Urban WWOOFer: Harlem Green, a Tour of Community Gardens

Harlem Green

This Saturday, July 30th, the 6th Annual Harlem Community Gardens Tour will take place, made possible by several NYC donors (including Greenthumb, The Green Guerillas, NYCCGC, The Willim H. Harris Gardeners and Project Harmony, Inc, my CSA!)  


Included in this free tour:  


- a 10am breakfast in the Joseph Daniel Wilson Community Garden at 219 West 122^nd Street
- A walking tour of fourteen Harlem gardens
- A Home-style Harlem Barbecue at the last garden on 153rd Street and St. Nicholas Avenue


This free tour is run to showcase the extraordinary gardens of Harlem and their many projects that are benefiting the community socially, educationally, nutritionally, and culturally.  The gardens are of all types:  some are shade gardens with flowers, gazebos and BBQs; others are full of vegetables, herbs, rain-water harvesting and solar energized systems; some use vertical garden space and innovative composting methods; some focus on running programs for children, young mothers, youth and seniors; others provide free environmental studies workshops, art and music events, and lessons such as canning and preserving or do-it-yourself compost.  Most are some combination of many of the above.  

Urban WWOOFer: Summer Plans Need to Be Revised

16 Jul 2011

My good friend Nick laughed and said, “Alex! It sounds like all the things that you care about are slowly going down in ruin!” I had just told him of how I twisted my ankle while running and then really sprained it the day after while hiking. He said this, remembering that a week before my garden had been excommunicated from our apartment building roof and my summer goal of successfully keeping a rooftop garden was ruined. So I can’t run, hike, or dance for some weeks, and I also will not get the chance to enjoy fresh vegetables from my rooftop garden in the fall.

My garden is now divided among four different places: the tomatoes, eggplant and basil went the fire escape of 4E—inhabited by Rachel and Thomas, my two CSA co-shares—my Thai peppers and mint are on my windowsill waiting in anticipation for a strong breeze to tear them away and down to the inaccessible backyard of the apartment, and my broccoli and onions are on the fire escape of Kianna and Megan, my two roommates with access to the fire escape who begrudgingly allowed me to take up some of their fire escape sitting space (apparently paying the same amount for rent but having a smaller room with no fire escape access is tough luck, not something they generously want to help right). I harvested the carrots and the first wave of onions, all mere shadows of what they could have been with another month of sun and water, but beautiful nonetheless. So my garden certainly took a blow, but it’s not over or hopeless. We are simply onto a new stage of development. That is, until the super realizes that we are using the fire escape for potted plants, gets a fine, and tells us we need to remove them again. For now, anyway…

Urban Gardening: No!!!!

My garden has been banned!!

Some jerks in my building threw two giant parties on our roof in a week, broke the door, made a mess, and now we've all been banned. Including me and my garden! I am distraught! It needs to be gone within a week, and I have nothing I can do with it. Find a friend with a roof? Start rogue gardening in Central Park? Take it out to Long Island?

Amidst the tears, I still want to find it a happy and healthy home.

Urban WWOOFer: Sierra Club's Inner City Outings

Even living as an Urban WWOOFer as I am, the city is still the city, and a longing for swimable rivers, real mountains, and a place where my Teva-wearing feet are in the majority is ever-present.

Another longing that I have in city-life--or life anywhere--is volunteer opportunity. In cities, it becomes so easy to focus on fending for yourself and to take on the hyper-individualistic mindset...not healthy for the long-term.

About a year ago I found the perfect solution! I began volunteering with Sierra Club Inner City Outings (ICO), going on adventures with an international high school of students in the Bronx. ICO is a volunteer and donation-based community outreach program in over fifty cities country-wide. It provides inner city youth and adults the opportunity to explore, enjoy and protect the natural world through organized outings to local nature reserves, mountains, rivers and places for outdoor adventure. Through fun team-building adventures, it builds interpersonal skills and teaches how to protect the natural environment.

Last week, for example, I went white water rafting! I show up outside of my particular group's high school, and from there, the other volunteers and I hop on a bus with twenty or so youth to leave for a day of adventure. The students love the opportunity most of them would not usually have, and the volunteers, like myself, love both the adventures and the interaction with the quirky inner city kids!

I wrote the trip report for our last adventure...take a look if you are interested to read about this and other adventures of the NYC ICO group!