Comments on: “Offensive Gardening”: A Primer for Bushwick

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 20:15:51 +0000

Don’t the police have leisure time to plant?

By: dana

dana — Wed, 30 May 2007 20:57:06 +0000

KG – i have appreciated your plantings too!! thought to myself what a nice job they(the police dept) did… now i know the real story. thanks!

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 30 May 2007 19:02:37 +0000

It’s definitely appreciated — Central from my block to Flushing is a gauntlet of vacant lots, razor wire, depressing dusty parks, and street-snubbing housing projects.

By: KG

KG — Wed, 30 May 2007 18:57:15 +0000

That’s the one! I should say that it’s the brainchild of my sister, and she was the one who put a hell of a lot of initial work into it. Go look at the Forrest Street strip — the roses have all popped and it’s lookin’ great. I’m going to try to hit the Central side tomorrow — I’m just the unhired help, though, rather than the organizing genius (which is another way of saying my sis won’t let me plant what *I* want, hem-hem). A lot of the cops are appreciative, though, and say so, and ply us with hamburgers and hotdogs when they grill outside. My sis and I look a lot alike, so I think many of the cops are under the impression that they’ve been chitchatting with just one person the whole time.

Hope you’ve enjoyed it. That was one of its points — a little beauty in the midst of a hell of a lot of concrete.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:56:56 +0000

You garden at the cop station on Forrest and Central? I see you all the time! Once spring sprung I knew there was no way some city gardener was doing all that, and that some private citizen had taken it over, since you knwo the cops couldn’t give a shit, I mean look at all the trash in front of that dump.

By: KG

KG — Wed, 30 May 2007 15:36:33 +0000

Hey. My sister and I garden outside a cop station in strips of dirt that probably had been intended at some point for bushes but the city ran out of money. The garden’s beautiful — pretty mature at this point — and I saw some kids come hurtling around the corner and jumping in the beds. I ran over and yelled at them. They were obviously a class from a school — they were wearing identical maroon polo shirts — and the teachers came around the corner eventually, but a confrontation had already ensued. One largish girl — they were 6th graders — got in my face and I got right back in hers, which perhaps surprised her, but I went to and have taught in public urban schools and I wasn’t havin’ it.

The teachers apologized, blah blah blah, and some of the kids were sweet, but the whole thing left me with a bad taste in my mouth, given the racial and class ramifications and that I was effectively participating in an oft-played and very frequent gentrification dynamic. My sister’s lived in Bushwick for 10 years, btw, so we didn’t just get here last month. So I got on the horn, called around, tracked down the school, and said I wanted to go talk to the class. Not for blame, not because I wanted an apology, but because I wanted each side to talk about what happened. This is where I was coming from, and then they could say where they were coming from. Also, this was a strategic move on my part, because I didn’t want the kids coming back and ripping out the flowers in retaliation.

Long story short: I went in, talked to the principal, and then was walked to the class. I think it went fine. If nothing else, perhaps the kids will know that we all have to live together, and if you’re out running around on the street, you’re not anonymous and actions have consequences, some perhaps intended, others not. I don’t have any big moral to this story, but I just didn’t want things to play out as they had.

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:55:07 +0000

Dana, try barbed wire instead of razor. It just pokes unless they really get their hands in there deep. By the time their hands are in the dirt, it’s gonna be some jerkoff adult trying to steal your plant, not a juvenile vandal.

JL, actually, the kids stopped and looked first, and when I yelled again (that would be “WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU!?”), then they took off running. I find the Mexican kids are scared shitless of anything, but the baby Boricuas look at you like, yeah, AND?

By: Jimmy Legs

Jimmy Legs — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:49:38 +0000

actually i prefer the method you employed already: scream at the top of your lungs. :) i wish i had been there to see that! those kids musta jumped ten feet. maybe you can rig up a motion detector to signal a recording of yelling if they get too close. it’s the only way they’ll learn.

i’m trying to work in some bit about aluminum vs. wooden bats, but i can’t quite bridge the gap.

By: dana

dana — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:39:13 +0000

UGH – that sucks. get the poles for the tree. that will probably help. i have thought about putting razor wire in my front flower baskets but the theft has been only intermittent so far (once or twice a year). also i wonder if i would get in trouble if a kid put their hand in there and hurt themselves badly… so i’ll probably skip it.

By: Miss Heather

Miss Heather — Wed, 30 May 2007 13:52:49 +0000

One time in front of my old apartment I saw three children (the oldest one was maybe 10) hurling water-filled 16 oz. bottles at cats. Like you, I ran down and screamed at them.

Yeah, they aren’t foliage but it makes you wonder what (if anything) their parents are teaching them. It makes me thankful my ‘new’ neighbors actually watch their kids. One wrong move and momma is on the scene.