Captured on my cellphone while riding the Q train to a candlelight service Sunday evening.
This art project was in disrepair for nearly 30 years. It’s only visible from the right side of the Manhattan-bound Q or B train while the train is moving.
Masstransiscope, Bill Brand
Bill Brand’s Project Blog
Update, Friday, December 5: Blog Widow John and I originally had reservations to fly down and visit my parents Wednesday, December 3, two days ago. Last Friday, while celebrating Thanksgiving with my sister and her family, I got the call that my Dad was back in the hospital, this time for the last time. His kidneys had failed and he was on palliative care, only oxygen and painkillers (hydromorphone/Dilaudid). My sister and flew down first thing the next morning; John joined us on Sunday. My father’s heart stopped at 5:15am on Monday, December 1.
I read this at his memorial service yesterday, December 4, the day after we had hoped to begin our visit. I should have introduced this as, “a reading from the Book of Jerry.” I was able to get through all of it without choking up until the very last line. I also read the eulogy I’ve been working on for months and finished during this hectic week.
He was a fan and regular reader of this blog, and wrote two other guest posts.
This is my father’s last, posthumous, guest post for this blog. The only edits here are for space, and one minor correction. I believe he wrote this in May of 2007, when his health and prognosis was already seriously downgraded. Still, he thought he might have years, not months, left.
Central display at his memorial service. The front of the chapel was filled with photographs and artifacts of his life.
I’m certain it’s true of all of us: as one approaches the end of life, we tend to review our lives and, perhaps, mend some broken fences or open the doors to reveal the family skeletons in our closets. In some cases, like mine, it is an attempt to get square with our Maker.
While disenchanted with the Holy Roman Catholic Church, I was too indoctrinated as a child to ever question the existence of God. Certain of the teachings of The Church I still hold to be absolute. Such as, the existence of Heaven and Hell. Not sure about Purgatory. It seems way too convenient to explain one of God’s great mysteries. Ah yes; the Sorrowful Mysteries and the Joyful Mysteries.
How convenient. [ala Church Lady]
Training and disillusionment have made me the believer I am today. That is, I believe in Heaven and believe I have never done anything bad enough to keep me from Heaven. I will go to Heaven. No question.
Now, about the details. How old will I be when I get to Heaven ?????
Will I be the age at which I pass this mortal realm only without the arthritis and other crap?
How about freezing me at one of the three greatest events in my life: my wedding and the births of my two children?
How long will it be before I get to meet God? He’s always very busy and there were billions before me.
I was promised a seat at His right hand. Maybe a glass of wine and a nice cigar.
I guess I will no longer need sustenance. Even so, will all my natural teeth come back? I get the idea, from paintings and such, that no one wears glasses in Heaven. If so, it is not a stretch to believe that all our ailments will be gone.
Okay, here’s a biggy: if I’m in that great physical condition . . . . what about (sh-h-h-h) S-E-X?? My wife will certainly be there so it’s legit. So we won’t be making baby angels. It’s still a privilege of marriage and He made it enjoyable.
What about the kids? What age will they be? If they continue to be healthy they might live way past the age at which I departed.
Socially, it’s a big tsimmis [fuss, bother]. Are we required to pay social visits to our 50,000 years worth of ancestors? Will Abraham even recognize me?
Conditions and environment. If the weather is always perfect, will I never again see a rainbow?
Mary and I like to travel. . . . .Where would we go?. . . . . Does one need a license to fish? . . . .What about the change of seasons? Do the trees change color in the Fall? Is there a Fall?
Music. There must be music in Heaven. After 10,000 years of Handel’s Messiah, will I be allowed to Rock and Roll? I would miss church bells and temple gongs if not available. And the sound of a train in the distance on a rainy night. . . . Rain?
Could we actually see the people on Earth and in Hell? I know I will have many, many friends in both places.
Some possible circumstances bother me. I know that my Agnostic friends will be shocked when they suddenly show up in your presence. They will be instant converts and therefore, probably a pain in the ass. All for the good. My Uncle converted from Lutheran to Catholic. My sister converted from Catholic to Jew. They were both real decent Human Beings and pains in the ass about religion.
BUT, how about my beloved Atheist friends? [Myself among them] Do they have a chance? They haven’t done harm to anyone and might have led otherwise exemplary lives. They just don’t believe in You. Will you give them the shock treatment like Agnostics with a chance to change? Or is it “get even” time where you thumb Your Nose and say “Nyahh-Nyahh” and open up the express Down elevator?
