Community Gardening - My Early Years- Part 2

The next part of the story begins the physical changes to the garden. The 6BC group was not well organized, meetings did not happen and no one bothered to renew the lease with Operation GreenThumb. I was determined to do something. I had recently started working at council on the Environment and I was learning about the world of community gardening in New York City. t that time there was no long term protection for community gardens. Some discussions were taking place and there some gardens were being offered long term - 5 year - leases.  The housing market was opening up and the Lower East Side was prime territory for development. The local community board was working on a cross subsidy plan as a way of insuring that there would be some low income development alongside the market rate housing. The plan was that for every market rate apartment built, developers were to subsidize a low income apartment. The plan saw few if any low income apartments built as result of the cross subsidies. The 6BC lot together with the lot on 5th Street made it a large assemblage and attractive for developers.

Something had to be done to preserve this garden space so I took it upon myself to sign the lease for the garden. The added benefit was that the garden would be eligible for materials like lumber, concrete and tools that could be used to rebuild the raised beds. I drew up plans for an arbor in 1989 and began showing them around to the gardeners. I got positive feedback to the plans and a few folks expressed an interest in helping to build the structure and rebuild the raised beds. At the time, I was driving the Grow Truck for Council on the Environment and I was able to arrange to pick up and deliver the materials for the structure.

A small group worked with me over the course of several weekends to dig holes, pour concrete, set the posts and build the structure with a built in bench.With all of the building going on the garden looked more like a a construction zone. The structure looked great when it was completed, it looked like the first house to be built in a new development before all of the other houses were built, the trees planted and the families moved in. The structure was installed at approximately a 45 degree angle to the street.

After the success of the arbor project, I worked on an overall plan for the garden that I completed in 1990. The plans called for placement of raised beds in the garden following the same diagonal as the arbor. This shift in the layout served several purposes. It provided visual interest - something different from the rectangular monotony of the streetscape. Manhattan's street grid was laid out following the general shape of the island which sits on a Southwest / Northeast plane. The diagonals in the garden were closer to a true North - South line.  The placement of the structure at this diagonal near the front created a passage into the rest of the garden and gave the visitor or gardener a heightened sense that they had left the street and the rest of the city behind. The diagonal layout left triangular areas in the 4 corners that could and would be used as  seating areas and a large entry area. Part of my thinking at the time was that when different groups of gardeners or visitors were in the garden at the same time, if one area was being used, a second group could use an area in the opposite corner.

There were a few trees and shrubs in the garden that remained and we built around them. There was still the problem of the extra fences dividing the garden and creating the drug alleyway. There was a small, not very well built shed that needed work. All of these existing elements of the garden needed to be addressed and a new group that would spend a good deal of time in the garden over the next few years helped with that process..... that story in the next post.

Community Gardening - My Early Years

                                               The 6BC Community Garden mid 1980's

This inspiration for this post came to me the other day when a writer doing research for a book she is writing asked me about urban agriculture in the 1970's and 80's. Well, we didn't call what we were doing at the time urban agriculture. It was community gardening.  I can't say much from personal experience about community gardening in the 1970's. It was happening at the time and the seeds of the modern community gardening/ urban agriculture movement were planted at that time.

I can talk from experience about community gardening in the 1980's. I started community gardening at the 6BC community garden in the early 1980's. At the time the garden was a dysfunctional mix of neighbors on the block including Puerto Rican and African American families, twenty something whites who recently moved into the neighborhood and a teacher and her elementary school students from the public school on the block. The garden was divided by chain link fences. One older man gardened by himself in a fenced off section where he grew a lot of tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers. A Puerto Rican extended family gardened in several raised beds, including one that was mostly taken up with a large rose bush. Someone tended a pot of annuals in from of a shrine to the Virgin Mary where often a votive candle was kept burning. I started gardening on half of a raised bed by growing a couple of tomato plants and a few herbs.

A handicap accessible raised bed was little used; there were no disabled gardeners. Most of the raised beds were made of rotting or patched together lumber. Some of the pathways were lined with brick others were just hardpan. The compost area was an unkempt pile of weeds, twigs and branches. The garden had a few trees and shrubs that were haphazardly planted. The group was not well organized and the gardeners were distrustful and antagonistic toward each other. Vandalism and theft were rampant. Just as a tomato ripened it disappeared.

