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The West Side Community Garden is a privately owned 501(c)(3) garden in Manhattan, New York City, United States. It is located between West 89th Street and West 90th Street in the middle of the block between Amsterdam Avenue and Columbus Avenue. [1]
The WestSide Community Garden was founded in 1975 on a large vacant lot filled with garbage and stripped cars locally known as "strip city" which fronted on Columbus Avenue between West 89th and 90th streets. The vacant lot was designated development Site 35 by the city and was part of the comprehensive West Side Urban Renewal Plan. The WestSide Community Garden was incorporated in 1983 as a New York State Not For Profit organization with the help of the Trust for Public Land. About the same time, the city awarded Site 35 development rights to the developers Jerry Kretchmer and Joe Wasserman. A long negotiation with the developers and the Community Planning Board 7 began and in 1985 the garden won the right to permanent garden status in the Community board by one vote. It was subsequently approved by the NYC City Planning Board, the City Council and the Mayor. This set aside 16,000 square feet (1,500 m2) for a permanent garden in Manhattan.
The new garden would be about one third of the original Garden site and a memorandum of understanding was signed with the developer for the design and development of the permanent garden. Community garden members developed the concept for the public flower park and amphitheater, and landscape designer Terry Schnadelback designed the Garden based on that concept. Construction began fall 1987 and the new garden was ready Summer 1988. The land was deeded to the WestSide Community Garden Inc. in a complicated seven-hour, three-part closing, the day before Thanksgiving in 1989 - from the city to the developer, to Trust for Public Land - to the garden entity. The closing took place in small room in downtown Manhattan and each representatives for entity involved was present with their team of attorneys as well as the title company.
About two thirds of the property is devoted to flowers and one third to vegetables and herbs. Gardeners maintain and use the greenhouse at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine to raise almost all the flowers planted at the garden, and coordinate the work load and donate plants to the Cathedral gardens, the Broadway Mall Gardeners, Riverside Park gardeners, the 111th Street garden and other neighborhood gardens. In the gated vegetable garden area near West 90th Street, there are 87 individual vegetable beds,6 school class plots, a berry patch and a rose garden. There are also community compost bins where garden members a may deposit their coffee grounds and other vegetable waste. Along the west fence is a community herb bed, and espaliered fruit trees. There are more fruit trees planted along 90th Street and a large persimmon tree that produces fruit each autumn.
Outside the vegetable fence is a walkway between West 90th Street and 89th Streets, a favored mid-block easement pass-through for the neighborhood. Along that path near 90th street is a perennial garden by the vegetable garden fence. A shade garden holds river birches, Chinese cedar trees and ornamental shrubs along the buildings on the east side of the pathway. At the midpoint between 89th and 90th Streets is a large rockery designed by Nadia Zamichow, and a trellis on both sides with seating. All the plantings in these areas are Community plantings open to volunteers and members. Near 89th Street is a tiered floral amphitheater with 26 Flower plots assigned to individual Flower Committee members. In the middle of the amphitheater is a sunken lawn oval - which serves as a playing area for the yearly children's Shakespeare Festival, and a seating area for the Sunday Summer Concert series,"Music in a Garden."
The garden has two aerated-static compost bins. See Program section for more details.
The garden's greenhouse facility is located at the backyard of The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine.
The garden has composted from the early days of the garden, gathering food scraps and garden waste from the garden membership. In 2019, the garden started a weekly food scrap dropoff program for the community. The composting program is lead by a NYC Master Composter, who leads a volunteer team of 130 garden members to manage has aerated static pile that create compost for use in the garden. The WSCG participates in the NYC Food Scrap Drop Off Network. [2]
In 2023, the garden's compost program won a grant from Greenacre Foundation, which funded the construction of its two aerated-static compost bins.
The garden organizes a annual benefit each June, which is the only event that is closed to the public and only available to ticket holders.
The garden organizes its members to plant tulips every year, and its award-winning annual tulip festival has attracted visitors from all over the world. [3]
The garden also has an annual music concert series runs from May to June. [4]
Compost is a mixture of ingredients used as plant fertilizer and to improve soil's physical, chemical, and biological properties. It is commonly prepared by decomposing plant and food waste, recycling organic materials, and manure. The resulting mixture is rich in plant nutrients and beneficial organisms, such as bacteria, protozoa, nematodes, and fungi. Compost improves soil fertility in gardens, landscaping, horticulture, urban agriculture, and organic farming, reducing dependency on commercial chemical fertilizers. The benefits of compost include providing nutrients to crops as fertilizer, acting as a soil conditioner, increasing the humus or humic acid contents of the soil, and introducing beneficial microbes that help to suppress pathogens in the soil and reduce soil-borne diseases.
Inwood Hill Park is a 196 acres (79 ha) public park in the Inwood neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, operated by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation. On a high schist ridge that rises 200 feet (61 m) above the Hudson River from Dyckman Street to the northern tip of the island, Inwood Hill Park's densely folded, glacially scoured topography contains the largest remaining old-growth forest on the island of Manhattan. The area is also known as the Shorakapkok Preserve, shorakapkok meaning 'the sitting place' in the Munsee language used by the Wecquaesgeek tribe who inhabited the area for nearly 700 years. Unlike other Manhattan parks, Inwood Hill Park is largely natural and consists of mostly wooded, non-landscaped hills.
