#18thStreetPollinators

Park B255O has a name. 

The #18thStreetPollinators sign I ordered arrived from Etsy and was planted with the first plants on Friday, March 11th. It provides a succinct explanation for curious onlookers. The goal of the garden? To transform neglected park into a calm botanical oasis for humans and a feeding-stop for New York City pollinators.

If you would like to make a contribution there is a Donate button in the left side bar. 

I was hoping to have an 18thStreetPollinators Instagram account established quickly for passersby wanting to find out more, but a vexing glitch at Instagram's end has stalled it, for now. Very frustrating (because of the time it wasted). Hence the update, here.

I spent two hours planting, but only after spending around 45 minutes shifting massive layers of large-chip mulch to reach the soil. I imagine it was dumped so thickly to suppress weeds. I do remember a very lush patch of chickweed here, last spring. There was also evidence of mallow (long, living tap roots) and dock. The only living things under the trees. Also plenty of earthworms! Which will help with drainage.

My first stop was plant-collection: They may not look impressive right now but it's still pre-spring and this collection is dormant. Gowanus Nursery's Michele Palladino kindly donated plants she had to remove from one of the gardens she tends. An Eden rose, Hypericum, fescues, and asters. Alyse, an Instagram friend, donated lots of Heuchera, as well as phlox, geraniums, mountain mint and a hyssop. I am so grateful.

The NYC Parks sign at least designates this a city park, but there has been no response yet to my emails asking about official stewardship. 

While I worked, four people arrived to sit on the benches. One threw my work bag off before settling down. They were three adults who were developmentally impaired, and their minder, who apologized about the bag, and promptly fell asleep (he snored). They just sat, not able to engage, apparently, and made noises from time to time while I dug. I hoped my activity was at least more interesting than what must be their usual sitting-session.

Michele also gave me two yellow root plants - Xanthoriza simplicissima. I had never seen it before and it solved a forgotten plant ID question for me. It makes fascinating sprays of burgundy flowers, which I have seen in the woodlands in Central Park.

I concentrated on one long bed, planting the asters near some of the allium bulbs I buried a few weeks ago, along with the fescues, the rambling rose, mountain mint and a stray Echinacea. Because they are more or less invisible to anyone who is not a gardener I do worry about stomping, but also feel that they are less attractive to plant thieves than something that looks perfect. The faster I can get plants in, the more established the park may look and the more the threat-level drops. 

Three neighborhood friends are interested in helping out and I think this is the germ on an idea: Walk-by gardening. Dead-heading, weeding, spontaneous, co-operative, decentralized, and intuitive. 

I'll mention again what the NYC Parks and Recreation Department receives in funding: Less than 1% of New York City's annual budget. Most parks and gardens languish for lack of maintenance. It's the ongoing care that sees the least investment. 

_________________

Pinesploration, Fort Tilden

Plant walk and picnic

18 March 2022

$60

#cookforukraine

b255o? - I see you

There is an empty park a few blocks from where we live. Its beds have been bare for as long as I have known it (just over three years). It has benches, but it is barren. 

It could be a place where pollinators and people feel good. Some bee-watching and butterfly therapy. Maybe a hummingbird or two.

It is a fact of never-ending wonder that New York City's mayoral budget allocates less - less - than 1% to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation. It's closer to 0.5%. And it's not just about plants and greening: the department oversees sports facilities, playgrounds, tarmac stretches of basketball courts, community centers, lifeguard training. The list is endless. Plants come last.

Pandemic budget cuts have left everyone deeply backlogged and worse-off than before. Nobody has time, staff, or money. Yet where did everyone go, flee to, during the last two years? The parks. For classes, for exercise, for meetings, for work, for birthdays, for school, for everything.

Parks are green jewels in this populous city's crown. Privately-funded conservancies shoulder the burden of keeping iconic spaces like Central Park and Prospect Park (and so very many more) in working order. But small, incidental parks like the one in my hood fall between the weedy cracks unless someone takes a keen personal interest in them. 

