Flatbush Gardener: 2008

Showing posts with label 2008. Show all posts

2009-01-16

Spencer Street Community Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.06

This is the Spencer Street Block Association Community Garden, at 230 Spencer Street, between Willoughby & DeKalb, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. This was the 6th stop on the third 2008 Green With Envy tour of Brooklyn Community Gardens last October.

2009-01-14

Greene Acres Community Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.04

One of the paths defined by hexagonal raised beds at the Green Acres Community Garden in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn

Stop #4 of the third 2008 Green With Envy (GWE) tour of Brooklyn community gardens was the Green Acres Community Garden, at the corner of Greene and Franklin Avenues [GMAP] in the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.

2009-01-11

Cedar Tree Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.02

The second of the stops on the third Green With Envy tour of Bed-Stuy community gardens this past October was the Cedar Tree Garden at 305 Greene Avenue.

Madison Street Garden, Bed-Stuy, Green With Envy Tour 2008 III.01

Winter is a good time to dig into my photo archives. October seems so warm right now.

This is a slideshow from the Madison Street Block Association Garden at 88-90 Madison Street in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. This was the first stop on the third of the Green With Tours of Brooklyn community gardens I attended during 2008. GWE 2008 III visited gardens in Bed-Stuy.

2008-12-31

2008 Wrap-up

A young raccoon in my backyard in Flatbush, Brooklyn in June of 2008. My post about them was in the top five of 2008, measured both by visits and number of comments.

It was a year of great changes and terrible losses for me. I began 2008 by taking classes at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden toward a Certificate in Horticulture, which I hope to complete by the end of this year. I remain involved in the gardening activism of Sustainable Flatbush, both in the Gardening Committee, and in the Flatbush CommUNITY Garden. I organized a Brooklyn Blogade, a meeting of bloggers, at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and helped with the 2008 annual Blogfest. I also lost two of my best friends: my cat, Spot, at the beginning of the year, and my father, Jerry, just four weeks ago.

To see out this old year and welcome in the new one, I thought I'd review and recap some of what I've written for this blog during 2008, and your responses to it.

Overall stats

Number of posts published: 236 (averaging 2 posts every 3 days)
Busiest month: April, with 38 posts (more than 1 per day)
Slowest month: November, with only 10 posts (1 every 3 days)

22,896 people visited this blog during 2008. There were 32,073 visits, an average of 88 per day. About 70% were first-time visitors.

Greatest Hits of 2008

The most popular content on the blog.

By visits

According to Google Analytics, from which I've collected these stats, "unique page views" are the number of visits during which a page was viewed. Page views are higher, since the same page may be viewed multiple times during a single visit. Unique pageviews, however, doesn't distinguish multiple visits from the same person or IP address.

(Magi)Cicada Watch, about the Brood XIV Magicicadas, which unfortunately have been extirpated in Brooklyn, 2008-05-21, 763 visits
Flatbush Rezoning Proposal will define the future of Victorian Flatbush, my report on a public hearing and analysis of the proposal, 2008-06-13, 483 visits
Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 405 visits
Sources of Plants for Brooklyn Gardeners, 2008-04-29, 367 visits
These two posts, both of them memorials, are close enough to call it a tie:
- 90 Years Ago: The Malbone Street Wreck, 2008-11-01, 310 visits
- Steven Earl Clements, 1954-2008, 2008-11-14, 307 visits

Special mention goes to my tutorial on the OASIS mapping service. Although I wrote it in February of 2007, almost two years ago, it was the third most popular page during 2008, with 433 unique page views. It's got "legs".

By comments

It's interesting to me that my two most commented posts this year were both obituaries. It's been a year of big changes in my life.