So much to learn. We’ll have to spend some time together, Lord, and work on the details.
I know my God has a sense of humor. He has often allowed me to poke fun at my religion at His expense.
But, just in case:
Oh my God I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, do penance and amend my life. Amen.
I really believe in this part.
What follows is the text of the eulogy I read at my father’s memorial this afternoon. I started writing it months ago. The first paragraph is a rewrite from my response to my father’s first guest post on this blog.
“To Dad, From Your Loving Family” My mother wants the roses. At least one of them will be dried for a memento box. The rest will be removed and worked into new arrangements for a nursing home.
I am grateful that I was able to have a relationship with my father. It wasn’t always so. There were decades of silence, and strained relations. I’m grateful that we both lived long enough to heal and grow, independently and together, to allow us to enjoy each other’s company. I’m grateful for the friendship we shared, as two grown men with a unique bond and shared history. I am also proud of him. I’m grateful that I’m able to feel all this, and know it, and celebrate it. And him.
I want to honor the complexity of my father’s life. My father was not a perfect man. I’m not proud of him because he was perfect. I’m proud of him because of how he grappled, throughout his life, with his imperfections, to become the man he always wanted to be. I was not proud of his alcohol dependence; I’m proud of his recovery from it. I was not proud of his homophobia. I’m proud that he overcame it so, that he accepted my partner, John, as his own son.
There is so much of him in me. We shared the same dark sense of humor. I thank him for my full head of hair. There is also our love of nature, animals and babies; love of science, engineering and computers, and space; love of photography, theater and music; the desire to connect with and contribute to our communities; and endless curiosity about the world. There’s so much of him in me, that it will be a long time before I can accept that we will never have another conversation, share another bad joke, exchange another email or photograph, share another hug.
Laurie Anderson said, “When my father died, it was like a whole library had burned down.” My image for this comes from the end of the film, “The Name of the Rose,” when the monastery tower goes up in flames. I feel like the monk, portrayed by Sean Connery in the film, staggering out of the smoke and ash, clutching a few smoldering volumes to his chest.
Stories:
Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008, 2008-12-01
How Old Will I Be?, 2008-12-04
Update 2008-12-04 11:26PM:It’s the end of a long day of a long week. We fly back home tomorrow. I am both anxious to be home, and dreading leaving, as it will be one more reminder of the finality of death.
The memorial service was today. I published my reading of my father’s writing, How Old Will I Be?, and my eulogy, as their own posts.
Update 2008-12-03 10:50AM: His obituary appears in today’s Asheville Citizen-Times and Hendersonvile Times-News, the text of which I’ve added below. The memorial service will be held tomorrow at 1pm at Thomas Shepherd and Sons; they’re hosting an online register on their Web site.
Holding the hand of my father on his deathbed at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina on Saturday, November 29, 2008. He was on palliative care, only oxygen and pain medication to keep him comfortable. Except for a brief moment of recognition later that Saturday, he was already gone. His heart stopped at 5:15am this morning, December 1, 2008, after prolonged illness.
This image was used to illustrate the online article, From Pain to Palliative Care in the WBUR radio documentary “Quality of Death, End of Life Care in America”.
He went into the hospital for the last time on Friday. He was never alone. My sister and I flew down first thing Saturday morning. Blog Widow John joined us last night.
I’ll be staying in North Carolina through the week. We’ll be making arrangements this afternoon for a local memorial service later this week.
Here’s my Mom and Dad on the porch at Woodfield Inn in October 2006. We celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary there in the Winter of 2007. This is how I prefer to remember him, one of the last few times he was relatively free of pain and discomfort.
No more pain, Dad. No more pain.
Some closing thoughts at the end of a long day. My eyes ache.
In his will, my father directed us that his body should be “cremated without ceremony and dispersed into any river in the United States at some date agreeable to living relatives. A memorial ceremony of a non-religious nature may be held at any time.” We arranged the details of that memorial this afternoon when we met with the funeral home.
Earlier this afternoon, I helped my mother compose this email, which she sent out to “all our friends and family” for whom we had email addresses at the ready.
Needed to communicate this way because of all we knew and loved. Sad news. Jerry passed away this morning at 5:15AM at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina; our children are here and helping me with everything.