I discovered (that sounds quick, it was a meandering process) that this little park has an identity, but no name: it is b255o. It is a "sitting park". There's just not a lot of incentive to sit here. The fresh layer of wood chips may have been spread during its last inspection (December 2nd, if one looks it up). While I have approached the parks department and a stewardship program to see how we can formally initiate the procedure of adopting a park it will be a long time (I think) before I hear back. I did this all over ten years ago in Manhattan for a much larger, locked space; and that shuttered park is now an open, thriving space, but times change. It will take longer for the un-greased wheels to begin turning, in 2022.  

So we're going guerilla. For now.

I'm holding my nose and jumping in. Which means I ordered 30 Allium bulbs and a sign to explain what's going on. Hoping it will attract some (welcome) attention and discourage dog owners from letting dogs in the beds. Making a commitment helps motivate myself, too. Two friends-through-my-walks have already offered their labor.  

Now we just need, well, plants.

The demands on city plantings are high. They range from drought, to compacted or poorly draining soil, to pollution (dog pee and poop, salt, heavy metals), to theft by humans who want the plants for themselves, to old-fashioned stomping and crushing. So plant choices matter, and after that fingers must be crossed once they are in the ground.

The plants must tough enough for the climate, obviously (USDA Zone 7b). That's the easy part. But they must also be resilient enough to be able to grow without more than the occasional presence of a gardener, and especially, no supplemental watering: new plantings are vulnerable. So I expect setbacks and some teeth-gnashing.

As I think out loud here are some wish list plants that will hold up and become self-sufficient. Most are North American natives, but some are not. I'm thinking seasonal interest, benefits for pollinators and birds, and even some edible plants (in case someone is in desperate need of fennel fronds for their fish stew). 

The space now is sunny, but in summer will be a mix of high, dappled shade, thanks to the plane trees nearby. The corner above will have direct sun. The choices below will evolve and will be influenced by what is available where, and when - these will hopefully be donations. Holler if you have some spare shrubs lying about. 

B2550 Pollinator Garden

Shrubs:

2 Serviceberry (Amelanchier spp) - question mark; early flowers, midsummer fruit, vivid fall color

3  Black chokeberry (Aronia melanocarpa) - spring flowers, late summer fruit, beautiful fall color

3 Clethra/sweet pepperbush (Clethra alnifolia) - late summer flowers, scented, butterfly magnet

3  Dwarf fothergilla (Fothergilla gardenii) - mid spring flowers, vivid autumn leaves

3  Oak leaf hydrangea (Hydrangea quercifolia) - early summer flowers are a bee magnet, flowers persist through early fall, beautiful bronzing leaf color through fall

3 Rosa but what form and cultivar? - 'Knockout' is the municipal standard but the barren flowers provide nothing for bees

Perennials:

30 Alliums (ornamental, no-name brand) - tall, striking, disliked by squirrels, bee-magnets; acquired!

10 Anise-scented goldenrod (Solidago odora) - early fall flowers, pollinator-magnet, edible leaves and flowers

10 Bronze fennel - tall, gorgeous foliage, flowers for pollinators, leaves for butterfly larvae, self-seeding

10 Foam flower (Tiarella cordifolia) - early spring flowers, bees love em. Native (I have babies that will make babies)

6 Hyssop (Agastache foeniculum) - long-blooming, bee-favorite, scented foliage

3 Milkweed - (Asclepias - not sure what species, yet) pollinator magnets, lovely flowers, showy seed heads

6 Ostrich ferns (Matteuccia struthiopteris) - sculptural, makes many babies, sequesters heavy metals

6 Thimbleweed (Anemone virginiana) - early summer flowers, attractive seed heads, disliked by pests

6 Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum virginianum) - fragrant, edible leaves, pollinator magnet-flowers in summer

12 Violets - spring optimism, fragrance, weed-smothering, self seeding

Annuals:

Jewelweed  (native Impatiens capensis) - attractive to hummingbirds, bumblebees, self seeds

Nicotiana (N. sylvestris) - statuesque, scented, attractive to hummingbirds

Papalo (Porophyllum ruderale) - people-pleaser, purely to make neighborhood Latinex cooks and eaters smile

Perilla/shiso/sesame leaf (Perilla frutescens) - self seeds (too freely), tall, striking, fragrant and edible leaves, drought tolerant, appealing to everyone

__________________

My Spring Classes at the NYBG

Trash Forage - Prospect Park

I am organizing a different kind of walk for October 24th in Prospect Park: A Trash Forage. Instead of learning about edible plants, we will be helping the park by collecting the different kinds of trash people leave behind their sorry selves.