Spot, 2008-02-23, 14 comments
Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008, 2008-12-01, 12 comments
Summer Nights, my photographic report on raccoons in my backyard, 2008-06-26, 11 comments
Snake in the Garden , Prospect Park, about a guy ripping branches off a cherry tree, 2008-04-26, 10 comments
Three-way tie, with 9 comments each:
- Brooklyn Bear's Carlton Avenue Garden, 2008-08-19
- Kensington Blogade, 2008-03-10
- Cortelyou Crocuses, 2008-03-06

2008-12-23

Recipe: Soft Molasses-Spice Cookies with Cardamom

No photos (yet) for this recipe. My motivation for this experiment was making use of a spice that was new to me: cardamom.

Cardamom

A couple of weeks back, on the recommendation of a friend of ours who's a professional chef, I picked up some ground cardamom (alt: cardamon) for baking. I'm unfamiliar with this spice and had never used it before this recipe.

It's intensely fragrant; even closed, the small baggie of loose cardamom I bought at the Flatbush Food Co-op has been perfuming our kitchen and dining room. It smells like Christmas gingerbread. The scent has strong citrus tones, and at first I thought it might be in the Rutaceae, the Citrus family. But it comes from the Zingiberaceae, the Ginger family, which also makes sense.

The plant is Elettaria cardamomum, a mono-specific genus native to a wide range in southeast Asia. (Some authorities separate the Sri Lankan population as its own species.) The fruit is a pod, a capsule containing multiple seeds. The spice is made from the ground seeds.

Credit: JoJan (Wikimedia Commons)

Elettaria cardamomum under cultivation. Credit: Rhaessner (Wikimedia Commons)

Searching for recipes on the Web, I found that cardamom is a common ingredient in many recipes from Nordic countries. I'm not familiar with Nordic cuisine, so I wouldn't be able to judge so well the success of my baking endeavor. Cardamom also shows up in many gingerbread recipes, so I fell back on something more familiar to me to try out: molasses spice cookies. Once again, King Arthur Flour provided the basic recipe which I tweaked to make use of my available ingredients.

Ingredients

KAF provides weight equivalents for the volume measures in many of their recipes. I use a kitchen scale and weigh bulk ingredients like sugar and flour whenever possible. It's much faster, more accurate, and leads to more consistent results. It also reduces cleanup, since fewer measuring cups are involved! This is especially convenient for liquid or sticky ingredients like the molasses in this recipe.

I used whole wheat flour instead of all-purpose, sifting it and leaving out the coarsest remaining bran to give it a finer texture. Since I had "robust" molasses, and I was using whole wheat flour, I increased the total amount of spices. I also added vanilla, allspice, and of course cardamom, none of which were in the original recipe. This created a complex taste, where none of the flavors overwhelm, but I think I would miss any I left out.

Yield: About four dozen (48) cookies

2 sticks (1 cup, 8 ounces) unsalted butter
7 ounces (1 cup) sugar
6-1/4 ounces (a little more than 1/2 cup) molasses, robust flavor. (6 ounces would have been 1/2 cup.; the extra 1/4 ounce was a mistake on my part, but I recorded it as what I did.)
2-1/4 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon cardamom
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 extra large eggs (original called for large)
14 ounces whole wheat flour (not sure of the volume equivalent)
sugar, for coating (This gives the outside of the cookies some crunch. The recipe calls for coarse or even pearl sugar, for more crunch. I'd use them instead if I had them.)

Preparation

Let the butter come to room temperature, if possible, for easier creaming.
Preheat the oven to 350F. (Be sure you have an accurate oven thermometer! I had a devil of a time baking in our horrible kitchen until I bought a thermometer and discovered that the oven dial was off by 100F!)
Prepare a small bowl with some of the sugar for coating the cookies.
(The recipe calls for greasing baking sheets or lining them with parchment. Since I have some well-seasoned, non-stick baking sheets, I didn't bother and it wasn't necessary.)

