The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden, Brooklyn’s (and NYC’s!) newest community garden

Posted on 2008-09-16 by admin

Completed raised bed frames, ready for filling and planting, on August 24, 2008

Brooklyn’s newest community garden broke ground at the beginning of July. We planted for the first time two weeks ago. Planning for the garden began at least as early as the Winter of 2007, when I first became involved.

The Flatbush CommUNITY Garden is a project of Sustainable Flatbush. The Garden is located at 1522 Albemarle Road, at the intersection of Buckingham Road, on property generously loaned to the Garden by the owner.

All 16 plots are already allocated for this season. As Brooklyn’s newest community garden, we are still working out our membership procedures. We hope to have these finalized by the end of the year. Announcements for future meetings, and procedures for new members to join, will be posted on the Sustainable Flatbush Web site when they are available.

Site visit, Sunday, June 1, 1008

The mission of the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden is to create space for a diverse group of neighbors to establish a community-led organic garden; to grow fruits, vegetable, herbs, and flowers, and create a multi-cultural, interactive, empowering space that fosters unity and pride within the community while supporting healthy eating and local sustainable agriculture. An additional goal of this program is to promote sustainable gardening and farming practices throughout the neighborhood, especially on publicly accessible land that is currently underutilized. Our gardens will serve as visible examples of sustainability practices such as rainwater harvesting, water-efficient landscaping, composting, and permaculture.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Say “Weeeeds!”

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Friday, August 29, 2008

Picking up compost from the Fresh Kills Composting Site on Staten Island

Links

Sustainable Flatbush: Community Garden, Projects 2008, and Flickr photo set

Brooklyn Bear’s Carlton Avenue Garden, Fort Greene, Green With Envy Tour, II.10

Posted on 2008-08-19 by admin

The Green With Envy Tour II at the Brooklyn Bear’s Carlton Avenue Garden in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

The final stop on the Green With Envy Tour II was the Carlton Avenue site of the Brooklyn Bear’s Gardens.

Check the links below for photos from the other stops on both Tours I and II. And watch for announcements for the next Green With Envy Tour, which I’ll post on this blog.

Street Entrance

This garden had the most-developed and luxuriantly planted streetscape of any community garden I’ve seen. This has a big impact even when the garden is closed.

Approaching the garden from the north, the first thing you notice is the three story mural painted on the side wall of the adjacent building.

Here’s a closer look.

As you get closer, the streetside planters demand your attention.

In the planter to the left of the entrance are the silver-white flowering bracts of mountain-mint, Pycnanthemum muticum. I recognized it because I grow the same species in my backyard native plant garden. In this garden as well as my own, at this time of year they are swarming with multiple species of bees, flies, and wasps, all important pollinators of food crops.

Opposite, to the right of the entrance, is another planter with a different design. Asymmetrical plantings like these entrance planters maximize the massing possible with a given plant palette. The greater variety of plants provide for longer, and more varied, blooms. All of these are strategies to attract both plant pollinators and insect predators close to the garden’s growing areas.

Every garden has a “garden is open” sign. This one includes several imperatives.

More ornamental plantings, including several mature trees, lie inside the fence.

Common Areas

The garden is built on a slope. The raised beds form terraces built into the hillside. This photo is the best I got to show this. I’d like to see this garden in the winter.

The picnic area, which appears in the opening photo, is part of the gathering area at the low side of the garden.

Composting

The mandatory composting area. This triple-bin arrangement was the most common. These weathered bins are still on the job. Signs moved from bin to bin let gardeners and visitors know where to add fresh material, and where they can obtain compost for use in their beds.

Glam

Marigold

Monarda

Achillea

Coreopsis

The Greene Garden, Fort Greene, Green With Envy Tour, II.9

Posted on 2008-08-12 by admin

Green With Envy Tour at the Greene Garden in Fort Greene, Brooklyn.

The Greene Garden is a shady green space across the street from Fort Greene Park. When I saw this, I imagined the wonderful shade gardens that could be created here.

There are no growing areas, just common areas for socializing, and relaxing, interconnected by wandering paths.

The gazebo is really nice. In my long-term vision for integrating the rear of my house with the backyard garden, I imagine something like this at the corner of a back porch, providing an entrance from the driveway and garage at the rear of the property onto the porch and access to the rear of the house.

This garden is a work in progress.

No glam in this garden, yet. It has the potential to become a showcase shade garden. Meanwhile, there some artificial color is scattered about.