Please join me at 10.30am at the Wellhouse for two hours of trash grabbing-and-bagging, followed by a reward of cake. 

Tickets to reserve your spot are $25 and will be refunded to you in full after the walk, assuming you attended. 

We will be supported by the Prospect Park Alliance, the NGO whose unenviable job it is to take care of a vast public park that has seen unprecedented number of visitors during the pandemic. People have sought solace (and sometimes shelter) in the green space. At the same time the park has suffered unprecedented budget cuts by the City of New York. Even in normal times City funding of our public parks is shamefully minimal. 

"Although City parks make up 14% of NYC’s land, the Parks Department receives only 0.6% of the City’s total budget," writes Molly Fraser, on the website for the NYLCV (The New League of Conservation Voters). That is not a typo. Zero point six percent.

She continues: "Urban forests support the City’s environmental health, filtering out harmful pollutants, cooling temperatures, and supporting wildlife. In NYC, trees filter out an estimated 1,300 tons of pollutants, save nearly $94 million in health costs, capture 2 billion gallons of stormwater runoff, and store 1.2 million tons of carbon annually."

And how do you quantify the therapy, mental and physical, that the park has provided during the COVID crisis? 

The park has become everything to all people. Living room, bedroom, kitchen, work out area and yes, toilet. It needs help.

On our Trash Forage on Saturday the 24th we will meet to sign in, receive trash grabbers, bags and gloves. There will be cleaning supplies on hand but bring your own pocket sanitiser. Masks and social distancing are mandatory. 

After we have filled our bags we will clean our hands (again!) and gather for the freshly-baked cake in a nice kumbaya circle. 

__________

My Books

Breezy Point - Backroads and Beyond

With the season turning towards fall the Frenchman and I migrate like birds back to the open spaces of Fort Tilden and Breezy Point, situated near the end of the long and skinny Rockaway barrier beach (the very end is a very gated, very white community* - to reach the point itself we use our legs, walking along the beach). 

[*Since I posted this the New York Times wrote about Breezy Point's Trump enclave.]

The reason we go back now is simple: we're allowed to park in the fisherperson's lot, again. After June 15th and before September 15th you need a permit (and to obtain it you have to show up at the permit office with a fishing rod). 

I walked alone on the deserted backroads, which were fragrant with autumn clematis in its glory. The roads are the abandoned infrastructure of a Cold War nuclear missile base - ponder that. The Frenchman left in the opposite direction, on his five-mile run along the low-tide beach while his camera gear waited for him in the car.  

Autumn pokeweed berries have been eaten from their fuchsia panicles by transiting migratory birds (as much as gardeners may dislike poke - Phytolacca americana - it is an important and native food for birds; and humans can eat the cooked spring time shoots - see Forage, Harvest, Feast for recipes and more detailed information).

In mid-walk my phone rang, which it never does. Frenchman. Birds on beach! Big birds! Beautiful wings, red beaks! They sounded like skimmers. He was running back, fast, to the car for his new camera. I about-faced and headed towards him. We met on the beach and speedwalked back out to the point, into the bright western sun.

On our way we passed little furries of piping plovers sanderlings [see comments].

I love how they scurry back and forth, pursuing the edges of the advancing and retreating water.

And at last, after a mile-and-a-half or so, the big birds that had excited the Frenchman: beautiful black skimmers in flocks on the sand. I have only ever seen one bird at a time. They all pointed neatly into the wind. Summer residents up the Northeast coast, they are also on their way south as the weather chills.

Cars are allowed on this beach, with permits. With dwindling safe habitats for shorebirds, and increasing pressure on their populations, I have never understood this. Shoreline ecology is exceptionally fragile. Tire treads just kill it. If you want to fish, walk.

