This week we will revisit some of our favourite stories about gardening in New York City. Growing big apple plants comes with challenges – yards tend to be small and shaded, and privacy is rare, but if you have patience, these city gardens can create a great magic. Look…
“I’ve always wanted a garden,” says ceramic artist Melissa Goldstein, a garlander. Mg by hand. (Please read more about her work here. ) As a child she loved going to nature. A few years later, she gathered fellow tenants at an old Tribecaloft to create a communal garden on the roof. However, until 2007 she didn’t have her own garden. The artist and photography consultant jumped at the chance when a friend told her that the brownstone behind her in Brooklyn was on sale.
However, there was one problem. The previous owner, who was too old to manage his backyard, had sprayed pesticides to control the vegetation. “We went in and inherited the addictive garden,” Goldstein says. But she didn’t stop it. She tested the soil at Cornell’s co-op exchange and set out to repair the land. “I planted some crimson clover, which added nitrogen to the soil and brought in a kerfull after the compost that New York City was handing out at the time on Staten Island,” she recalls some of her methods. The soil began to heal slowly. And a few years later, she began planting.
Photo by Melissa Goldstein.
She started with structure. She bought a “really beautiful boxed tree” from her local nursery, soaked it in root hormones and planted it in the ground to breed cuttings. “I tied up a lot of them,” she said. “They grew quite rapidly.” Boxwood carved in loose balls dot the garden and offers a green moment between the sea of flowers.
She also removed the chain link fence that separates her garden from her friends and now neighbors and replaced it with a living fence. She ordered 7 European horn beams (Carpinus betulus)plant Dig a dog nurse. She knitted together along the boundaries of the 20-foot-wide site, and trained the archway so that two families could walk on the visit. The kids especially loved to go back and forth between two yards.
