we followed this tupelo’s foliage change for nine weeks straight!)

Throughout the Ramble, you’ll find several rebuilt rustic features, including bridges, benches, and an overlook with a rustic rail along the length of the Gill. The Ramble also features a newly reconstructed stone crossing that previously existed above the watercourse before it was replaced by a concrete bridge in the 1930s.

The Pond and the Hallett Nature Sanctuary

Look for the colors of the black cherry, sawtooth oak, gray birch, and tupelo at the Pond and in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary. This is the first autumn that the Hallett — the smallest of the Park’s woodlands — is open to the public daily. Enjoy its rustic features, such as a scenic overlook, railings, and benches that provide meditation spots and emphasize never-before-seen views of the Pond and south end of the Park.

The Conservancy also created a helpful fall foliage map, and conservancy guides will lead at least a couple 90-minute fall foliage walks on different dates in November.

Where to see the best fall foliage elsewhere in Manhattan

Inwood Hill Park