Conservation should be at the forefront of any administration's funding. Instead, it is a distant afterthought.

On our more sedate walk back we were treated to the extremes of human behaviour. This lone fisherperson wearing their mask.  

And a hundred yards behind him: A massive, unmasked, packed-like-sardines gathering of humans at the Silver Gull Beach Club (which lies at the eastern end of the gated Breezy Point community). Do they all have COVID-resistance? Are their parents or grandparents and children and friends immune? What about their colleagues at work? What about the staff working there? 

Is this what is meant by a superspreader event? 

We didn't even like walking downwind of them.

(Honey, is that a tickle in my throat?)

And that's all, folks (or perhaps the beginning, for some). 

_____________

NYBG Class, 15 October

The Park

Until two weeks ago I had never seen a chipmunk off the ground. Now they are elevated. Here's one eating the seed heads of statuesque Silphium perfoliatum, reached from a handy pin oak perch in Prospect Park. 

Last week I saw a chipmunk chomping on spicebush fruit, hunting the ripe red drupes along the slender branches.  I suppose they have always done this. But suddenly I am noticing it.

I walked in the nearby park with the Frenchman, recently. He was hunting migrating hummingbirds with a new camera lens (we found them). But before we did - in a patch of jewelweed - we visited Lookout Hill, where in late summer a small, fenced-in meadow is filled with the season's rough flowers: Joe Pye-Weed, a giant persicaria, golden rod, and daisies. I see this hill several times a week, because I run up it to counteract sedentary evils. But no matter how familiar I think it has become it always shows me something new.

The tall flowers were bobbing and bending with seed-eating songbirds.

On our walk home the baseball fields were filled with masked children and parents, warming up for complicated pandemic schooling.

The park is all things to all people.  Now, more than ever. And that can get complicated. But most people are trying.

Our New York City city parks require New York City funding, and the local government has never been generous. And now the parks' budgets have been slashed. They rely on private funding.

The parks feed our souls. 

And what is that worth?

____________

Storm in, storm out

Yesterday's temporary citrus grove, brought inside to prevent toppling in Isaias's winds (you can see them in my Instagram Stories).

The terrace, strapped down before the storm. This morning I sipped my coffee there, all calm, and thought about Beirut. The coffee is Najjar and Beirut is its home. The destruction is unimaginable.

In the late afternoon I walked in Prospect Park a little earlier than I should have. Two-days of cabin fever, and a curiosity to see the familiar place after a changing storm, sent me picking my way over fallen branches while the departing gusts of Isaias occasionally convulsed the branches of tall trees. Sycamores left a litter of small branches and leaves. 

Familiar paths were impassable. Admiring and exploring the fallen foliage were some families, and parent-child exploratory teams, moms with babies strapped to them, a father glued to his live-streaming phone to share storm pictures while his toddler grabbed his dad's pants asking to be noticed. 

I was wondering about late-falling branches, weakened by the intense winds, and all those leaning trunks, propped by their neighbors, but called widowmakers for a reason (yes, it's sexist, but it's dated - widower makers, orphan makers?). If you hear that sickening splitting sound - unhelpfully directionless -  how do you get your flock of small children out of the way in a hurry?

Why do we feel compelled to walk out and see the fallen trees? See, this fallen tree, it was up, now it is down. It was big and it broke. 

The storm flattened indiscriminately. While I am sure that streets flanked by the infamously weak-crotched callery pears (the Frenchman calls them calamity pears) are choked by their broken boughs, the casualties I saw in the park included black cherry, linden, mulberry, maples, oak, and sycamore. Some were sick, weakened and eaten from the inside out by pathogens like the delicious hen of the woods (maitake) mushroom, or chicken of the woods, or honey mushrooms. Good for our dinner, bad for the trees.

Others may have been weakened by humans. People who barbecue in the park sometimes tip their hot coals out on the lawn at the base of trees when they leave. I think this linden may have been serially scorched. 

What do you think? So odd that it was absolutely flush with the ground.

This mulberry looked like a giant gardener's hand had pulled it from the earth. 

En route home. 