Mixing

Cream together the butter and sugar until they're light and fluffy.
Beat in the the molasses, salt, and spices. (Here's where you can taste-test to adjust if needed. I added the spices at 1/4 or 1/2 teaspoon at a time to make sure I didn't over do it. I ended up with 1 teaspoon of each, as listed above.)
Beat in the baking soda.
Add the eggs one at a time, beating until they're mixed well into the batter. Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and mix well.
Slowly stir in the flour. (This is something I've learned recently. Stirring the flour in at low speeds keeps the cookies tender. Beating the flour in at higher speeds makes the cookies tougher.) Scrape down the sides of the bowl and the beaters and mix well.

This is a fairly soft, wet dough. Although I didn't try it this time, I bet you could refrigerate the dough for a few hours, or even overnight, to set up before baking.

Baking

Using a tablespoon cookie/ice-cream scoop, create a small ball of the dough. (A scoop is the fastest, easiest way to get a consistently sized, professional looking, batch of cookies. You could also just use two tablespoons.)
Drop the dough ball onto the coating sugar. Coat thoroughly.
Place the coated dough ball on the baking pan. Space them evenly, and leave plenty of space for them to spread. (The recipe says leave 2-1/2" between them, which sounds about right.)
Bake for at least 10, at most 11, minutes at 350F. (With experience, your nose and eyes are the best guides here. When they smell like they're just starting to burn, and the edges are visibly just darker than the center, they're done.)
Remove the pan and let it cool for 5-10 minutes.
Move the cookies to a wire rack to cool completely. (But try at least one with a glass of cold milk while it's still warm!)

Other recipes on this blog

Links

Soft Ginger-Molasses Cookies and Ginger Syrup, Recipes, King Arthur Flour

2008-12-21

Stand Still / Dona Nobis Pacem

Illumination of Earth by Sun at the southern solstice.

It's the longest night and shortest day of the year for my half of the world. This season's Solstice (Winter in the Northern hemisphere, Summer in the Southern), occurred at 12:04pm UTC on December 21, 2008. That was 7:04 AM Eastern Time, my time zone, about six hours ago.

The name is derived from the Latin sol (sun) and sistere (to stand still), because at the solstices, the Sun stands still in declination; that is, its apparent movement north or south comes to a standstill.
- Solstice, Wikipedia

It feels like winter. It's cold outside, icy and frozen over the layer of snow we got on Friday. We will get a deep freeze tonight.

Later this week, I will see what's left of my family of origin for the first time since we flew back from North Carolina a little more than two weeks ago. It feels like it's been much longer than that. It will be a bittersweet reunion. We are incomplete for the first time, and for all the seasons to come.

The days start getting longer again, earlier sunrise, later dusk. It feels like more than a metaphor this year.

Lots of "it feels", which really means, "I'm feeling." Sometimes that's the work to be done. To stand still. And simply feel.

If, like me, you can't read music cold, this page has a little MIDI file which bangs out the tune so you can follow the score.

2007 December (Winter) Solstice

Links

Solstice (Wikipedia)

2008-12-19

Happy Holidays

The MTA thwarted our plans to attend a concert of a women's choir this evening. So Blog Widow and I turned back and walked around our neighborhood, taking in the snow-beings and holiday lights.

Enjoy this slideshow of my Flickr set of photos from the evening. For best viewing, click the play button, then click the icon with four arrows in the lower-right to view it full-screen on a black background.

2008-12-18

Winter Storm Watch

A Winter Storm Watch is in effect for Brooklyn and the south shore of Long Island for tomorrow, with the possibility of 6 or more inches of snow:

THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN UPTON [New York] HAS ISSUED A WINTER STORM WATCH...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM FRIDAY MORNING THROUGH FRIDAY EVENING.

SNOW IS EXPECTED TO OVERSPREAD THE REGION FRIDAY MORNING...AND COULD BECOME HEAVY AT TIMES IN THE AFTERNOON. THE SNOW MAY MIX WITH SLEET AND RAIN IN THE AFTERNOON...ESPECIALLY ALONG THE SOUTH SHORE OF LONG ISLAND. THERE IS THE POTENTIAL FOR SNOWFALL ACCUMULATIONS OF 6 OR MORE INCHES.