Clifton Place Block Association Community Garden, Green With Envy Tour, II.7

Posted on 2008-08-11 by admin

Green With Envy Tour at the Clifton Place Block Association Community Garden in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Planting areas

The usual raised beds, but laid out in an unusual manner, almost mazelike.

Here’s a view from the street entrance area.

Here’s a view from inside, near the rear of the garden.

A hint of the maze.

Composting

They had some brand-new, still-shiny compost bins.

Glam

Are we sick of sunflowers, yet? I hope not.

Bee on Sunflower

Kale. Almost looks good enough to eat. Almost.

Moss on Rock

I know, you’re sick of Echinacea by now. But it’s hard to take a bad shot of them. They reward close inspection.

And the bees like them some Echinacea, too.

Lily. As fragrant as it looks.

Classon FulGate Block Association Garden, Green With Envy Tour, II.6

Posted on 2008-08-10 by admin

Green With Envy Tour at the Classon FulGate Block Association Garden in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

Classon FulGate was the oldest community on the tour, possibly the oldest in Brooklyn. The unusual name derives from its location: Classon Avenue between Gates Avenue and Fulton Street. It’s been in operation for more than four decades, under the guidance of this man, whose name I cannot recall. I’m better with plants than people.

Street Entrance and Common Areas

Street entrance

Most of the common area is located at the rear of the garden, beneath the only tree. As you can see in the opening photo, the shade was a welcome relief, as were the refreshments at this stop.

A community mural depicting residents of the block covers the back wall. The smaller portraits along the top of the wall depict deceased residents.

Growing Area

Nearly all the space of this comparatively small garden – the area of two townhouses – is devoted to growing food crops.

The growing beds are sunken rather than raised, relative to the central path. Everything is grown in impeccably neat rows in one of two large communal growing areas, one on each side of the path.

Glam

Watermelon leaf

Bee on Canna

Marigold

Zinnia

Hibiscus syriacus, Rose-of-Sharon

Hollenback Community Garden, Clinton Hill, Green With Envy Tour, II.5

Posted on 2008-08-08 by admin

The Green With Envy Tour gets an explanation of the water collection system at the Hollenback Community Garden.

Skipping over stop #4 (we’ll wrap that up with some other short stops at the end), we come to Hollenback Community Garden, stop #5 on Tour 2 of the Green With Envy tour of Brooklyn community gardens. Hollenback is another large community garden. They have the largest and most sophisticated rainwater collection system I’ve seen yet. They have an community composting program. They provide multiple channels for folks to contribute, including their so-far-unique composting toilet.

Street Entrance and Common Areas

Compared to the lush Prospect Heights Farm, in this garden, the common areas near the entrance are spartan.

Ornamental plantings line the paths leading into and through the heart of the garden.

Composting

I was impressed with the scale of these open silos, and the temperatures they achieved.

Each silo was carefully labelled.

And monitored.

The silos were out in the middle of the garden. They had a sweet aroma. There was another composting area, located in the rear of the garden, as is more common.

The finished material is beautiful.

This custom-made compost-mobile is an important element in their collection system. They partner with the GreenMarket, NYC’s farmers’ markets, at Fort Greene Park. They have drop-offs there on the days the Greenmarket operates. They load up garbage cans in the front crate and pedal them back to the garden for composting.

They also have garbage cans at the entrance, just inside the gate, where neighbors can come by and drop off their kitchen scraps even when the garden is not open.

Composting Toilet

This high-end outhouse addresses all the concerns you might have about a composting toilet. There was absolutely no odor around or in this, even when they opened the “basement” lid so we could take a look at the “nightsoil” they’ve collected so far.

The woman on the left seems not so sure of the whole setup.

This sign reminded me of the scene in 2001 regarding the zero-G toilet.

Beneath the base is the finished product. The lid is necessary for periodic maintenance, mainly raking and leveling out the, um, “material”, as well as eventually harvesting the compost. The black lid on the left covers another trap for removing excess liquid. The gray box and white plumbing provide ventilation.

Water Collection

Massive tanks collect water off the flat roof of the adjacent brownstone.

This big “U” trap behind the main tanks is an important part of the system. It collects the initial flush of water off the adjoining roof, which will have the most airborne contaminants. Only when the trap fills does the flow begin filling the tanks. The trap can be drained independently of the tanks.

Glam

Bee on Sunflower.

Very familiar, some kind of Hibiscus, but I can’t place it.

