Douglas Blonsky is Central Park’s constant gardener.

“That’s some job,” the New Jersey-born administrator of the 147-year-old park said yesterday. “All day, every day.”

It means working with 250 full-time staffers and 3,000 volunteers. It means raising much of the park’s annual $25 million budget. It means nurturing a vast cohort of donors – not only the big-money kind, some of whose families have been involved with the park for several generations, but also 20,000 New Yorkers who pay between $35 and $1,000 a year for the privilege of being formal supporters of Central Park.

It means dealing with 25 million visitors annually who use Central Park’s 50 entrances to stroll, jog, romance, and gambol in an area that is 2 1/2 miles long and half a mile wide. It means supervising more than 1,000 public events, ranging from performances of the Metropolitan Opera to the New York City Marathon.

“It means being the human face of the park,” Mr. Blonsky said, with a smile that suggested advanced enthusiasm.

Mr. Blonsky’s job actually consists of two assignments: In addition to being administrator, he is president of the not-for-profit organization that manages Central Park under a contract with the city, the Central Park Conservancy.

The words “job” and “assignments,” however, don’t quite capture what it is Mr. Blonsky does.

Consider this: He is the supernumerary of an 843-acre park with 26,000 trees of 165 different species, including 4,262 Black Cherry, all self-seeded, none planted; 1,834 American Elms, one of the finest collections in America; 1,318 London Planes; 1,724 Pin Oaks; 1,632 Black Locust; 1,310 Norway Maple; 953 Sycamore Maple; 757 Red Oak; 549 Ginkgo, and 407 Turkey Oak.

When one counts Central Park’s 4 million shrubs, lawns, and hedges, that’s another 1,500 species of flora under Mr. Blonsky’s care as Central Park’s constant gardener. And there are 275 species of migratory birds that inhabit the park, which is on the Atlantic Flyway.

“Constant gardener” may not even capture the essence of his contribution to the park since he joined the conservancy 21 years ago. Although he blanches at the seemingly hyperbolic characterization, a more appropriate term would be “savior.”

When Mr. Blonsky came to New York, armed with a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from Rutgers University and another bachelor’s degree in horticulture from the University of Delaware, Central Park was a mess. Virtually all of its structures, including Belvedere Castle, had been defaced by graffiti. Its 9,000 benches – which, if placed end to end, would run seven miles – were dilapidated. Its 36 bridges and arches were falling apart. Its seven ornamental fountains and 120 drinking basins were crumbling. Muggings were commonplace, even in daylight. The 6-foot-deep lake at 72nd Street was filled with detritus. The blue grass had withered, and the lawns were parched.

“I was amazed that the park was in such poor condition,” Mr. Blonsky said.

His distress was heightened by the fact that Central Park had its own folklore and its own special place in the life of New York City.

Growing up in Morristown, N.J., as the son of a MetLife employee, George Blonsky, and his wife, Kathryn, a Spanish-language teacher, Mr. Blonsky had always been encouraged to be outdoors. Douglas, the youngest of four children, helped out in his parents’ garden, where roses and rhododendrons were in abundance. Central Park was a metaphor for an advanced urban civilization and a great city’s lungs.

By the time Mr. Blonsky came to New York, he was familiar with the park’s history. The city had commissioned the designer and writer Frederick Law Olmsted and the English architect Calvert Vaux to create Central Park out of a vast area of scrubland, swamps, boulders, and some farmland. Some $5 million had been allocated for the project, which involved bringing in 10 million cartloads of soil and seedlings. By 1873, Central Park was completed.

By 1980, however, it had deteriorated to the point where nothing short of a master plan was needed to rehabilitate it.

“All that history, all that wonderful greenery – Central Park had been taken for granted,” Mr. Blonsky said. “Our master plan was more than a rescue operation. It was total rehabilitation.”

Over the next 25 years, some $320 million was raised for the project from the private sector. One of Mr. Blonsky’s acclaimed innovations was to create 49 “zones” for the park. Each zone would have a multidisciplinary team attached to it, and the team would be responsible for its upkeep.

Spurred by the conservancy’s 52-member board, Mr. Blonsky and his associates introduced what were then considered technological novelties such as walkie-talkies. Vehicles were bought that could easily access all parts of the uneven terrain. Mr. Blonsky’s wife, Mai Allen, a landscape architect and former Parks employee – whom he met in Central Park – was often a source of design ideas.

With the assistance of allies such as Betsy Barlow Rogers, Ira Millstein, Norma Dana, and Richard Gilder, among others, the conservancy’s endowment rose to more than $100 million.

New York being New York, of course, a public-service enterprise rarely can escape politics, especially a highly visible, iconic presence such as Central Park. So how was Mr. Blonsky to effect his innovations without suffering political interference?

“Well, it helped that I was an outsider to the city,” he said. “Some of our donors and board members handled the political part.”A former Parks commissioner, Henry Stern, “a political animal if ever there was one, was a wonderful ally,” he said.

“I also received great cooperation from various mayors, especially Mayor Bloomberg, and his Parks commissioner – and my good friend – Adrian Benepe. My message always was, ‘It’s everybody’s park.’ It’s hard for people to be partisan over Central Park – passionate, yes, but partisan? No.”

In the spirit of such nonpartisanship, Mr. Blonsky hopes to be able to create a special high school that will inculcate in students a love for the landscape.

“Central Park’s presence in New York’s life is forever assured,” Mr. Blonsky said. “But wouldn’t it be nice if we trained young people to look after the city’s great asset?”