Sandy and New York City Community Gardens

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First of all I must apologize for the amount of time between posts. Maybe it is blogger’s block, if there is such a thing but also sometimes life gets in the way of blogging. I do have to wait on line to use the computer. My kids homework trumps dad’s use of the computer.

I have been mulling over what to say about Sandy and the community gardens. I live on Staten Island and was directly if only slightly affected by the storm. Some of my fellow Staten Islanders lost their homes and in some cases their lives. The effects of the storm still linger for many. Oddly we had no damage due to Sandy (we lost electricity for 28 hours – short enough to be a novelty and not long enough to cause major inconveniences) but a large cherry tree came down in the Northeaster storm the following week. The tree still had it leaves and the wet snow and a gust of wind took it down. It disconnected our neighbors and our electric and cable lines but only caused minor damage to our garden and none to our house. This 30 inch diameter trunk even fell neatly between 2 beloved rose bushes I had pruned just a week earlier.

Some of the community gardens fared much worse but on the whole most avoided damage from the storm. In fact I know of one garden with solar panels where the gardeners were able to charge their cell phones as they waited up to 2 weeks for the electricity in their apartments to be restored. Chalk one up for sustainability initiatives in community gardens.

In the low lying areas of Coney Island, Far Rockaway, Red Hook and the Lower  East Side, the community gardens were flooded with up to 12 feet of water which brought with it all kinds of debris, sewage and whatever the ocean, river and bay were carrying. Fallen trees also caused damage in these gardens as well as other gardens inland in neighborhoods in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.

The flooded gardens have been advised not to eat anything that was flooded and not to grow anything in inundated soil for at least 60 days. That’s not bad considering that the 60 days will fall in November, December and January when little grows in the gardens here. In several gardens that I visited after the storm there were sewage and petroleum smells which tells me that there may be cause for caution growing vegetables this spring in some of these areas.

Like my home some community gardens lost large trees and limbs which caused everything from minor inconvenience to lost plants to damage to structures, fences and raised beds. New York City’s Green Thumb program and Parks Department helped remove some of the larger trees and limbs and some gardeners and helpers from the community took care of smaller trees on their own but much more work needs to be done to cut up and chip branches and to assess and prune trees that may be vulnerable to future storms.

Community Gardens that were inundated with debris have been cleaning up on their own with assistance from volunteers from all over. Often the community gardeners were overwhelmed with volunteers and did not have enough tools, gloves and garbage bags to get the job done. The organization I work for, GrowNYC helped with some of these things but we had supplies to assist only a couple of gardens. GrowNYC was also hampered by the fact that the vehicle we use, Grow Truck, was parked on a pier on the East River where it was flooded and became unusable.

More work needs to be done and the community gardeners and non profit organizations are planning for the spring when the gardens will need to repair and improve infrastructure and plantings and prepare the community gardeners so that in future storms the impact will not be as great.

So what is needed is not just to replace what was but to rethink the use of some materials and plants and to use storm resistant species and materials. Planting smaller trees like dwarf fruit trees as an example. Using plastic and composite lumber instead of wood will hopefully keep the raised beds in place if flooded again. Existing trees will need to be pruned preemptively to remove any limbs that are in danger of falling in future storms.

Other than the experienced labor to accomplish these tasks like tree climbers and pruners the most important thing needed is the dollars to pay for these services and the tools and materials needed to make the necessary repairs and improvements. Hopefully next time there will be a much happier story to tell