Big space will host community activities and lots of growing
Over the past decade, El Girasol Community Garden on East 138th Street was littered with overgrown weeds, trash, and debris.
“This garden for years has been an eyesore,” said Luis “Murph” Rodriguez, 58, an after-school basketball coach at the St. Luke’s Church school across the street from the garden and a member of its volunteer board.
Not anymore. On June 22, residents and green space advocates gathered to celebrate the garden’s reopening, as what they hope will become a vibrant oasis for Mott Haven residents with scant access to green spaces. They were joined by representatives from the Timberland clothing chain, which is sponsoring the project.
Rodriguez, who was born and raised in the neighborhood, has worked with three other activists to transform the space. They started last fall, pulling out old make shift fences, digging out old plots, and clearing out the junk.
“I would like this to be the botanical gardens of our section,” said Rodriguez.
Rodriguez said the opening was the culmination of years of work, which started when he contacted the nonprofit group GROW NYC a few years ago to float the idea of saving El Girasol from its fate as an informal dumping ground.
Timberland is working to create and restore green spaces in five U.S major cities, and a company official who attended the opening, Atlanta Mcilwraith, said that that commitment began with the restoration of the 138th Street Community Garden, as it is now being called.
“This is a great opportunity because this park happens to be 32,000 square feet,” said Mcilwraith. “It’s beyond doubling our footprint in New York City.”
The garden used to be divided into two independently operated sections— St. Luke’s El Girasol Community Garden and the United We Stand Garden—with four parcels on each and separate entrances on East 138th Street and East 137th Street between Cypress and St. Ann’s Avenue. Though the two sections are still under different leases, it will now be open as one contiguous parcel.
Volunteers set out on the windy Wednesday afternoon to lay down new soil, repair 20 park benches, and repaint and fix up two old sheds. They planted flowers and laid down plant beds named for residents who have tended the gardens in prior years.
Antika Laboy, who has lived in the Mill Brook Houses across the street for 37 years, tended a plot at the United We Stand garden for years. Laboy, 57, said she has witnessed the transformation of the garden and its importance to the community.
“For the elderly, this place is like a safe zone,” Laboy said.
After a fire badly damaged the garden over a year ago, the parks department decided to clear the space, leaving behind a rose bush, cherry tree, and grape vines, before it deteriorated, no thanks to people heaving their junk onto the grounds.
Morrisania resident Samantha Villanueva, 27, came to volunteer with her 3-year-old son, Orion. She said that the space had been anything but hospitable before, and the plots were poorly laid out and too close together.
“Before, the garden was really closed off for individual gardeners, I thought of it as people’s property, like they had their own land,” she said. “But now, I can see it’s more open to the community and everyone can be more connected.”
Open space advocates have long called for more green spaces, such as community gardens, in neighborhoods like Mott Haven, where asthma, diabetes, and obesity rates are among the city’s highest, due to industrial operations and the crisscrossing expressways. According to a 2014 report published by New Yorkers for Parks, the neighborhood failed to meet 11 out of 15 open space index criteria, including total acres of open space available for every 1,000 residents. A third of Mott Haven’s population resides more than a five-minute walk from the closest park, according to the report.
David Aguila, 58, an amateur boxing coach in Soundview who serves with Rodriguez on the board, said there will be plenty of activities for the public to take part in once things get off the ground. Plans include transforming the old greenhouse into an information center, hosting salsa dancing and karate exhibitions, and offering Tai Chi and gardening classes.
“It’s not about us, it’s about the community, and the future,” said Aguila, a grandfather of three. “ We want to get these kids to plant seeds instead of planting curse words on the Internet.“
Villanueva said that although she has never grown anything before, she will start now by growing her own vegetables to put into meals for her family.
“I want to grow things I can cook so my son can eat organic food and see he is eating the food he planted with me,” she said.
About Post Author