Brookfield Place is a shopping center and office building complex in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is located in the Battery Park City neighborhood, across West Street from the World Trade Center, and overlooks the Hudson River. The complex is currently owned and managed by Brookfield Properties, a subsidiary of Brookfield Asset Management.
The Liz Christy Bowery Houston Garden, started in 1973, is the first and oldest community garden in New York City. Located at the corner of the Bowery and Houston Street in Manhattan and running across to 2nd Avenue, it is now a part of New York City Parks Department.
Queens Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 43-50 Main Street in Flushing, Queens, New York City. The 39-acre (16 ha) site features rose, bee, herb, wedding, and perennial gardens; an arboretum; an art gallery; and a LEED-certified Visitor & Administration Building. Queens Botanical Garden is located on property owned by the City of New York, and is funded from several public and private sources. It is operated by Queens Botanical Garden Society, Inc.
Guerrilla gardening is the act of gardening – raising food, plants, or flowers – on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate, such as abandoned sites, areas that are not being cared for, or private property. It encompasses a diverse range of people and motivations, ranging from gardeners who spill over their legal boundaries to gardeners with a political purpose, who seek to provoke change by using guerrilla gardening as a form of protest or direct action.
This is an alphabetical index of articles related to gardening.
Abingdon Square Park is located in the New York City borough of Manhattan in Greenwich Village. The park is bordered by Eighth Avenue, Bank Street, Hudson Street and West 12th Street.
Stuyvesant Square is the name of both a park and its surrounding neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The park is located between 15th Street, 17th Street, Rutherford Place, and Nathan D. Perlman Place. Second Avenue divides the park into two halves, east and west, and each half is surrounded by the original cast-iron fence.
On a residential area, a front yard or front garden is the portion of land between the street and the front of the house. If it is covered in grass, it may be referred to as a front lawn. The area behind the house, usually more private, is the back yard or back garden. Yard and garden share an etymology and have overlapping meanings.
DeWitt Clinton Park is a 5.8-acre (23,000 m2) New York City public park in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City, between West 52nd and 54th Streets, and Eleventh and Twelfth Avenues.
89th Street is a one-way street running westbound from the East River to Riverside Drive, overlooking the Hudson River, in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The street is interrupted by Central Park. It runs through the Upper West Side, Carnegie Hill and Yorkville neighborhoods.
The Integral Urban House was a pioneering 1970s experiment in self-reliant urban homesteading. The house was located at 1516 5th St. in Berkeley, California between 1974 and 1984.
The Astor Court Building is a 12-story, 164 unit apartment building on Broadway between West 89th Street and 90th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City, built in 1916. It was designed by architect Charles A. Platt for developer Vincent Astor. The twelve-story building is constructed around a landscaped courtyard. Architectural historian Christopher Gray believes that the landscape architect may have been Ellen Biddle Shipman. The building became a co-op in 1985.
Jackson Square Park is an urban park in the Greenwich Village Historic District in Manhattan, New York City, United States. The 0.227 acres (920 m2) park is bordered by 8th Avenue on the west, Horatio Street on the south, and Greenwich Avenue on the east. The park interrupts West 13th Street.
La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez is a community garden and public green space in the East Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. Serving as a community garden, park, playground, wildlife refuge, urban farm, community composting site, and performance venue, La Plaza Cultural is also utilized by local day-care centers, after-school programs and a growing number of parents with small children. The garden has been known to grow a number of various edible plants including fruits, vegetable, and herbs. The lot is approximately 0.64 acres and consists of at least 11 members.
Community gardens in New York City are urban green spaces created and cared for by city residents who steward the often underutilized land. There are over 550 community gardens on city property, over 745 school gardens, over 100 gardens in land trusts, and over 700 gardens at public housing developments throughout New York City. The community garden movement in NYC began in the Lower East Side during the disrepair of the 1960s on vacant, unused land. These first gardens were tended without governmental permission or assistance.
New York City's waste management system is a refuse removal system primarily run by the New York City Department of Sanitation (DSNY). The department maintains the waste collection infrastructure and hires public and private contractors who remove the city's waste. For the city's population of more than eight million, The DSNY collects approximately eleven thousand tons a day of garbage, including compostable material and recycling.
The land comprising New York City holds approximately 5.2 million trees and 168 different tree species, as of 2020. The New York City government, alongside an assortment of environmental organizations, actively work to plant and maintain the trees. As of 2020, New York City held 44,509 acres of urban tree canopy with 24% of its land covered in trees.
Little Island at Pier 55 is an artificial island park in the Hudson River west of Manhattan in New York City, adjoining Hudson River Park. Designed by Heatherwick Studio, it is near the intersection of West Street and West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District and Chelsea neighborhoods of Manhattan. It is located slightly west of the Manhattan shoreline atop Hudson River Pier 55, connected to Hudson River Park in Manhattan by footbridges at 13th and 14th Streets. Little Island has two concession stands, a small stage, and a 687-seat amphitheater.
40°47′21.4″N73°58′18.6″W / 40.789278°N 73.971833°W
