• About

This Handcrafted Life

~ decorative painting, low-tech photography and paper craft

This Handcrafted Life

Tag Archives: gardens

Farewell, Sweet Little Gardens

02 Wednesday Oct 2013

Posted by ThisHandcraftedLife in black and white, cityscape, iPhone apps, landscape, Photography, Sketchbook Journal, Travel

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

alphabet city, art, east village, gardening, gardens, maps, new york city, photography, sketchbook

I finally closed on my new apartment, so I’ll be heading uptown later this week and moving in. One thing I’ll miss in the East Village is the plethora of community gardens. I thought it would be fun to sing a farewell love song to Alphabet City, an ode to the gorgeous oases that dot its streets. (If you don’t know where this area is, here’s a little help.)

I drew a map of the neighborhood’s community gardens. Look at them all. Amazing! Each is named. Some are over 35 years old.

GardensMap

When I first started wandering around the hood on my morning walks, I was surprised by the number of gardens. I’d never seen so many gardens in one area before, a number of them mature and substantial. After all, NYC real estate is valuable, and I wondered how these patches of community-supported soil had managed to stave off man’s irrepressible impulse to claim and build, not to mention the city’s ability to use “eminent domain” to seize any patch of earth it chooses.

AG:Willow

The story of the development of these gardens is long and rich. In the 1960s and 70s, this part of the city was deeply neglected, falling prey to crime and slumlords. A number of buildings were destroyed by arsonists. The city razed these buildings, leaving open land, and since the neighborhood was dangerous and destitute, there was no interest in rebuilding.

AG:Path

AB:picnic

In 1973, Liz Christy, an artist and activist, founded an environmental group called the Green Guerillas. They began by throwing “seed bombs” over the fences surrounding the lots, packed with seeds, fertilizer and water. She caught the attention of the city’s Parks Department, who leased her an empty lot on the corner of Bowery and Houston Streets for $1 a month. This became the Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden, the first community garden in the city. It eventually contained 60 vegetable beds and inspired a horticultural revolution.

AG:Windmill

In 1978, the GreenThumb program was born, which encouraged neighborhood groups to lease land parcels for sometimes as little as a dollar a year. This program was intended to encourage grassroots neighborhood revitalization and was wildly successful. The catch? The gardens created were considered temporary and the city still retained rights over the land. This concept hummed along nicely until the 1990s, when the city decided it wanted to sell some of the gardens to developers to shore up the budget. By this point, the gardens had become such an integral part of their neighborhoods that the prospect of losing them was unthinkable. This being New York, all hell broke loose.

AG:flowers

The Attorney General had to step in to broker a deal. One of the key players in that deal was Bette Midler, who, appalled at the lack of community green space in the city, had founded the New York Restoration Project a few years earlier. Her group bought 52 of the gardens outright. Of the 520 gardens in the city at that time, 400 were saved, many becoming permanent as part of the Parks Department.

AG:Dark

Today, NYC has about 640 community gardens scattered among the five boroughs, with about 60 clustered in the East Village and Lower East Side. The gardens boast 20,000 members; the gardens themselves make up about 32 acres. Wow! is all I can say. Each garden hosts events and workshops and all are open to the public.

The garden below is a tiny sliver of land, yet it explodes with greenery.

AG:corner

Each garden has its own sign.

AG:sign

A bonus of the gardens is that lucky apartment dwellers can look out their windows and instead of seeing other buildings, they see trees.

AG:Apts

Mural and garden and comfy bench! Does it get any better?

AG:Bench

Some gardens contain sculptures, decorative nicknacks, or someone’s latest creative installation.

AG:Goose

These lots once represented the detritus of a neighborhood under siege. It’s amazing to see how the concentrated work of determined visionaries was able to utterly turn around this devastation and from it, create not just a sense of community, but a vital part of the local culture that brings people together with a sense of purpose and joy.

AG:path2

Today, it’s thrilling to walk in Alphabet City and stumble on these lush pockets of green, welcoming anyone to sit down and take a deep breath. I’ll miss them on my morning walks, but I’ll be back often to wander among them again.

AG:pond

Manhattan’s Secret Gardens

02 Monday Apr 2012

Posted by ThisHandcraftedLife in iPhone apps, Photography

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

backyards, gardens, manhattan, secret gardens, townhouses

Image

One of the things that I like most about my job is seeing things that are hidden from public view: swanky apartments, crazy views of Central Park, the miles of corridors in the basements of buildings on the way to the service elevator. A burning question at any townhouse is, what’s in the backyard? Gardens are always inaccessible to the public, hidden away from any view except the neighbor’s windows.

This backyard is in the east 40’s. It’s unusual because the gardens of the townhouses all join together in an interconnecting maze full of stone sculptures and little iron gates. Imagine a warm summer evening, people drifting between the gardens, booze, music, everyone laughing, a big happy party. Here’s the same garden again, from another angle.

Image

The back yard below is on Perry Street in the West Village, another interconnected garden, this one without any fences or gates, a wild tangle of overgrown bushes and trees, a tiny 18th Century gravestone in one corner, with little cleared spots containing chairs and tables for a summer meal.

Image

Now we’re in the East 60’s, where you’d expect to see a posh formal arrangement, but we’re looking off a back balcony into the wilds of under-tended buildings, neglected and decayed. It feels like a deserted old house, overgrown and fading away.

Image

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 330 other followers

Come Join the Gang!

  • RSS - Posts
  • RSS - Comments

Recent Posts

  • Designing with Light: Gilding a Wall
  • Finding an Old Growth Forest in Manhattan
  • Color Matching Madness
  • Meandering Around Munich
  • Sketchbook: Why Cats Seem Indifferent

Top Posts & Pages

  • Inside Central Park: The Arcade at Bethesda Terrace
  • Paper Crafting with Italian Florentine Papers
  • How Do They Do That? Chinoiserie Wallpaper
  • How Do They Do That? Painted Woodgrain
  • How Do They Do That? Painted Strié Finishes

My Decorative Painting Website

Handmade Paper Craft in my Etsy shop

Tags

aluminum leaf architecture art Australia beach birds black and white black and white photography cat central park cityscape color matching craft crafting decorative painting decorative paper decorative papers diana camera drawing embroidery family history faux finish faux finishes faux finishing faux marble faux oak faux painting faux wood faux wood grain fine art florence food gardens gilding glazing handmade book handmade paper illustration interior design italy landscape long island manhattan marble marbling murals nature needlework new york new york city oak painted finishes painted marble painted oak painted wood painting paper craft photography pinhole pinhole camera pinhole photography plastic camera portrait portraiture sculpture sewing silkscreen sketch sketchbook strie sydney toy camera travel trompe l'oeil woodgraining

Categories

Archives

  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
Online Marketing
Add blog to our blog directory.

Blog at WordPress.com.

Privacy & Cookies: This site uses cookies. By continuing to use this website, you agree to their use.
To find out more, including how to control cookies, see here: Cookie Policy
  • Follow Following
    • This Handcrafted Life
    • Join 330 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • This Handcrafted Life
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...