Lotus Garden: Secret Garden Tour Pt. 1

I snuck home last weekend for the Secret Garden Tour and visited two amazing places. So I decided they each deserved their own post (And then I'd feel less nuts about all the writing I'm doing. Or more nuts?)

The Lotus Garden is on the Upper West Side which is like a foreign country. I'm a downtown girl, if you know what I mean. The townhouses and condominiums of Central Park West through to Riverside Drive are completely alien to me. They're full of rich people, you guys! What's interesting about The Lotus Garden is it's completely ornamental and this was a stipulation of its existence. The garden had originally been a ground floor community garden and when it was ripped up for Columbia to develop another building they had enough sway to demand reconstruction. Now the garden is elevated over the new building's parking garage, but growing vegetables was banned as it was considered 'low rent'. Why would you need to grow food when you can buy it?

I don't mean this as a criticism of the garden. Frankly, it's totally beautiful and well maintained and verdant etc. I just find it pretty fascinating how people's attitudes about home gardening have been reflected in the landscape. Upstate now I've noticed that depending on the neighborhood you're driving through many people have started to have vegetable gardens (or continued to if they never had any snobbery about it). Will there come a time when Lotus Garden needs to grow vegetables? Since I'm not usually that interested in ornamental gardens, especially the shaded hosta filled variety I spent a lot of time thinking about that as we toured around.


Members of the garden have a key to let themselves in and not many open hours. That plus the fact it's up a locked staircase on top of a private parking garage means it's a secret garden indeed. The Lotus Garden is also run solely by volunteers and to register as a non-profit they'd need to be open at least 20 hours a week which would be pretty challenging. I wasn't clear from listening if they need more members or money or what...but I guess being a non-profit they could then apply for grants and then get more members and then more money.... wahhh! How confusing the access to park and growing space is in New York! I heart community gardens but they need to become less rarefied and more inclusive if they want to survive. Probably not the Lotus Garden though. Their roots run deep.

They have trees standing twenty feet high and a koi pond whose ancestors probably pre-date my birth. The people who met us there, with cider and crisp apples from the farmer's market as a gift, were gracious and incredibly committed. Carolyn Summers showed off her miniature garden, tiny Hen and Chicks planted in the gravel, baby hostas and ferns stunted by the pots shortening their roots and hidden carefully under ground. It's kind of fascinating how people take pride in what they grow and what they choose to grow and why. With space limitations she made her plot a museum of the small. I could never grow a garden like that...but wouldn't it be incredible if everyone had a little space to see what they'd sow?

You can visit The Lotus Garden from 1-4 every Sunday April-November on W. 97th between Bdwy and West End. Thanks to Huong for photos!

The Secret Garden Tour/ I Love Plants Like Whoa

Someone recently said, "Your posts are so long!" without adding "And really interesting..." so here's a pretty short and sweet and matter of fact one for ya. Ya knows who ya is.

This summer I met two lovely people, Colin and Huong. They're artists and though I'm not sure about what kind of objects they make (if only objects qualify) they certainly know how to throw a party. Frankly, there is an artistry to that I greatly admire. Many fun times were had but this fun time in particular took place on their Secret Garden Tour. Colin has assured me it's not really a secret so I am at liberty to divulge. They've been developing the tours all summer and this particular one brought us to two very diverse examples of community growing.

Damn. I typed a whole bunch and then my computer shut itself down and it was all lost. There's a lesson in here somewhere but for who?

Let me regroup. THE FIRST PLACE WAS...Red Shed Community Garden on Kingsland Ave. and Skillman. They have a willow and fig tree, a shed, and a grill that they started to fire up at the smallest hint we'd be staying a while. Didn't bring anything to bbq though unfortunately. This garden is very reminiscent of a community garden I grew up next to in the East Village run by Open Road. I had a plot there which still remains. I planted a tree in it so they can't dismantle it. Cherries!