The neighborhood was in the midst of a heroin epidemic. The way that the garden was fenced, a narrow alleyway ran the length of the building adjacent to the south side of the garden that continued through to the adjacent street. This alleyway was a convenient drug distribution point as the dealers could escape in either direction if the police arrived. If you were in the garden at the right times, usually late morning and at dinner time, you would notice a number of disheveled looking men and women nervously pacing near the garden looking suspiciously up and down the block. All of a sudden the dealer would arrive, everyone would form a neat line and in no more than 5 minutes the drug exchange would be finished. During off hours for the drug trade the alleyway was used for urinating and prostitution.

This lawlessness found it's was into community gardens throughout the city. Theft and vandalism were major problems for many gardens. Sheds could not be made vandal proof, so tools could not be safely stored. Annuals, perennials and shrubs with showy flowers could not be planted. Mother's Day was dreaded; it was the day of the year with the highest incidence of robbery. More than a few moms received presents of flowers or plants that were nurtured in a community garden. In fact the Green Guerillas distributed a fact sheet on how to prevent vandalism that showed gardeners a method for chaining and locking shrubs to deter theft!

Not a very auspicious beginning for a movement or a career but small or humble or difficult beginnings very often yield amazing results with perseverance and luck. More chapters to come.

                                                    6BC Community Garden circa 2002

Spring Mix

I participated in a third spring event, the GreenThumb GrowTogether which took place on Saturday April 2nd. Attended by 1200 people with 55 workshops (2 I led), this was a great event that continues to be 'the official first day of spring' for New York City community gardeners, according to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. This year's keynote speaker, Joan Dye Gussow, following up on the soil thread of my recent posts, spoke about how just a pinch of soil has more than a billion organisms, some that have yet to be identified.

The two workshops I led were Rainwater Harvesting presented along with my co-worker Lars Chellberg attended by 30 people interested in installing rainwater systems in their gardens. And a workshop on making what I call Grow Sacs. These are polyester bags which are upcycled into planters which can be hung on fences or walls. Simple directions here: Both workshops were videotaped. When time permits I will edit them to share.

See previous posts about vertical gardening:
Vertical Gardening
Vertical Gardening Update
Vertical Gardening Update II

It wouldn't be Spring without some threat to community gardening in NYC. This year it is the wrangling in Washington over the federal budget. One of the items on the chopping block by the Republican Tea Party is the Community Development Block Grants (CDBG) which is a way that the Feds provide money to cities and states for many social services and development programs and projects. New York City's GreenThumb Program receives 100% of it's funds through CDBG. The verdict isn't in yet but it would be a crime if the Republicans prevail and GreenThumb and other worthy programs lose their funding. If NYC politicians allow GreenThumb to lose it's funding it would be even a bigger crime.

A Couple of Spring Garden Scenes

The Perennial Veggies and Herbs in My Garden

Left to Right Front: Rhubarb, Chard,

Middle: Horseradish, Sorrel

Rear: Comfrey, Parsley (a biennial)

Great to see the greens coming up in the otherwise bare garden

Bloodroot - a wonderful spring ephemeral!

More on Soil

An Associated Press article about urban soils ran in over 100 news outlets a couple of days ago with many headlines using the word "tainted".  Most of the articles made the case that the benefits of community gardening and urban agriculture outweighed the risks associated with "tainted" soils. Gardeners were encouraged to have their soil tested.
The articles can be found in:
NPR
Huffington Post
Battle Creek Enquirer

The director of the Cornell Waste Management Institute was quoted saying that a pilot study of 44 gardens found less than 10% of the gardens had high levels of Lead. This seems to contradict the finding of the Brooklyn College Environmental Science Analytical Center that 51% of the urban soil samples tested at the lab exceeded  the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation's Soil Cleanup Objectives  restricted use levels. But what this does is point out the lack of consistent standards for what are acceptable levels of heavy metals. 

It's the Soil...

Usually in these pages I write about water - rainwater harvesting - because access to water is so important to sustainable community gardens. The tsunami in Japan showed the sheer power of water to destroy, the need for water to avoid a nuclear disaster and how this resource can be made unusable by radiation.

                                Rainwater Harvesting System at the River Garden in the Bronx

Soil is equally important in a community garden. A fragile resource that can be lost through erosion, contaminated by heavy metals and chemicals and depleted of nutrients, oxygen and beneficial soil organisms if the soil is not cared for properly.