I haven't been to Green-Wood, yet, and wonder how their huge, beautiful trees fared. They are very well looked-after so it is possible that Prospect Park's suffered more. The historic cemetery is well funded privately, while the shame of the park is that while everyone uses it, the (equally historic) public space is allocated a pittance by the city and state. 

The sun is shining, and humidity is back. All quiet till the next one.

__________

Help Beirut: Donate to the Lebanese Food Bank

Waterfront forage cocktails and snacks

Join me on a waterfront adventure at Bush Terminal - featuring wild cocktails and snacks - this Wednesday at 5.30pm.

When we moved to our (latest) new apartment we reconnoitred our new hood. And within its borders we discovered a park I had never visited, on the edge of New York Harbor. Since then we have returned, many times, for the salt air and the wide horizons.

In city terms, the park at Bush Terminal is new: it opened in 2014. It is a manageable size but seems much bigger because of its spectacular and big-sky views to the north (Manhattan) and to the west, across New York Harbor to the Statue of Liberty. The ship, ferry, and water taxi traffic is mesmerizing, and local waterbirds add a sense of discovery (I once saw an elusive green heron perched on a log in broad daylight).

Already, as is inevitable in this city, which underfunds its parks (if the park is in great shape that shape comes from private conservancy money), the designed landscaping has given way in many parts to weeds. Luckily, for our botanical purposes, lots of them are edible! There are also shoreline natives that speak to what our regional cuisine could be, if we let our culinary imaginations breathe. You will taste those possibilities in our picnic.

So on Wednesday we will explore this waterfront space, and finish with  cocktails and a picnic inspired by the microseason (that would be the first week of July) featuring the flavors I have recently foraged in the Catskills, and from the remote green wilds of the city itself.

The menu is never final until the day, but the canapés will feature the scents and tastes of a wild botanical summer, including the flavors we have just met. I am thinking white sweet clover pastry, fava bean and common milkweed tartlets, yellow sweet clover mini-biscuits (fresh from that afternoon's oven), pepperweed relish (wasbai-ish), American burnweed and lime butter, and... some other things. And the cocktails of course. I'm leaning toward elderflower and wineberry for botanical base notes.

So:

Where? BushTerminal, Sunset Park, Brooklyn
When? Wednesday, 10 July, 5.30pm - 7pm
How much? $45

I will email you with meet up details once you have purchased a ticket. I can offer a few rides from Windsor Terrace, but the R subway goes to 43rd Street (a 10-minute walk) and there are two buses. Plus Citibike and Lyft or Uber, of course.

BOOKING CLOSED

Harlem winter

Since we have broken records in the last week, with a coldest temperature recorded at JFK...

...here's a look back at the last three weeks in our immediate Harlem hood.

 127th Street

Until February rolled round winter had been chugging along. Last February was snowy, too.

 Lenox Avenue

But this year, wham bam, we were cold-slammed.

 Lenox Avenue

Even the scaaaaaaary blizzard that made the governor shut down the subway fizzled out, in January. 

Nobody warned us about the next part.

C-c-c-c-c-cold. 

The derelict community garden on our block froze and the snow covered its trash.

 Yes, I have made inquires; no, I have not received answers. GreenThumb is "looking into it."

Even our steps had icicles.

Trees bent with iceweight.

And the flower sellers stayed open, keeping up a steady supply of forced bulbs for me.

The sidewalks are obsessively scraped and then are snowed on or iced over again. 

Wildlife plots its course.

And the stone steps up the rock hill of Marcus Garvey Park are a frozen watercourse.

Most parks have been cleared well, but Marcus Garvey, beautiful in many ways, is also semi-derelict, on these upper levels. The people who come this high are occasional dog walkers, drug users, sex-seekers and purveyors, police (an officer was shot up here last summer), and those who fall in the cracks (...er, me?). So. No salt for us? Maybe they want we should fall and break or heads. Problem solved.
.

Beautiful steps, up the chunk of rock too big to blow up, so that 5th Avenue has to move around it.

And home past old Atlah, whose pastor's habits have returned after an uncharacteristic Christmas time lull.

Yes, well. The nutter is still at it.

And so are we. 

In other ways.