Anyway, at Red Shed there are the locals who've been living in the neighborhood and nearby projects for ever and there are the gentrifying intruders. As a visitor I can only say that things seem friendly. They have community plots and personal ones with lots of fruits and vegetables growing. Eggplants were flourishing when we were there and mosquitos. The keep extra bug spray in the shed.

Our second stop on the tour was Rooftop Farms on Eagle St. in Greenpoint. Rooftop is run by Annie Novak and Ben Flanner and they've been getting a lot of attention this year because they've taken the idea of a green roof and turned it into a working farm. The roof's owner wanted to install a green roof and Annie was called in to figure out how to make it all work. We talked for awhile before the tour started and it seems like that's what she does circling the world, stopping at farms and meeting challenges in growing. As she said several times in different ways, "I love plants like, whoa."

Rooftop sells their produce and welcomes volunteers. They're hoping to make the farm work as a viable option for other buildings around the city. The installation is quite expensive but since then she says they've been farming as cheaply as possible. With time the produce will begin to pay for itself and make up the original cost.

We walked down the rows of tomatoes, carrots, squash, beans, fresh herbs, melons and Annie told us about the different plants and their composting system. They also have two bee hives (!) and are growing hops up the side of one of their walls.


Now, I'm not a farmer. But I do love plants like...well, like something. What was especially exciting about the tour was the feeling that hey, you want to grow things, grow them! You want to start a community garden, start one! You want a farm, build it on the roof!

So how about it? Anyone want to start a community garden with me?

The next Secret Garden Tour is this coming Saturday Sept 12th starting at 2 PM at The Lotus Garden then going on to the Waterpod at Concrete Plant Park. If you can't come then find another time to visit either place (the Waterpod in particular looks cool as shit) or hell, just go to your nearest community garden and sit back on a bench. Enjoy the last warm days of September as the harvest comes rolling in. Think what you'll plant next year. Imagine it grow.

April is the Cruelest Month...and May Through August

Statistically speaking I dropped off this whole blogging thing at about the right time. Half a year and I checked out. I can go on about the reasons why I did but what's more interesting are the reasons why I'm writing again, which will hopefully not be just another whim. But hey, who knows? Life is long and full of impediments.

Let us take a journey back to April then, that far flung month of Fools and sudden flurries. It was wet, it was cold but Spring had reached out to tap our shoulders and say, "Hey, wait up I'm coming! Don't go without me!" I looked out at the sagging broken bits of my garden and thought, Let's do this thing. Earth was turned, leaves composted, cement swept and the great Craigslist search began. First to build a garden box you need wood and free wood is the best kind.

My roommate Claire and I met up on a desolate street a hair's breadth from Red Hook then followed a strange woman into her warehouse, using a flash light to pick through her debris and find chunks of wood of an approximate size to one another. They were all different finishes, some actual lumber, some just the hacked up drawers of an old bureau, some were lined mysteriously with cloth that no force on earth (barring industrial solvents) could remove. We bungeed what we could to the back of Claire's bike and the rest on a tiny black hand cart and walked the forty or so blocks to our house, with the weight of the wood tipping their conveyances over every ten feet or so. Tenacious C, as I like to call her, urged me on as my shoulders separated and we finally made it, April wind whipping our faces and the clouds rolling over.

Aw, look at this photo. I'm so glad my Nalgene is pictured here. I lost it a few weeks ago at a yoga studio. Never forget!!


When we finally got to hammering all this garbage together we noticed our boxes were perfectly coffin sized, if you were being buried 150 years ago in the Old West.


There was one for me as well but I like the power to the workers tone of Claire's pose here with the hammer and all.