Echinacea and Bee

Rose

Elephant Garlic, I think

Gomphrena

Hollyhock in bud

Links

Hollenback Community Garden

Prospect Heights Community Farm, Prospect Heights, Green With Envy Tour, II.3

Posted on 2008-08-08 by admin

The Green With Envy Tour at the Prospect Heights Community Farm.

All the common patterns were present in this garden, writ large:

Common areas of ornamental plantings at the street entrance
Raised beds with individual planting areas, mostly devoted to food crops
Composting area

And something else in this garden that we’ll see more of later: rain-water harvesting.

Street Entrance and Common Areas

Nearly every garden has a charming, hand-painted “The Garden Is Open” placard that sits out on the sidewalk and invites passersby in.

Regular open hours are almost always also posted at the entrance. I think this is a requirement for gardens operated by the Trust for Public Land, locally represented by the Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust.

Step inside, and you’re enveloped by the lushness of the garden.

At the rear of this garden is another common area for composting, tool storage, and relaxing in the shade.

Individual Plots

Composting

Demonstrating another common pattern, this production line arrangement of sturdy, uniform bins helps organize the work, minimizes the need to move heavy compost around, and keeps a steady flow of materials moving through the system.

Water Collection

The fact that something different is going on inside is announced by this big sign at the entrance.

This is the beginning of the water collection system, so well-camouflaged I almost walked past it. The downspout from the adjacent building is on the left, the storage tank is on the right.

This all leads to some serious tankage.

Glam

Just ’cause it’s not all compost and rainwater.

Echinops

Rudbeckia

Sunflower, detail

There were several chairs and benches placed in the shade of common areas, painted in bright colors, and adorned with a hand-painted, smiling sun.

Shed Door, detail

St. Mark’s Avenue Community Garden, Prospect Heights, Green With Envy Tour, II.2

Posted on 2008-08-05 by admin

The Green With Envy Tour at the St. Mark’s Avenue Community Garden in Prospect Heights, July 26, 2008.

Biking was definitely the preferred mode of transportation on this tour. I don’t have a bike, so my feet and legs got a workout.

As soon as we arrived, our hostess proudly informed us that the garden was not only a butterfly sanctuary, but a praying mantis sanctuary.

Emptied egg case on the front gate

In the flesh.

This photo illustrates a pattern realized by many of the community gardens we visited: a common area, just inside the entrance, comprised largely of ornamental plantings. This is part of the “community” aspects of these gardens: putting your best face forward makes both the street and the garden more inviting, and helps keep good relations with the neighbors.

Seating in common areas.

I was charmed by this child-scaled seat composed of salvaged building materials.

Stepping past the threshold you come to the raised beds with vegetables.

Here’s a detail of that window visible in the photo above. A church is next door.

The ubiquitous composting area was located at the rear of this garden, furthest from the street, another common pattern. I wonder what all the rear-yard neighbors think of this arrangement.

Glam shots.

Squash leaf.

Nasturtium.

Solenostemon (Coleus)

Wasp on Dill.

Tour Brooklyn community gardens this Saturday, July 26

Posted on 2008-07-24 by admin

El jardin esta abierto / The garden is open

This is a reminder that the second leg of the Green With Envy Tour of Brooklyn community gardens is this Saturday, July 26. Tour Two kicks off at 10am from the Brooklyn Bear’s Pacific Street Garden, in the triangle at the intersection of Flatbush Avenue and Pacific Street in Park Slope, near the Atlantic Avenue station.

This is an opportunity to hear about the history of Brooklyn’s community gardens, speak with gardeners at each of the gardens, and learn how they organize and operate.

I posted 160 photos from Tour One two weeks ago. Tour Two promises to be just as extensive and interesting.

Pacific Street Brooklyn Bear’s Garden at Flatbush Avenue
St. Marks Avenue Blk. Assn. Community Garden btwn Carlton & Vanderbilt
Prospect Heights Community Farm, St. Marks btwn Vanderbilt & Underhill
Fulton Revival Garden, Vanderbilt at Gates
Hollenback Community Garden, Washington btwn Gates & Greene
Classon Ful-gate Community Garden, Classon btwn Fulton & Gates
Clifton Place Community Garden, Grand btwn Clifton & Greene
Pratt/Clinton Hill Community Garden, Hall St at DeKalb
The Greene Garden, DeKalb at Portland
Carlton Avenue Brooklyn Bear’s Garden between Fulton & Greene

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Sunday, July 20, 2008

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Friday, August 29, 2008

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