Environmental Archives - Be Kind, Thrift and Rewind

New York City is a huge city with a lot of frenetic energy. That is all the more reason to find and enjoy the lovely gardens that are spread throughout the city. My personal favorite is the Gardens at St. Luke in the Fields, which is at 487 Hudson Street in the West Village. Recently I found an East Village garden that is now another favorite in the lower Manhattan area. Nothing makes one care more about our planet and recycling than a good dose of nature. It is actually possible to sit in a tucked away corner of this garden and “get away from it all.” It is a beautiful place for meditation, or resting ones weary feet.

The Liz Christy Garden is Located at Houston Street between Bowery and Second Avenue. The term ”bowerie” is Dutch for farm. Many years ago, during the 17th century a large farm was at the site of the current Liz Christy Community Garden. At the time it was owned by “the last Dutch Governor of New Amsterdam,” Peter Stuyvesant.(1)” What remained of the farm was in shambles during the 1970’s.

In 1973, local resident Liz Christy took an interest in the plot of land. She and the Green Guerillas, a community of gardening activists went to NYC’s Housing and Preservation and Development office to inquire about using the lot. Volunteers gathered to haul out debris, and installed a fence. In April of 1974, “NYC’s Housing and Preservation and Development approved the site for rental as “Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden” for $1 a month (2).” Work began towards planting raised beds, adding of donated topsoil, and planting of vegetables, trees and flowers.

By the garden’s second year it won its “first Mollie Parnis Dress Up Your Neighborhood Award (3).” New York residents throughout the five boroughs were inspired to start similar gardens. In 1986 the Garden was named after its founder, Liz Christy. Massive renovations have been going on throughout the neighborhood for many years. In 1990, the Cooper Square Committee, “pledged to preserve the garden in its entirety (4).” In 2002, in a more recent agreement, the NYS Attorney General also agreed to preservation of the Liz Christy Garden.

The garden is open to the public year round. The hours are:

Saturday- Noon to 4Pm (All year)

Sunday-Noon to 4pm (May to Sept.)

Tues. and Thursday- 6pm to dusk (May to Sept.)

There is a donation box in the garden for donations towards tools and supplies to further the maintenance of the garden. There is also a website for the garden if you wish to find out more about it: http://www.lizchristygarden.us/

I hope you enjoyed this post and hopefully I can make it to another garden or two while the weather is warm to share more photos of lovely New York City gardens. I have always been a big fan of gardens and am a member of two gardens within the Brooklyn Land Trust. Years ago I visited Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden many times, actually on a regular basis when he had it on Rivington Street, in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I remember Adam Purple from when I was a young adolescent walking with my family in Central Park years ago. He would bike ride to the park to collect horse manure for his garden. Adam always wore purple, thus his name Adam Purple. He raised vegetables and herbs in a garden outside of his apartment building after the building was condemned and abandoned. He distributed the fruits of his labor to the surrounding neighbors, and even me when I visited. He stayed living there and continued his garden until the city finally closed it down many years later, in 1986. I was one of the people who wanted to stop the bulldozer. Adam said the tree in the center was “sucking up too much water” and that eventually the tree would kill the garden anyway, so he seemed to have accepted that the garden had run its course. About his garden he said “It’s the Athenian oath.” “The Athenian oath. The duty and responsibility of every citizen to leave the scene a little better than when they got there, to improve things (5).” The city never could get him to leave his home though and eventually a new building was built there. He was guaranteed his home since he had been there so many years already. The world needs more people like Adam Purple and Liz Christy who nurture and tend to the soil, making beauty out of chaos and rubble.

Adam Purple’s Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden

http://www.lizchristygarden.us/, paragraph 2
http://www.lizchristygarden.us/, paragraph 4
http://www.lizchristygarden.us/,paragraph 4
http://www.lizchristygarden.us/, paragraph 5
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/02/22/nyregion/adam-purple-s-last-stand.html?pagewanted=4

All photos(except Adam Purple Ones) and written material by Marilyn Lavender. © Marilyn Lavender, 2015. “All rights reserved.”

I have always liked laundry lines. I think they evoke a memory of a time when so many things went a bit slower, or times when I lived in Colorado, or traveled in Europe when I was a child with my family. Whenever we were in Italy we saw dozens of laundry lines daily, even in the larger cities they draped their colorful array of clothing across the scenery of buildings and large windows. I have a couple of photos here from my last trip to Italy, when I went with my mother in 2006. Also, in Italy many of the rooms inside, or even the exterior of the buildings have bright colors such as peach, orange or yellow, which added to the array of color on the laundry lines.

I recently hung a dry laundry line inside my apartment. I missed seeing them more often; so I decided why not allow myself some of that joy in an urban environment? Obviously I can’t hang wet clothes on it but I like that I can hang my floral blouses or scarves up there, so I can see them before I iron them.

Every week I have a drying rack out for at least one day, to dry all the clothes I washed in the machine downstairs, but don’t want to put into the dryer. So many of my clothing items aren’t suitable for the dryers and I find most clothing lasts longer without the drying.

There are a couple of my watercolor paintings in this post and I hope to do more paintings of laundry lines soon. It is downright difficult to get the time I want to focus on all these creative aspects. I do the best I can, but there times I feel like I am running a race. I have been working on setting up schedules to focus on the various crafts, or weeks when I can focus more of cooking, etc…. Recently and in the past I took lots of photos of laundry lines and I am hoping to do some more paintings from those photos.

Not only does drying on a laundry lines outdoors save on energy, which is good for the environment, but it helps to brighten white’s fabrics. If you gently shake the clothing before hanging it on the line it can reduce wrinkles that might need to be ironed out. Plus it leaves clothing with a fresh, sun kissed scent. Some people who own their own dryers claim you can later put the clothing in the dryer for five minutes to reduce wrinkles.

I don’t mind things like hand washing laundry, drying racks or the site of laundry lines. I like these things that take a bit longer to finish. So much of modern life is fast paced and hectic. I am thankful for the slower, calmer events and find some beauty in them. I have heard friends complain about ironing for instance. When I used to have a lot of items to iron at once for instance, I would divide them into four items at a time. I ironed them one at a time, in a meditative state of mind, one for the north, south, east and west. That always made the task more enjoyable for me. I think I got that somewhere along the way when reading about American Indian rituals. The Quakers do daily tasks with a meditative state in mind, extending some consciousness into just enjoying the moment at hand.

Well I hope you all had a nice Fourth of July celebration. I went out to see some friends play music, which was fun. One of my friends recently had a heart attack and he was playing. It was nice to see him enjoying himself after going through such an ordeal. Life is so precious. We ought to be thankful for all the small things, as well as the bigger picture.