We encourage all of our communities here to go out to see all of our gardens here – and learn about the histories of each new and welcomed addition to our communities. Their hardships and their contributions.
We have three key garden plots that currently exist, are tended and represent communities here as well as efforts to build unity of purpose and welcome.
We have literally decades of work and experience building, maintaining, and preserving gardens here (below is some of that history).
Side Note: We have had numerous complaints/questions about what looks/sounds like exploratory digs (for water sources or simply testing the state of collapse beneath?).
Could we have some kind of signage and notification on what is going on for the community (much as we do for the East River Projects/Southern shore projects)?
The history of the gardens South Delancey to Grand Street in Sara Roosevelt Park.
-Our decades of advocacy and relationships made with former Council Member Chin (and former Borough President Gale Brewer) are what enabled the lion’s share of the funding ($15 Million) for this south Delancey to Grand funding. This is also true of the Rivington Playground. (We gratefully acknowledge The Alliance and the Mayor’s office for their added funding!).
-The NYC Parks Department and NYC abandoned this park in the 80’s.
We didn’t.
We took the park back with the neighborhood and with the help of elected representatives and the police department. At that time (the early 80’s) the gardens here were reactivated. The Forsyth Conservancy created the four current gardens in this section (these were formerly GreenThumb gardens) and some of their members still live here.
-We worked hard on the resolution for this section to ensure the work of this community didn’t get erased by well-intended, but unaware partners.
-We have spent over $3000 of a grant for plants, and bought others paid for by volunteers, and generous donations from Bronx nursery, specifically for these plots. We’ve planted and replanted many times. We’ve had plants stolen, slept on, trampled, gardens used as a latrine or shooting gallery or weed-whacked by well-intentioned Park workers. We freed up tree beds and repurposed those Belgian blocks for these sites to outline the plant areas and pathways to help the public and park workers delineate the beds more clearly. Our experience has shown that when we clarify the area – people tend to respect that.
-We were thrilled with the outcome of a garden behind the Broome Street building thanks to the Alliance’s advocacy for it.
-We (this Coalition) were, for decades, the ONLY gardeners who worked in this park. We are all volunteers. We are unpaid local from every walk of life here.
-We fight for NYC Parks funding.
-The Alliance has continue a focused clean-up and planting days in the Hester /Grand areas.
-In this section we work with MKG volunteers, 5th Pct Youth Explorers, Tenement Museum staffers, resident volunteers, Buro Happold volunteers, etc. – under the supervision of a volunteer gardener who has worked in this park for 40+ years.
-We have cared for these gardens for decades – despite there being NO water source. It means we have to schlepp, by wagon and shopping cart, jugs of water every week to water plants here from the MKG across the street.
Tony (Hua Mei) was using the drinking fountain filling small water bottles. Now uses fire hydrant with small jugs.
-Given tightening budgets, it is unlikely Parks will be able to hire a dedicated gardener here who learns the area and knows how to tend the plantings.
-We do not want easily maintained/generic gardens with a look that isn’t connected to who is here and who has been here.
-Perhaps most importantly: In part to address some of the racial tensions here, and in part because we want to honor all histories here – we’ve cared for legacy gardens enshrined here:
Sebastiaen de Britto Garden 1647
Acknowledges this entire area’s history as The Land of the Blacks. See the Tenement Museum’s article. Landscape Ideas from African American Swept garden of the Southern USA
“A swept yard is a lawn-free style of front garden that has its roots in West Africa. The ideas made their way to the American South due to the slave trade. They were maintained to be weed and debris free with handmade stick brooms.Waiters demonstrated yard sweeping in the yard of her neighbor, Ms. Cora Robinson, the only person in the neighborhood who still swept her yard in the 1980s. (Photo 1988). Photo courtesy, African Americans at Mars Bluff, South Carolina found via Francis Marion University
The yard was also the heart of the home since the inside quarters were not cooled and much of the work of living took place outside.”
This plot was part of a larger area “granted in 1647 to “Bastiaen Negro”, born Sebastiaen de Britto, a formerly enslaved man of African descent who had been kidnapped in Santo Domingo by the Dutch West India Company. Once a ship captain, de Britto held Captain status amongst the other enslaved people in New Amsterdam. He was given this land and his full freedom, alongside several other enslaved persons who were granted adjacent land and partial freedom under the “half -freedom plan”. These Black farmers were positioned north of the Wall street (where a wall was soon built) and used as a buffer between the Dutch to the south and the Lenape to the north.” Tauba Auerbach did extensive work uncovering the local history.
The design and working history is to recreate as possible (given climate differences) the post-Civil War Gardens of Black women based on the work of Dianne D. Glave Assist. Professor in the African American Studies Department at Loyola Marymount University, and an African American and environmental historian.
TO PLANT their flower and vegetable gardens, African American women used their hands—darkly creviced or smoothly freckled; their arms—some wiry, others muscled; and their shoulders and backs—one broad and another thin. They dropped small seeds into the soil with their veined hands. They wrapped their arms around freshly cut flowers to decorate tables in their homes. They bent their shoulders and backs to compost hay, manure, and field stubble, and transplanted plants from the woods into their own yards. These women developed a unique set of perspectives on the environment by way of the gardens they grew as slaves and then as freedwomen. They continued these practices and exercised these perspectives into the early twentieth century. Rural African American women then joined these traditional ways of gardening with horticultural practices they learned from Home Demonstration Service agents and from the special programs developed in African American schools in the South.
“Guided by my heritage of a love of beauty and a respect for strength—in search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.”1
Alice Walker, In Search of our Mother’s Gardens
Hua Mei Bird Garden The Hua Mei Bird sanctuary was created in 1995, It was a part of the four decade old Forsyth Conservancy (along with the other three plots – de Britto/Ribbon/Center plot). “In 1995, three men, a Chinese banker and two former waiters, approached Anna Magenta, who, with Federico Sabini, had started the Forsyth Street Garden Conservancy in 1994 to improve the park. With her help, they petitioned the Parks Department, and in 1995, the Hua Mei Bird Garden was hatched. Bird gardens are common in China, and there are even restaurants that cater to patrons with their birds in tow.”
photo Lee Elson
Former Council Member Margaret Chin, at our request, came and interpreted for the birders (none speak fluent English) to ensure we had all of their requests correctly noted.
The Ribbon plot was created in response to the Anti-Asian violence here, including one brutal death, through funding provided by University Settlement’s ROAR festival. It was the coming together of every racial group here/immigrants/residents/homeless people/ rich/poor/middle class/police/youth/elders etc. to create ribbons of hope for the park, their families/everyone.
Earth Day Memorial along with the Chinatown Partnership and Wellington Chen was to honor the life of Christina Yuna Lee who was brutally murdered on Chrystie Street. The garden didn’t survive (not enough water) but we hope to recreate it after the renovation.
The Tenement Museum, longtime partner – two blocks away, will also play a role in ensuring that we have tours that stop by and give this history. We will be working with the Museum to offer our local schools visits to these gardens and to the Museum itself (racially diverse and low-income students, many ELL students in the high schools that are located at both ends of this long narrow park)
Regarding the de Britto in particular: Most of the homeless here are African American men. A number of these men are consistent volunteers who tend the park with the Coalition. We are often thanked by other homeless people simply for continuing to care for these tougher to maintain gardens that had been given up on. Most of the Park workers are African American, our Coalition Vice President lives across the street with her two sons who are African American. This matters to our efforts to build respect for every group, and ultimately, unity here.