Sun, open space, and celebrity -- the opening of Brooklyn's "Garden of Hope" had them all. On an unseasonably warm and sunny afternoon last month, Bette Midler was in high spirits as she celebrated the transformation of a slice of land between two century-old brownstones from a paved walkway with a few trees into a park-like oasis. "I hope anyone who wants to be married will come and be married here," said Midler with a supernova smile to the neighborhood residents, nonprofit types, local officials, and other invited (and lightly sweating) guests. "I hope that everyone on the block uses this and makes their memories here."
A garden sprouts in Brooklyn: The Divine Miss Midler (right) with neighborhood resident Marlene Marshalleck (left) and garden designer Ellie Cullman.
Photo: Emily Gertz
In addition to being the Divine Miss M, Midler is a diva of dirt, at least in the five boroughs. In 1995, she founded New York Restoration Project to help revitalize neglected green spaces in low-income city communities. In 1999, NYRP purchased Garden of Hope and dozens of other community gardens on city land from the administration of Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to save them from commercial development.
Like many of the rescued gardens, the Garden of Hope was a hard-luck space carved out of the city's impermeable surfaces, maintained doggedly and with few resources since the early 1980s by residents in neighborhoods like Bedford-Stuyvesant, a largely African-American enclave in the heart of Brooklyn.
These lots are a legacy of the 1970s, when severely depressed rents led some New York landlords to abandon buildings in low-income neighborhoods -- or torch them to collect insurance. The city foreclosed on many such properties after their owners skipped out on their property taxes, but with the economy in a stupor and the city nearly insolvent, the lots went unused, attracting drug dealers and trash. So residents in many neighborhoods took the initiative, cleaning up these lots and transforming them into much-needed community space.
Before the renovation, Garden of Hope was "just a plain area," says Annie Ruth Williams, treasurer of the local Hancock Neighborhood Block Association, who has lived here since 1964. "There was a paved walkway, a picnic table with benches. Some cedar bushes -- someone stole them around Christmas time one year." But every spring the neighbors turned out to clean up the garden, she said.
Block party: Hancock Block Association members Georgetta Belton, Lori Walters, and Annie Ruth Williams (left to right) bask in their triumph.
Photo: Emily Gertz
Although the area's gritty history of race riots and street crime has largely given way to a revival of interest in its stately brownstones and quick commute to Manhattan, Bed-Stuy remains home to thousands of low-income residents, many of whom live in public housing projects. And it still has one of the city's lowest ratios of green space per person. So remaking the Garden of Hope had to take the neighborhood's real needs into account.
"It's not a landscape -- we designed this as an outdoor room," says Ellie Cullman. The interior design doyenne is better known for her elite clientele (Oprah is a fan) and her own exquisite Park Avenue apartment than for community gardening. But after being recruited by Midler about two years ago to adopt one of NYRP's gardens, born-in-Brooklyn Cullman worked with the block association to create a design that met their needs and expectations, and raised nearly all the money needed to do the work.
Cullman and NYRP were "very attentive to our thoughts and ideas," says Williams of the block association. The designer adapted formal garden traditions to a city neighborhood's resources and needs, turning the slim, 2,000-foot lot into a progression of circles and squares that lend the space order and calm -- while also creating plenty of room for plain old hanging out and running around. Just inside the garden's gates, a patio offers ample café-style seating. Where the patio ends, a lush green lawn flanked with flowers and shrubs flows back toward the center of the block, studded with groupings of large wooden globes and other features. The lawn is capped with a small, shady wooden gazebo, the likely future venue for memory-making celebrations envisioned by Midler.
Lori Walters, a young woman who has owned a home on the block for five years and is active with the block association, says the garden will become a focal point for the neighborhood, like "a well-maintained living room," especially for seniors and children.
Annie Ruth Williams agrees. "I'm sure we'll have more people coming into the garden to read, do needlework, and have tea with your neighbor," she predicts. "I would."
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frankejames Posted 12:38 am
12 Jun 2008
My personal story -- which is not as profound as the NYC example of social change on a neighborhood, but does reveal improvement: After we sold our car in 2007, we transformed our 34ft. wide interlocking driveway into a 24ft. wide lush garden and 10ft. green driveway. So many neighbors have commented on the positive lift it gives to our neighborhood. It is so good for the environment -- and our eyes.
Thanks for the inspiration. Next up: Our carport is going to be an outdoor dining room.
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caniscandida Posted 8:58 pm
13 Jun 2008
The Garden of Hope space, according to the photos in the NYRP website, is elegant and cool. Not very colorful, yet, though; and one might wonder why so much of it, relatively, was covered with flagstones -- very nice ones, to be sure. Perhaps it is still a work in progress, and pots of flowers will be coming, once the funds are there.
Also, there are no chairs in place. For what Midler wants the garden to be used for, chairs will have to come from somewhere -- and it is not clear that people in the community can be counted on to bring their own.
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Emily Gertz Posted 2:13 am
15 Jun 2008
There really is a lot of lawn at the garden, too -- that photo foreshortens the space considerably.
As to how much patio there is, I think that reflects the needs of the neighborhood for a nice outdoor sitting space, for otherwise homebound seniors for instance, in a neighborhood without a ton of such spaces or services. People told me they expected it to be a great space for seniors and children to spend time together, too.
In my experience here in NYC, people have really divergent ideas of what a "nice" or "useful" park is for. I am very fortunate to live by Prospect Park in Brooklyn, and during summer weekends the outer edge of the park is full of people having day-long barbeques. This is not my idea of what people ought to be doing in this big chunk 'o green -- but hey, I'm not the only type of person living here, and the park has to serve all of us. (I never ever saw a cookout in a park during my five years in Portland, Oregon -- maybe they happened somewhere, but it also reflects a really different ethos about the uses parkland -- as well as the fact that there are a lot more backyards in PDX.)
While I did not dig deeply into the ongoing financial arrangements for maintaining this garden, I can say from my general knowledge of NYRP's activities that it remains involved with its gardens and will support the block association in its management of these spaces -- NYRP owns the land in trust for the neighborhood, after all.
At the party, Ellie Cullman told me that she expected to remain involved as well; she said clients tend to become "clients for life" and she didn't make a distinction between the residents of this block of Hancock Ave. and her firm's clients. Also, she seems to have a very strong emotional attachment to the space, since it is in her "home town" of Brooklyn, and dedicated to the memory of her late (and much-missed) business partner, Hedi Kravis.
I love your story, Frankie -- and envy you the future outdoor dining room! (Maybe I should go have a cookout in the park once in a while. ;)
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