He had many illnesses this year but the most important one was that his kidneys were failing and he couldn’t take dialysis because of his low blood pressure. He was in Mission from Friday til this AM with palliative care giving him pain medication; his legs were very bad and his pain was intolerable. [He was never alone. One of us was always with him. My mother stayed with him Friday night. I stayed with him Saturday night. My sister stayed with him last night.] Karen [my sister] was with him at the last minute and we had gone to a “McDonald” type house to rest nearby. [The Lewis Rathbun Center, a wonderful place. Our stay there was thankfully short.] She called and we got there about 2 minutes too late. He had a lucid moment on Saturday and recognized both Karen and Chris and even called them by name. [The “brief moment of recognition” I mentioned at the top of this post. He did look at me directly and call out my name. My mother and sister had stepped out; we called them back. It seemed to me that he also recognized my sister, but quickly fell away from us again.] He is at rest now and no more aches and pains.
We will have a memorial service this Thursday, December 4 at 1:00 pm at the Thomas Shepherd Funeral Home, 125 South Church Street, between 1st Avenue and Allen Street in Hendersonville, North Carolina. Per Jerry’s wishes, there will be no viewing; he will be cremated and his ashes will be scattered at a future date. There will be a notice and obituary in the Asheville Citizen-Times and the Hendersonville Times-News tomorrow and Wednesday.
In lieu of flowers, you may make a donation to the Mineral and Lapidary Museum of Henderson County, 400 North Main Street, Hendersonville, NC 28792. Their phone number is 828-698-1977. [My father was a founding member of the museum. Some of his contributions are in their display cases. He remained active to the end, as his health permitted.]
Hendersonville – Gerard “Jerry” Kreussling, 77, of Hendersonville, died Monday, December 1, 2008 at Mission Hospitals after a prolonged illness.
A native of Brooklyn, NY, he was a prior resident of Florida and New York where he was very active in community theaters before moving to Hendersonville 16 years ago; the place he chose to live. He is preceded in death by his sister, Patricia Rubak and his loving uncle, Emil Kreusling.
He served in the US Army from 1952 to 1954 and was employed with Grumman Aerospace for 37 years.
He was a founding member and volunteer for the Mineral and Lapidary Museum of Henderson County. He also was a member of the Henderson County Gem and Mineral Society, local photography clubs, and volunteered with the Henderson County Sherriff’s Department.
He was a loving, generous, humorous, and gregarious person and will be dearly missed.
He is survived by his loving wife of 52 years, Mary Kreussling; a son, Chris Kreussling and his partner, John Magisano of Brooklyn, NY; a daughter, Karen Provinzano and her husband, Mike of Brick, NJ; two granddaughters, Michaela and Cassandra Provinzano along with several nieces and nephews.
A memorial service will be held at 1 p.m. on Thursday at Shepherd’s Church Street Chapel with the Rev. John Magisano officiating.The family will receive friends immediately following the service at the funeral home.
In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be sent to:
The Mineral and Lapidary Museum of Henderson County, 400 N. Main St., Hendersonville, NC 28792.
Thos. Shepherd & Son Funeral Directors and Cremation Memorial Center is in charge of arrangement. An online register book is available at www.thosshepherd.com.
My father wrote two, and so far the only, guest posts for this blog. The third, “How Old Will I Be?”, was published posthumously the day of his memorial service.
How Old Will I Be?, December 4, 2008
Guest Post: The Man From B.R.O.O.K.L.Y.N., May 17, 2007
Guest Blogger, Parental Unit Y: Blogs and Bloggers, Golden Age, and Generational Differences, October 21, 2006
Eulogy, December 4, 2008
Give Thanks, Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2007
Woodfield Inn, Flat Rock, North Carolina, January 22, 2007
Some of my photos of my father [Flickr set]
Mineral and Lapidary Museum of Henderson County
Lewis Rathbun Center
Obituary and online Guest Book, Thomas Shepherd & Son Funeral Directors
Obituary, Asheville Citizen-Times, 2008-12-03
Obituary, Hendersonville Times-News, 2008-12-03
‘Fantasticks’: Charm Major Asset, Theatre Review, p. 7, SUNY Stony Brook Statesman, V.17 n. 88, July 11, 1974 [PDF], a review of the Theatre North performance at the Setauket Holiday Inn. My father played one of the fathers in the play.
The center hall of BBG’s landmarked Lab and Admin Building, decorated for the winter season in December 2007.
Admission to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden is free Tuesday through Friday (the grounds are closed closed Mondays, though offices are open) all Winter, from November 20 through February 29. Both the Native Flora Garden and Cranford Rose Garden are closed all Winter, but there’s still stuff happening to see.
