My name is Lori Harris, and I’m a community gardener. I’m quite sure I wouldn’t have been a gardener if it wasn’t for my father. I mean I like to grow plants in the house or whatever. But, I really took an interest in watching him be interested in doing this. He grew up in […]
Haja: My name is Haja Worley. I am the husband of Cindy Nibbelink Worley. I’m from Patterson, New Jersey by way of North Carolina. Growing up, my parents had a garden in the backyard. I’m sure the garden was not as big as it seemed to be when I was little. We grew collard greens […]
The Garden Path ~ Green, Growing, and Blooming Project emerged as a tangible remembered connection and, consequently, a pathway to engagement following my mother’s diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, thereby, enlarging her narrowing view of her world. She had been an inveterate gardener and had lived in tune with the seasons. The everyday visual signs of nature—sunshine, birds, […]
Citizens Committee for New York City’s mission is simple: to help New Yorkers – especially those in low-income areas – come together and improve the quality of life in their neighborhoods. Residents are uniquely situated to define and act on the issues affecting their communities. When provided with modest support, neighborhood and school groups can […]
Considered the oldest community garden in New York, Liz Christy Community Garden was established in 1973. In late 1973 and early 1974, the community activist group the Green Guerillas, among them an energetic member named Liz Christy, cleared the lot at the northeast corner of the Bowery and East Houston. In late April 1974, the […]
The Taneyhills Library Garden was a bare landscape. With a grant from the Master Gardeners of the Ozarks and donations from supporters of the library, new gardens were established. One of the Master Gardeners and a Library board member helped establish the Taneyhills Junior Gardeners. The Junior Gardeners helped beautify the library grounds while learning […]
Omar B., a zone gardener with the New York Restoration Project (NYRP), shares entries from the journal he keeps about his work with the environmental non-profit founded by Bette Midler in 1995 to preserve and transform public green spaces in New York for all citizens to enjoy. His writing gives us a day-to-day peak inside […]
On an early Monday autumn morning, with leaves changing colors and dropping across the city of New Haven, I found myself driving through The Hill neighborhood in the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) delivery truck, the bed full of 300-pound trees ready to be planted by the Greenskills/EMERGE planting crew. I pulled over to the side […]
A mosaic path winds its way through the Bassett Street Park, past the bushes on the edges and the donated sculpture memorial in the lot’s center. The summer the path was made, every volunteer from the neighborhood designed a square. They used marbles, broken glass, and whatever other flashy baubles they could find. Over a […]
Jody K. is quick to say she’s not a leader. “I’m more of a really good follower,” she protests. But while Jody may not have captained the initial push to transform the vacant lot at 93 Shepard Street into a Greenspace, she has been the site’s most committed caretaker for over a decade. If Jody […]
It started because of a shared problem: the drug activity and prostitution in the abandoned double lot on Saltonstall and Lloyd. Adeli D. lived next door at the time, and remembers having to yell at the dealers who wandered through her driveway past her playing toddler to the empty house beside hers. Eventually, the young […]
Have you ever judged a neighborhood by its trees? I have. Without even realizing it, I’ve felt happy walking down an alley of green trees in the summer, in the filtered light of their giant canopies. I’ve also felt that a block is gloomy or deserted before noticing what makes it that way: the dead, […]