Woodbine Garden

The Woodbine Garden, on Woodbine Street in Bushwick, is looking incredibly good these days. I stopped by on the way from getting my bike fixed, and was blown away. The Woodbine is an older garden that went through a kind of fallow period. Then a couple years ago Sean and John kickstarted a refurbishment, pulling in several new, very committed gardeners. The garden is part of the Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust. On June 21 they’ll be hosting a musical event as part of the Make Music New York festival. I think I’ll try to stop by. You’ll see some photos below — and more here on my Flickr account.

155 Hull Street

This is an inspiring front yard container garden. I especially appreciate the recycling bag in the middle picture. The cross street is Rockaway Avenue — it’s a block from the Phoenix Garden.

Junk Yard Wisteria

This wisteria grows at where Chauncey Street runs into Central Avenue, near my home in Bushwick, Brooklyn. It’s a corner at the edge — it’s next to the egress to a diesel truck depot, next to a school bus depot, Cemetary of the Evergreens, turn-of-the-century tenements. The building on the right in the top photo is a vegetable oil packaging plant; on the left they make tortillas. This wisteria is spectacular in the way only wisterias can be — clambering aggressively to show drooping pea flowers of soft violet — a gesture of beauty planted when? I’m feeling at least 50 years ago. It is one forgotten gardeners legacy.