Hmm, now we have boxes. Where to find dirt? Until you need large amounts of it at once you assume dirt is the most readily available commodity out there. I mean everywhere I look I see dirt, right? But no. Craigslist again! This time it lead us to a bar on Fifth Ave. where the proprietor had been digging out his basement, hoping to make the ceiling a habitable distance from the floor. One day it will be a music venue but that particular day it looked like where we were going to be murdered. It didn't help that in the corner sat two hundred partially filled black garbage bags under a caged bare bulb. These turned out to be full of dirt, not body parts, and we started hauling them up the perilously steep basement staircase. Another surprise about dirt-it's pretty fucking heavy! It took the both of us to manage certain bags and when we peaked in one we saw why. This wasn't loamy compost full of rich organic matter. This was red silt, the clay earth of old Brooklyn sitting under the pressure of a building for a hundred years. Not entirely sure anything would even grow in it we loaded down a friend's car until it sagged and drove the bags home to go through another back breaking session of moving them down the long alleyway to our apartment.

Now the fun part! Slashing the bags with a razor blade filled me with glee. Because I'm deranged. Claire upended our compost bin over the red clay, ignoring un-composted bits like corn husks and what we'd just eaten for lunch, assuming it would all work itself out in the end. We mixed the two together hoping to create a hospitable environment for our seeds.

And such seeds. I had it all worked out. I was gonna grow a whole season's worth of food and have enough to can and jar, freeze and dry, and subsist on all winter. I dreamed big, baby. Tomatoes, snap peas, kale, carrots, green onions, potatoes (Including the purple Magic Mollies I'd hoarded in a paper bag all year. When I reached my hand in to get them I shrieked. Their eyes had sprouted and the stems caressed me like antennae), strawberries, five kinds of basil, rosemary, thyme, beets. All of these I planted in peat lined trays and covered carefully with clear plastic. I worried over them like a mother. A negligent, inconsistent mother but somehow they sprouted. I built a trellis over the boxes out of old silkscreen frames for the climbing peas and sat back waiting to reap what I'd sown.

Then the blow! My landlord wanted my house, Tenacious C was moving out and I had to find a new place to live all of which is a saga for another day. I suffered in a few ways, throwing out most of my personal belongings, losing money etc. But the hardest thing was saying goodbye to my garden that I had planted and tended in good faith and which now was reduced to a charge from my landlord. Removal. He trashed it all. All our work in a dumpster just like that.

That's assuming he didn't just charge me and keep the beds in his new yard anyway, which I'd really be glad to hear.

So here I am, in upstate New York again, a part of the world that first inspired me to begin writing about food and the outdoors and growing things. And I said this was going to be a post about why I've started writing again not why I stopped but it seems they're the same story, really. I stopped because my garden was taken away before it could be anything and I'm starting again because writing about food and life and plants brings it back to life, allows it to stretch its tendrils out and climb that trellis where it can unfurl and bear fruit.

Metaphorically, I mean. Because it's actually in a landfill now.

Seeds

This summer I neglected my garden. I was away in other people's gardens and had no time for things like weeding or watering. The sun was there doing its thing. Sometimes the clouds would part. That's it.

Of course upon my return the place looked like ass. Nothing had been transplanted on time and all the herbs were sadly strangled in their pots, by their own roots no less. And yet...things grew.
Nature-what a crazy bitch she is.

So here was the total:

Six tomatoes, a handful of beets, and enough beans to replant them next spring. There were also enough basil leaves to flavor a mixed drink. Speaking of which there's a lot of mint growing randomly around, so mojitos for everyone! I have grand plans for next year. There's going to be a pea place (where I grow peas) and troughs of Magic Mollies. There will be strawberries (we have a few in a big yellow tub now but my mouth didn't harvest any) galore and chickens. Chickens.


There is a chance it will all fall to ruin again. That's the chance everyone takes any time they attempt something positive because unlike things that are bad for you doing something good for you is hard work. Diets, exercise, educating yourself, being nice to people... All practically impossible!! At least this is what we're conditioned to believe. Eating organic is too expensive, shopping from local growers is too complicated, eating healthy is too boring, recycling is a waste of time, no one can remember to take canvas bags to the grocery store don't bother, nothing you plant will ever grow.

