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, there is a desire and a need for a more typical community garden with plots and benches and composting. (I'm just naming stuff from other community gardens, but I don't know if the organizers actually want these things. It sounds good though!)
I believe there is a community garden on 4th Avenue and 65th (or is it 64th?). I've never actually seen it, but I'd guess it's by that dead end where the tree sellers set up under the overpass. However, those on the northern, lower-numbered streets want some garden exposure as well.
If you want to get involved on the ground floor, come to a meeting to help brainstorm and organize!
from the organizer:
Do you want a place to grow vegetables and flowers and play with the kids?
Are you interested in helping to beautify your neighborhood?
IF SO...Please join the Sunset Park Garden coalition on:
SATURDAY THE 29th at 10:30 AM
in front of the 9th AVENUE subway station (on 39th Street)
We will be discussing a plan of action for converting the empty lots near the 9th Avenue subway station into a community garden for the residents of Sunset Park.
This will be a meeting to plan the garden, and a chance to sign a petition to the MTA for use of the land.
Tell your friends!! Bring your kids!!! All are welcome!!
If you can't make the meeting but still want to help, please email with your name, address, phone number, any ideas or comments, and I will add your name to the petition list.
Also, if you have any information about the history of the empty lots next to the 9th Avenue subway station, that would be great...they apparently used to be a garden, and we would like to know why they were abandoned.
for more information, please email:
sarahjulig@gmail.com
8 comments:
This is a good idea (and I'll likely be there in support) but remember Sunset Park is not Park Slope, nor does it want to be Park Slope. If you're moving to Sunset to be near the Slope you're going in the wrong direction. Sunset Parkers are happy to be living away from the $8 sprout sandwiches and 'Hall and Oates' t-shirts.
Please, if you're looking to live in the Slope, go do so,
I'm always curious why many comments need to take away from the "it's a good idea" part with "go to Park Slope" additions. Why is the assumption always Park Slope? Was the attitude "Go live in (add country of choice here)" when restaurants and services for new residents 20 and 30 years ago started opening up? It's possible, and just as unfortunate.
And what do "$8 sprout sandwiches" have to do with a community garden? Wouldn't you want to grow your own sprouts to avoid that? Are the Hall and Oates tees also $8? Now THAT'S a bargain.
I said I'd be there, didn't I? I'm not taking away from the good, I'm trying to avoid the bad.
The sprout sandwiches have to do with the people - the trust fund anarchists, those who roll in with money, spend it on absurdly priced food and rent, ultimately raising rent - then they leave once they've had enough of the 'urban experience'.
I'm just saying - there is a place for transient post-college kids looking to live a bohemian lifestyle - it's the Slope.
Get it?
Which lot is it exactly? Is there an address? I can do some research on the history of the site if I have the details.
"... there is a place for transient post-college kids looking to live a bohemian lifestyle." Which has nothing to do with community gardens. Or this post.
I take the D from 9th Ave sometimes, takes me right to work. I noticed these lot on the south side of the station and thought, hmmn, that would be a good garden spot. I don't quite live in the neighborhood, but I have run out of garden space in my small strip.
Have knowledge, will travel. Maybe see you there.
I'd love to start growing things right now. Any movement on this? Anywhere I can get an update or more information? I'd love to join!
What does community gardening have to do with Park Slope? Growing food for yourself is not a recent phenomenon, and community gardening is older than Park Slope itself. This kind of ignorance is really unfortunate. Not having the space or land to grow your own food in an urban environment is really awful. Gardening is so incredible, growing things, dirt, having veggies that still smell like the ground.
I was just thinking how starting gardens is really hard work with all the bulldosing of the dirt to get cement and trash out, build irrigation. This project will probably take awhile.
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