Come January, the Witchhazels put on their show.
Check out the Bonsai Museum any time.
And this is the best time of year to enjoy the Japanese Garden in contemplative solitude.
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, December 2007
Brooklyn Botanic Garden, January 2008
Sunset Park neighbors and colleagues Best View in Brooklyn report that there is interest in developing unused MTA property into a community garden:
Some Sunset Park residents want to grow stuff…lots of stuff. You know, things like vegetables and flowers and green things. Despite there being several very active members of the Sunset Park Garden Club [which maintains gardens in Sunset Park itself], there is a desire and a need for a more typical community garden with plots and benches and composting.
– Sunset Park Wants a Community Garden, Best View in Brooklyn
They are meeting this Saturday, November 29, at 10:30 in front of the 9th Avenue subway station (D and M lines) in Sunset Park, just south of Greenwood Cemetery. There are vacant lots on either side of the station building, visible in this Google Maps Street View of the station.
View Larger Map
For more details, see the original post.
Sunset Park Garden Club Needs You!, May 19, 2008
Very carefully.
This huge, mature Ginkgo biloba tree is being relocated to make room for construction of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s new Visitor’s Center. The new building will open onto Washington Avenue and the parking lot BBG shares with the Brooklyn Museum, the building in the background in the photo above.
The muddy mess in the foreground used to be the Herb Garden, which is being revisioned as a “21st Century potager” which will be located along Flatbush Avenue, south of the rock garden. This shot shows more of the ground, including one of the old paths in the Herb Garden in the foreground.
Here’s a view from a different perspective, looking back toward the entrance from the parking lot. Here you can see the other three Ginkgos which must also be dealt with before construction can begin. These are going to be converted to lumber and other materials which will be incorporated into the new, green building.
It looked like this when I visited with the Brooklyn Blogade back in October. The Ginkgos are leafy and green in the background.
Here’s a closer view of the gigantic root ball. I first estimated it to be at least 12 feet across. Now I think it’s at least 20 feet across. Compare the width of the root ball to the four foot width of the 4×8 sheet of plywood lying on top of it.
BBG Ginkgo biloba mobile, 2008-11-11
BBG, 2008-11-15 (Flickr photo set)
Steven Earl Clemants. Credit: Brooklyn Botanic Garden
The botanical world – especially New York State, New York City, and Brooklyn – suffered a great loss recently. Steven Earl Clemants, Ph.D., Vice President of the Science Department of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Sunday, November 2, 2008. Funeral services were held last Friday, November 7. He was 54 years old.
I never met Steven, but I’ve known of his work. I’ve written about some of it on my blog. His contributions in several fields, including native plant conservation, invasive plants, and urban botany, are substantial. I can only summarize.
Dr. Clemants was Chair of the Board of the Invasive Plant Council of New York State. He was the Historian and past President for the Torrey Botanical Society, and Chair of the Local Flora Committee of the Long Island Botanical Society. He was a founder, coordinator and contributor for the New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF), which is documenting all the flora within a 50-mile radius of New York City. He was Codirector of the Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE), a collaboration between BBG and Rutgers University. He served on the Advisory Board and Atlas Committee of the New York Flora Association. He was a graduate faculty member of both Rutgers University and the City University of New York. He was also involved with the New York State Invasive Species Task Force, the Prospect Park Woodlands Advisory Board, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences, among many other efforts.
He was Editor-in-Chief of Urban Habitats, an open-science online journal dedicated to worldwide urban ecological studies. In addition to authoring and co-authoring numerous technical journals and articles, he was co-author, with Carol Gracie, of “Wildflowers in the Field and Forest: A Field Guide to the Northeastern United States.”
The Dr. Steven Clemants Wildflower Fund has been established to honor him. Steve’s widow, Grace Markman, is working with the Greenbelt Native Plant Center to plan a living memorial that will foster the planting of native wildflower species in New York City parks.
If you would like to donate to the Fund, there’s a PDF form to fill out and mail with your check. Email me at xrisfg at gmail dot com and I’ll send you the form. Make out your check to “City Parks Foundation” and mail it with the form to:
City Parks Foundation
c/o Greenbelt Native Plant Center
3808 Victory Blvd.
Staten Island, NY 10314
As an alternative, here’s an Amazon Associates link for the paperback edition of the Field Guide which Dr. Clemants co-authored. I will donate any proceeds I receive through this link to the Dr. Steven Clemants Wildflower Fund. The Field Guide is also available in both hardcover and paperback editions from BBG’s online store.
