The Lake

The Ramble and Lake is a main feature of Central Park in New York City. Part of Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux's 1857 "Greensward" plan for Central Park, The Ramble was intended as a woodland walk through highly varied topography, a "wild garden" away from carriage drives and bridle paths, to be wandered in, or to be viewed as a "natural" landscape from the formal lakefront setting of Bethesda Terrace or from rented rowboats on the Lake.

The 38-acre Ramble embraces the deep coves of the north shore of the Lake, excavated between bands of bedrock; it offers dense naturalistic planting, rocky outcrops of glacially scarred Manhattan bedrock, small open glades, and an artificial stream that empties through the Azalea Pond, then down a cascade into the Lake. Its ground rises northwards towards Vista Rock, crowned by Belvedere Castle, a lookout and eye-catching folly.