Most community gardens are in urban areas and on land that may have been contaminated by a prior use. There has always been a concern about potentially toxic chemicals or heavy metals that might still be present in the soil and end up being absorbed by community gardeners through the skin, by inhalation or through eating the vegetables grown in this soil. I am not aware of any poisonings or sicknesses caused this way. Community gardeners have always been advised to have their soil tested to know if special precautions need to be taken.

            Witch Hazel flowering in early March at the Jacquline Denise Davis Garden in the Bronx

The heavy metals of concern are Arsenic, Cadmium, Chromium,Nickel and Lead. An excellent heavy metals fact sheet published by the Environmental Sciences Analytical Center @Brooklyn College gives some interesting facts about the soils they have tested. The median levels of the five heavy metals results found in urban soils primarily taken from NYC gardens are anywhere from 2X the levels of Nickel to 20X the levels of Lead as found in rural soils in NY State. That sounds bad but even with these numbers there are best management practices for gardeners to follow to avoid any problems. Also, soil tests are based on mixed samples taken at different depths and from random spots in the garden. A soil test that shows high levels of Lead for example could have been taken from a spot that is contaminated by lead based paint chips from an adjacent building or from remnants of the building formerly occupying the site of the garden.

"Native" soil in a Bronx community garden

In my experience, most community gardeners grow in soil that has been brought in by a truckload and confined in a raised bed and are not planting edible plants in the existing soil. In addition, plants will be less likely to uptake lead in soils that includes 5 to 10% organic matter (compost). Slightly acidic soils with a pH of 6.5 to 7  and soils with the proper amount of phosphorus will bind the lead particles in the soil and make it  less available to plants. Gardeners who realize the importance of healthy soil spend time building up the nutrients and soil organisms. This is another example of sustainable gardening and yet another reason to preserve gardens. 

Soils that have been improved over years of stewardship are not easily replaced. A community garden destroyed or moved to a different location is not the same community garden. The centuries old villages destroyed by the tsunami will be difficult to rebuild in a short time and land contaminated by radiation from the still unfolding and worsening crisis at the nuclear power plants in Fukushima, Japan may not be usable for years, even decades. Soil, water  and community gardens are resources to be preserved and protected and not abused because of carelessness or for profit.

      A recently completed RWH system at the Belmont Little Farmers community garden in the Bronx 

Spring Energizing Events

This is the season for preseason community gardening conferences. A time for those new to community gardening to learn the skills they need to garden, organize, compost or distinguish between a pest and a beneficial insect. A time for experienced folks to share their knowledge, learn something new and be energized for the gardening season ahead. I think I've experienced all of these things.

I've had the pleasure of making rainwater harvesting presentations at a community gardening symposium on March 3rd with over 100 in attendance at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum in Morris County, New Jersey. The county and other counties and small towns have community gardens in areas that I would call suburban.  Community gardening is happening in these areas as much as in the urban centers of New Jersey like Newark, Trenton and Camden. The attendees were very interested in rainwater harvesting and many were making plans to capture rainwater in their gardens.

On Saturday, March 12th, we set up the GrowNYC rainwater harvesting display at Making Brooklyn Bloom, the annual gardening festival sponsored by Brooklyn GreenBridge, the outreach program of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I was almost hoarse after speaking practically non-stop for about 5 hours to folks who had rainwater harvesting systems in their backyards, front yards and community gardens. Others came by for advice on how to build new systems in their own yards or for others as a business. All kinds of people were talking sustainability, storm water management and green technologies. It made this early season event quite energizing.

Still to come is the GreenThumb GrowTogether an day long event attended by over 1000 community gardeners who attend workshops and gather information during the networking session. I will be leading 2 workshops, one on rainwater harvesting and one a hands on workshop where we will be making the recycled plastic planter bags that I have been using for vertical gardening.

I hope to have photos and video of the vertical gardening workshop. The rainwater harvesting workshop at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum was videotaped and will be available in some form soon which I will pass along when it is available. Happy Spring events!

Some Fun Pictures of Community Gardens

Crows lined up on a cable from the Brooklyn Bridge

repurposed into a railing in the 

Brooklyn Bear's Pacific Street Garden 

A steel plate remnant from a stamping factory 

now artwork in the Creative Little Garden

Glass bottles embedded in a pathway

 in the Diaz y Flores Garden

Rose and DEP water meter in the 

Brooklyn Bear's Pacific Street Garden

Water bill paid in Roses?

Rocking chair planter in 

a garden in St.Paul, Minnesota

(photo from 2006)

Eyes on the Street!?

Sculpture in

United We Stand / Sunflower Garden