Behind a tall wrought iron fence in Red Hook, Brooklyn, a drift of near-black columbines stopped me in my neighborhood tracks, recently.
Photography by Marie Viljoen for Gardenista.
On the corner of Summit and Columbia Streets, just a long block from the gantries guarding the port life of the Red Hook Terminals, the Summit Street Community Garden’s unscripted prettiness belies its roots as an abandoned lot, filled with rubble, derelict refrigerators, and rusting car parts.
Purple columbines lure late spring visitors.
The gate was open, and a welcoming chalkboard drew me in. Its luminous leaves are wildly ornamental and the perennial vines are hardy to USDA Zone 3 (yes, you can use the female inflorescences to brew beer).
Claire explains that some interesting plants arrived in the garden by way of two participants (she avoids the word “members”—“too clubby,” says Claire, one of the garden’s coordinators) who worked for Martha Stewart and who staged photo shoots in the space.
The dark leaves of Northeast native ninebark (Physocarpus opulifolius – probably ‘Diabolo’) provide a rich contrast for its abundant white flowers in late spring.
A clump of low-maintenance Siberian irises forms part of a sunny bed. Work in the garden is shared by the most active of its 70 members.
On a quiet day there was no one in the garden but Josie Rubio, pulling copious weeds from the brick path. There’s something so therapeutic about sitting on the bricks warmed by the sun and being so close to the earth and the smell of the grass and soil.
The size of the raised beds— 4 by 8 feet—in the garden was set by the length of the wood available from Green Thumb, the New York City Parks Department program that provides support for community gardens.
After gardening in a full size yard in Ohio having a yard is probably one of the things I miss the most Josie adds that the community garden plot is much more manageable for...
...a busy New Yorker I get to enjoy the beautiful garden without having to maintain the entire space And it gave her the time to create a new website for the Summit Street Garden
I m used to being able to talk to your neighbors over a fence while you re in the yard says Josie so I love that the community garden can give me that experience Red Hook...
...is not Ohio but here the fences are friendly and perfumed with honeysuckle and the sweet flowers are an antidote to the occasional old sock smells wafting from the open holds of cargo ships docked nearby
Garden sitting is what it sounds like. Green Thumb requires its community gardens to be open to the public for 20 hours a week from April through October, and volunteers are needed to garden sit during those regular open hours.
Heavy with scent in its first flush, this towering rose bush is a refugee from upmarket Westchester. The rose is top-dressed with the garden’s own compost and doused with Epsom salts three times a year.
A peaceful and shady corner beneath a tall birch is a transformation. The caveat is that if they are in the garden the gate stays open to the public.
Irises spill from behind the open fence onto the sidewalk. Not doing everything behind closed doors; that is not what community gardening is about.