Strawberry Fields (memorial)

The memorial is a triangular piece of land falling away on the two sides of the park, and its focal point is a circular pathway mosaic of inlaid stones, with a single word, the title of Lennon's most famous song "Imagine".

The mosaics at the heart of a series of open and secret glades of lawn and glacier-carved rock outcroppings, bounded by shrubs and mature trees and woodland slopes, all designated a "quiet zone".

A woodland walk winds through edge plantings between the glade-like upper lawn and the steep wooded slopes; it contains native rhododendrons and hollies, Carolina allspice (Calycanthus floridus), mountain laurel (Kalmia latifolia), viburnums, and jetbead.

At the farthest northern tip of the upper series of lawns enclosed by woodland are three dawn redwood trees, which lose their needles but regain them every spring, an emblem of eternal renewal.

In April 1981, a patch of land in Central Park, near the Dakota Apartments where Lennon lived with Ono, was officially named "Strawberry Fields" in his memory.

On Lennon's birthday (October 9) and on the anniversary of his death (December 8), people gather to sing songs and pay tribute, staying late into what is often a cold night.

The tributes usually run all night, but for a period through the late 1990s and early 2000s, mayor Rudy Giuliani enforced a curfew, which prohibited people from being inside Central Park after it closed each day at 1:00 a.m.[11][12] Gatherings also take place on the birthdays of other Beatles.

[14][15][16] One of its best-known visitors was Gary dos Santos, a devoted Beatles fan who decorated the memorial in circles of different flowers and objects, often in the shape of a peace symbol.