Scattered throughout the Lower East Side, there are over 40 community gardens (and 400 in the entire city). These come as a surprise, even to residents – they are certainly not on the tourist radar and quietly offer a visual respite from the concrete jungle. For a list and map of these gardens, go to the Earth Celebrations site and click on the Garden Preservation link.
Albert’s Garden, on 2nd Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues, is typical of these community gardens. As you can imagine, tremendous effort goes into this effort. Keeping developers at bay is no small task – I applaud the efforts. One such effort is Bette Midler’s Restoration Project, started in 1999, which rescued 114 of these gardens and established a trust. Perhaps in time I will feature another one of these gardens if I come across one in my travels…
Merci pour la decouverte, je ne connaissais pas. c’est le charme de nyc,on trouve de tout (mon jardin prefere etant ce petit coin de paradis du bronx : wave hill)
Three cheers for Bette Midler! I’d never heard about that project or her involvement in it.
Gosh only knows that one thing the original city planners of NYC left out was enough green space!
This one in the pic is actually a cemetary; " (Part of the confusion: the deceased are interred in underground marble vaults marked by plaques, not tombstones.) Founded in 1830, the New York Marble Cemetery, located in what is now the East Village, is the City’s oldest nondenominational public burial ground—and also one of the hardest to find. The cemetery gate is located at the end of a narrow alley leading from Second Avenue; it’s unlocked to visitors only for a few hours on the fourth Sunday of each month from April to October. "AB"
The anonymous commenter above is actually the one who is a bit confused. The Marble Cemetery is on E 1st street. Albert’s Garden is on E 2nd. There is an adjoining wall but they are not one in the same.
I spent a good deal of time at the home of Albert Eisenlau in the halcyon days of my youth. Somewhere, someone may still have the sketches he did of me for a piece he never finished before he passed in the late 90’s. Don’t get me wrong. I was no Rose Dawson. The drawings were made from photos and I was fully clothed. The man was a creep. A talented eccentric, but a creep none the less. That being said, I am positive there were no burial sites in that garden and I have been in every inch of that lot at one point or another. Back then it was not a designated greenspace maintained by the EVP Conservancy. It was a random bramble of something like wisteria and weeds littered with discarded wine bottles, cigarette butts and the occasional filthy stuffed toy. Of course, during the time I am harkening to, a good deal of the East Village resembled an editorial photo from war-torn Beirut. I swear I seem to remember overturned cars on fire. I may have been drinking. I digress.
Albert may have had some “garden art” which might have resembled grave stones to passers by but I am fairly certain he told me the spot was a basketball court back in the 70’s. It’s a lovely untouchable gentrified imitation gemstone now.