Web Resource: New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF), 2006-06-02
Steven Earl Clemants:
Center for Urban Restoration Ecology (CURE)
Invasive Plant Council of New York State
Long Island Botanical Society
New York Flora Association
New York Metropolitan Flora Project (NYMF)
Science Department, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Torrey Botanical Society
Urban Habitats
The Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Blog Widow and I both grew up in New York state. The annual spectacle of fall foliage never fails to leave us in awe. We usually try to make some kind of annual road trip out of the city to enjoy the foliage, but this year our schedules haven’t permitted it.
Friday we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It was my first chance to get there this season. It was psychedelic. It was hard to take a bad photo, but these are some of the best of more than a hundred shots I took during our few hours there. Hope you enjoy them as much as we enjoyed being there. All are best viewed at screen-filling enlargement in a dark room.
Cherry Leaves
View toward the Cherry Esplanade from the Cherry Walk.
Cherry Walk
Foliage, Japanese Maple
Hill, Japanese Garden
Pond, Japanese Garden
Cherry Leaf with Koi
Magnolia Plaza
Japanese Persimmon
Bonsai Museum
Bonsai, Ginkgo biloba
Bonsai, Acer palmatum
Beautyberry, Callicarpa bodinieri var. giraldii
Beautyberry, Callicarpa japonica ‘Leucocarpa’ 
Target Park, Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn
By my best estimate I have now visited 36 of Brooklyn’s community gardens, most of these from the three Brooklyn Community Gardeners Coalition (BCGC) Green With Envy (GWE) Tours I attended this year. This is just an introduction: there are over 200 community gardens in Brooklyn alone.
It’s become clear to me that the future of community gardens in Brooklyn, and throughout NYC, is not assured. They are facing renewed threats to their survival, to their identity as community gardens. Paradoxically, the systems set in place to protect community gardens may contribute to these threats.
Anne Raver’s Home & Garden column in the November 6, 2008 New York Times highlights these threats. She highlights two gardens – one in Jamaica, Queens, the other in Harlem, Manhattan. Both are owned by the New York Restoration Project. Both were recently overhauled by professional garden designers with hundreds of thousands of dollars of private funding.
Walter Hood, a California landscape architect, redesigned a community garden at the corner of Foch Avenue and 165th Street in Jamaica, Queens with $350,000 donated by G-Unity, the private foundation of Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent. The garden, once called the Baisley Park Community League Garden, is now known as the Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson Community Garden. $350Gs buys not only water collectors “shaped like martini glasses”, but naming rights.
Mr. Hood said he leapt at the chance to work with the New York Restoration Project. Community gardens have always been temporary spaces, “social actions by advocacy groups during times of need,” he said. “But when Bette Midler created this nonprofit and gave ownership to these spaces, they become this real thing.”
– Healthy Spaces, for People and the Earth, Anne Raver, New York Times, 2008-11-05
Excuse me?! In what way are community-run gardens not “the real thing”? Some of those “temporary spaces” have been in continuous operation as community gardens for four decades. How is it that only the arch touches of a professional designer and corporate sponsorship bestow “realness”? How insulting.
The American Community Gardening Association (ACGA, not to be confused with its antithesis, the American Corn Growers Association) defines a community garden as “any piece of land gardened by a group of people.” While inclusive, this definition is too broad to begin to characterize the challenges and threats to urban green spaces. My current frame for thinking about this defines three broad categories:
The official name of the green space in the photo that opens this post is “Target Community Garden.” Yes, that Target. Here’s what the New York Restoration Project, which owns this property, has to say about it:
For 15 years, this garden has been an important resource in improving the safety and quality of life in this Bedford-Stuyvesant community. A local elementary school and several families are currently involved in the maintenance of the garden. During 2004, these residents raised funds to support the site’s use for gatherings, workshops, and as a learning garden by neighborhood school children.
Target is generously supporting the restoration of the garden and selected nationally acclaimed garden designer and horticulturist Sean Conway to provide the garden design. Since 1998, Conway has helped to create the garden centers in Target stores and also designed the gardens at the Target corporate headquarters in Minneapolis. He has also been a frequent guest on Martha Stewart Living and is the co-executive producer and host of Cultivating Life on PBS.