My garden marched on without me much as the planet will march on without humanity once we've wiped ourselves off it. But if I'd done a little more with it, some weeding for instance, we could have supported each other! No one would have to be wiped off anyone's face. I'm trying to say that you can work with nature or you can ignore it-guess which action turns out better? It's not a perfect analogy since my garden's decline isn't causing climate change but you get it.

Personally I'm not very active on the doing things for the planet front but I've noticed my awareness and interest has increased with every seed I plant. Every seed. We have a compost bin so now I don't throw organic waste into the garbage (for anyone holding their breath to find out what happened with my almost full compost bin, one day Claire just picked it up and dumped the whole thing over a garden bed. It had actually turned to dirt! Didn't need that help line after all) and I reuse bags and recycle and buy organic and am trying to just buy local (if only Europe didn't make such awesome cheese) and these are all pitiful small things, seeds if you will, that hopefully will grow into something more, with time. But only if I put in a cultivating hand. Mmm, mixed metaphors are delicious. Like Mojitos.

I guess what I'm saying (and reminding myself of) is even though a seed looks small and insignificant, plant it because it's amazing what it can produce.

The Mosquitos! Oh God, The Mosquitos!

This weekend I helped my pals Ella and Pete weed their new garden. After five years of living in a boxy little place with many tiny rooms and no sunlight they moved to farther afield pastures, a place equipped with a back yard.

I'd heard about it, I'd seen pictures but I still wasn't mentally prepared for the horror show. While I was fantasizing about going with Ella to pick out chickens and a pygmy goat I ignored the reality of how much work rehabilitating an overrun garden would be. I'll say right now I didn't contribute much to the process. Mostly I drank beer, swatted mosquitoes and identified the one plant they didn't want to rip out of the ground. Hibiscus. Someone who lived there long ago loved hibiscus and it's sprouted up in tall shrubby trees everywhere. What a fun kind of archeology to look back and see what meant something to someone who existed there, what made their heart sing to see blooming on a bright summer morning. Coincedentally, I found a used condom next to it's wrapper. It was a Magnum.

There are three levels of hell to this yard and it's only in the back where the ivy has completely taken over that you can really appreciate the extent of the neglect. The fence tappers off except for where its remnants are bound together by an old hospital bed frame and rusty rake head. The back is where we also found the source of the mosquitoes. Seriously, I know it's fall and that's when they like to have their last hurrah but it was like a plague. All day into the evening they swarmed and followed us around from one room to the next. Killing them and measuring the blood streak was a crowd pleaser. The breeding was going on in an abandoned dog crate filled with water and larvae and fear. Around the crate were a few toys, a bowl and a broken chain. It's only a matter of time before they find the dog.

But you know what? I'm jealous. I have my lovely little yard but I've had to build most of my garden boxes. There's no helpful ground to throw compost on, just our alarmingly full bucket. As 'we' raked over the earth iridescent worms squirmed hysterically back into the soil. There's life there, potential for growth and lots of nutrients from all the buried dog carcasses. One day, if they can maintain their current crusade, Ella and Pete are going to have someplace beautiful to grow tomatoes and herbs and a pygmy goat. Of course, Ella's mom came down with hives from something that may or may not be poison ivy out there and Pete treed himself sawing dead branches so who knows? Growing stuff is hard work. And I'm sure as hell not gonna help.

Just kidding. That whole 'tend your own garden' thing is really not such great advice. We should all tend each other's gardens. If we all do a little the world will be a bit greener, more beautiful and soon everyone will know a hibiscus just by looking at it. And poor unsuspecting people who were wearing work gloves praise Christ wont be finding deteriorating condoms under very leaf. Or if they do, they'll know who left them and that person will be held accountable by God!!

Also I need some weeding assistance myself. They owe me for cleaning out all those beer bottles.