2008-12-16

Gardening by Satellite

Here in Brooklyn, at the end of last week and into the weekend, we got drenched with a couple days of rain. Fellow gardeners in Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, I sympathize.

In this image, snow is red and orange, while liquid water is black. By the time this image was taken [On December 13], the top layer of ice was undoubtedly starting to melt, and the resulting watery ice ranges from dark red to black. The icy region extends over parts of Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire ... The normally green-blue tone of plant-covered land is nearly black throughout most of New Hampshire, the state most severely affected by the storm.
- New England Ice Storm, NASA Earth Observatory

If you've blogged about the ice storm in your area, give us a link!

Links

New England Ice Storm, NASA Earth Observatory

The following Garden Bloggers reported on the ice storm where they are.
Common Weeder, Heath, Massachusetts
Garden Path, Scarborough, Maine
The Vermont Gardener, Marshfield, Vermont

Masstransiscope

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.

Links

Masstransiscope, Bill Brand
Bill Brand's Project Blog

2008-12-04

How Old Will I Be?

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.

Eulogy
Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008

Eulogy

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:

Checkers
Bullfrog
Deer throat
Gliders and flaming hot-air balloons
Coin collecting
Rocket launches
Stingray on the St. John's
Vibrating beds
My first camera
Community theater
CB radio

Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008, 2008-12-01
How Old Will I Be?, 2008-12-04

2008-12-01

Gerard Kreussling, 1931-2008

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.

2008-11-26

BBG Free Winter Weekdays

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.

Camellia japonica Julia Drayton, Bonsai, Literati style

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

Links

BBG Hours and Admission

2008-11-25

Sunset Park can haz Community Garden?

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

Links

Sunset Park Wants a Community Garden, Best View in Brooklyn

2008-11-18

How to move a 200-ton Ginkgo

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 4x8 sheet of plywood lying on top of it.

2008-11-14

Steven Earl Clemants, 1954-2008

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

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

Links

Steven Earl Clemants:

Obituary, BBG, 2008-11-28
Staff Page, BBG
CV [PDF]

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

2008-11-08

Brooklyn Botanic Garden, November 7 2008

The Cherry Esplanade at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Cherry Esplanade, 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

Japanese Maple, Japanese Garden, Brooklyn Botanic Garden

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'

2008-11-06

Gardens are not Parks, Parks are not Gardens: New challenges facing Brooklyn's community gardens

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.

Definitions

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:

park: a green space open to the public, but not cared for by them; no membership requirement
community garden: a green space cared for by its members; contains personal and/or shared areas gardened by members; contains ornamental and/or agricultural plantings; non-profit, volunteer-run organization/governance
urban farm: dedicated to agricultural - food - production; often setup as a program providing services to a targeted community; may be run as a profit-making venture

Case Study

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.

The pressure to be "open"

In Brooklyn, most community gardens are held by one of the following:

The afore-mentioned New York Restoration Project (NYRP)

The Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust (BQLT), part of the national Trust for Public Land (TPL)

New York City Department of Parks and Recreation (Parks)

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

Links

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

Pages

2009-01-16

Related Content

Links

2009-01-14

Related Content

2009-01-11

Related Content

Related Content

2008-12-31

Overall stats

Greatest Hits of 2008

By visits

By comments

In case you missed it

2008-12-23

Cardamom

Ingredients

Preparation

Mixing

Baking

Related Posts

Links

2008-12-21

Related Posts

Links

2008-12-19

Related Content

2008-12-18

2008-12-16

Links

Links

2008-12-04

Related Posts

Related Posts

2008-12-01

2008-11-26

Related Posts

Links

2008-11-25

Related Posts

Links

2008-11-18

Related Content

Links

2008-11-14

The Dr. Steven Clemants Wildflower Fund

Related Posts

Links

2008-11-08

2008-11-06

Definitions

Case Study

The pressure to be "open"

Related Posts

Links