– Target Community Park
The corporate sponsorship is part of the design. If the logo on the entrance sign didn’t catch your eye:
the corporate colors and logo incorporated into the privacy screen bordering the lounging plaza assert dominion over the space:
In some sense, this is still a garden. It has flowering plants, a lawn, places to gather. However, in no way can it be called a community garden. Is it reasonable to still call something a community garden when it has been completely redesigned and rebuilt with $250,000 of corporate sponsorship? Even the garden’s designer is corporate, which explains why it feels more like the “Target corporate headquarters in Minneapolis” than a community garden.
The few remaining gardening plots have been relegated to the worst possible location: huddled against the north side of an adjacent building to the south of the space, completely shaded except during the morning and evening hours of the the long days of summer.
The community was involved in setting priorities for the design. I can accept that they got what they asked for. The community enjoys the rewards this space provides. They have a space which is open all day for the enjoyment of all residents. People come and gather and interact. This is a village green, a town square.
However, the community is not involved in its upkeep, except in minimal ways. It is no longer effectively “gardened by a group of people.” It’s open to anyone, even those with no hand in its making. That’s a good thing (with apologies to Target’s other corporate personality), but that’s what makes it a park, and not a garden.
The other garden described in Raver’s article has also received the Target touch from corporate consultant Sean Conway:
It would be hard to miss the Target East Harlem Community Garden on East 117th Street, just east of First Avenue. The garden, designed by Mr. Conway and completed in early October, greets the visitor with a forest of steel poles sporting bright red disks. All that’s missing from those circles is a bull’s-eye.
“That would have been too over the top,” he said in a recent conversation from his home in Tiverton, R.I. Mr. Conway, who stars in a PBS show, “The Cultivated Life,” and designs outdoor furniture for Target, noted that “those circles were a little bit of a nod” to the company, which provided $300,000 to build the garden in a vacant lot.
Really? Over the top? This makes at least two corporate parks Mr. Conway has now created for Target out of what once were community gardens. NYRP has already redesigned 30 of its 50 gardens, and has plans to do another dozen, leaving only 8 gardens untouched. If there’s any community left when they’re done, it will be unrecognizable, hidden behind corporate swag.
In Brooklyn, most community gardens are held by one of the following:
There are a handful of other holdings, including those on private property, but most spaces identified as community gardens in Brooklyn are held by one of these three.
In the bad old days, then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani placed many of the city’s community gardens on the chopping block, as city-owned “vacant” land to be sold at auction for “development.” The Trust for Public Land stepped in and bought many of these properties.
Bette Midler also came to the rescue:
Celebrated entertainer Bette Midler founded the nonprofit New York Restoration Project (NYRP) in 1995 in the belief that clean, green neighborhoods are fundamental to the quality of life, and that every community in New York City deserves an oasis of natural beauty. Seeing many parks and open spaces in dire need of cleanup and restoration, Ms. Midler created NYRP to be the “conservancy of forgotten places,” particularly in New York City’s underserved communities.
NYRP quickly raised millions of dollars and bought threatened properties outright, preserving them as gardens. 13 years later, NYRP wields tremendous clout; their 2006 financial statements show over $8million net assets, and over $8M annual revenues. That’s a lot of money, and NYRP is under pressure from its sponsors to spend it somewhere, preferably with visible results. This means NYRP is landscaping and redesigning gardens, even when the community is not asking for it.
As more and more community gardens receive professional treatment, the communities of those gardens become less involved in their design and upkeep. Target Park is just an extreme example. The garden, the physical place, is taking precedent over the intangible associations of the hearts, minds, sweat and tears of neighbors working together to build community. With less community investment, gardens slide ever more toward becoming parks for passive enjoyment, and away from providing opportunities for people to dig, get their hands dirty, and connect with our birthright to nurture and grow green, living things.
[bit.ly]
Green With Envy (GWE) 2008 Tour III of Bed-Stuy Community Gardens
Map of Community Gardens after the settlement, Gotham Gazette
Bringing Peace to the Garden of Tranquility, Land & People, Fall 1999, Trust for Public Land
Community Gardens Memorandum of Agreement, September 17, 2002 (PDF)
Timeline of NYC community gardens
New York’s Community Gardens: A History, TreeBranch Network
History of the 6th and B Garden in the East Village, Manhattan
The Community Garden Movement: Green Guerillas Gain Ground, NYC Department of Parks & Recreation
Green Guerillas: New York City’s Community Gardens, EcoTipping Points Project
Healthy Spaces, for People and the Earth, Anne Raver, New York Times, 2008-11-05
Target Community Park, New York Restoration Project
GreenThumb NYC