Hey Mom, I'm on Broadway!

A pollinator garden designed for bugs...and people.

I've been unable to find the time to write the past month due to a volunteer design project for Van Cortlandt Park on Broadway in the Bronx. We'll, it was installed on Friday, May 23!

Last autumn I kept walking by this overgrown pollinator garden. I wanted to putt around and grow some things from seed and beat back the weeds.

Turns out this bed was part of a larger design about a block long. The whole thing was planted in 2020. However, this section surrounding a grand staircase had few of the original plants remaining, overtaken by weeds.

When my offer to garden was received it transformed into a much larger project than expected.

Working with the NYC Parks' Director of Horticulture for the Bronx and the Executive Director at the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, a dear friend, I designed a display for the southern side of the staircase.

Unfortunately, the north side, the original pollinator bed I had hoped to work on, had a infestation of dogbane (Apocynum cannabinum). Which is a great native plant, especially for stabilizing slopes. A friend, has used it to combat mugwort--this stuff is tough! But in this context, it is not very showy and too aggressive. I don't know how we will eradicate it.

This design went through two revisions with three different plant lists, eventually determined by the availability at the city nursery. There is one, ONE, nursery that provides ornamental plants for the entire parks system in all the boroughs! Since we were planting late, I revised first on the April availability and then again for the May availability.

Weeding of the hillside happened when I had time after work, but most of it was done Friday morning with a team before planting.

I had help on planting day from three Parks staff and holy moly these women were amazing. An additional five staff from the Alliance who were also incredibly helpful! The 9 of us removed bags and bags of weeds. It was sad to learn that NYC Parks does not have a compost operation so these weeds went to the landfill. Ummm, someone please give them money now to create that!

Weeds included: burdock, mugwort, Norway maple, red maple, oriental elm, porcelain berry, some grass that had created a lawn and the difficult dogbane.

Plants went in after lunchbreak. Over 200 plants! About a third of the plants were not available from the nursery but we hope that we can get those into the ground in June or at the latest September.

A dwarf white obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana ‘Crystal Peak White’) grounds the border planting that sweeps up and down the stairs. It is complimented with whatever the nursery had, some echinacea cultivars and other aster-related plants. Hoping to add some pink flowering yarrow in June. Check out a list of all the plants in Google Drive.

The center bed contains a substantial remaining fragrant sumac (Rhus aromatica ‘Gro Low’) which was uncovered while weeding. We left that and the milkweed (Asclepias syriaca).

Aromatic aster ‘October Skies’, mountain mints, ironweed ‘Iron Butterfly’ and a few different rudbeckias make up most of this planting. Hoping to add Penstemon digitalis ‘Dark Towers’, Coreopsis tripteris, Lobelia cardinalis and goldenrods.

This project started as a selfish need to garden but grew into a partnership between multiple organizations working together to build something beautiful and selfless.

It was such a joy to work on this garden. To meet amazing staff from Parks and the Alliance. To have a better understanding of the Park's systems. And to do something for the community: pollinator and human. Hopefully the bugs, oh and the people too, like this garden.