Bloomingdale Garden – Sidewalk Greenspace on New York's Upper West Side

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Welcome to the Garden!

Bloomingdale Garden is a tiny patch of green in public space on New York City’s Upper West Side.

Located in containers and tree beds along the sidewalk of 219/217/215 West 106th Street, the garden occupies less than a hundred square feet, but provides a welcome splash of color to the neighborhood.

My name is Matthew Cavalletto, and I’ve created this site to showcase the flora and fauna that make their home in and around my garden, and to answer some common questions asked by passers by. I’ll also share some notes about my experiences as a gardener, in hopes that this will encourage other people to create their own pocket gardens anywhere they can.

The garden is named Bloomingdale, a traditional name for this area of New York City’s Upper West Side.

Blooming Coleus

It was only this spring that I learned that coleus is a member of the mint family — square stems, pointy leaf tips, spike of little flowers — but despite this fact you definitely should not eat it.

Field Mushrooms

These little mushrooms popped up in one of our treebeds earlier this week, and will likely be gone in the next week or so, after they’ve finished releasing their windblown spores. But their web of mycelium will remain underground, where they help to break down dead plant matter, exchanging water and nutrients with plant roots in vast networks of underground fibers extending under the sidewalk.

I don’t know enough about mushrooms to be sure, but I believe these are examples of “Shaggy Parasol” a type of mushroom known as chlorophyllum, and I’m glad I caught sight of them during their brief visit aboveground.

An Unwelcome Volunteer

Typically I’m excited to find unexpected plants cropping up in the garden; I know many people would classify these surprise visitors as weeds, but I’m usually happy to find something new that’s vibrant enough to make a go of it in the challenging environment of our sidewalk containers.

However there are a few exceptions, and when I noticed that a “tree of heaven” (Ailanthus altissima) had cropped up in one of the big grapevine planters, I knew it had to be removed. This invasive species not only has a tendency to crowd out other plants, it’s a preferred food source for the spotted lanternfly — spotted lanternflies flourish and produce more eggs when tree of heaven is present, and then go on to attack other nearby plants.

This unwelcome volunteer has now been banished to the city’s organics recycling bin, and I’ll keep an eye out for any siblings that may be lurking nearby.

Yellow Rose In Bloom

I held off on growing roses for a long time, on the grounds that they were a cliche — but then a few years I finally got one and it was such a pleasant addition that I’ve finally gotten over myself and now there’s a handful of specimens in the garden, including this one yellow example.

Grape Flower Buds

The grapevines have begun forming their flower buds, and with a bit of luck by the end of August this will be a little cluster of American fox grapes.

Pink Clover

As if to measure up to its scarlet cousin currently blooming ten feet away, this pink clover has popped up in another of our containers.

(I think this pink one is Trifolium pratense, while the scarlet is T. incarnatum, but that’s just a guess.)

Crimson Clover

I scattered a bunch of crimson clover seed a while ago as a nitrogen-fixing ground cover, but I wasn’t quite prepared for how pretty the flowers are.

Compost Top-Dressing

My thanks to the Columbus-Amsterdam BID for providing more than thirty pounds of compost produced by Big Reuse as part of GrowNYC’s community composting program.

This rich organic material will be scattered in a light layer over the surface of the soil in tree beds and sidewalk planters here on 106th Street to provide a slow but steady trickle of nutrients to the trees and flowering plants that protect and brighten our neighborhood.

Over the last decade, I’ve received more than three thousand pounds of compost from the Big Reuse composting facility under the Queensborough Bridge to be applied to sidewalk treebeds all over our neighborhood — which is why I’m incredibly disappointed to learn that the NYC government is killing it off with a one-two punch: eliminating all funds for community-composting programs from the city budget, and revoking the license for the under-bridge space so that it can be converted to a parking lot.

I hope that those short-sighted policies are reversed, or that our city finds another way to fill the gap that will be left by this tragic loss.

Allium Starbursts

The giant alliums have put up their starbursts of flowers in our sidewalk treebeds — mostly purple, plus this one even-larger white specimen. These bulbs were planted a few years ago and seem quite happy to come back every spring.

A Gardener’s Portrait

My thanks to NY Times photographer Jeenah Moon for sharing this lovely picture she took of me in front of the azaleas on our sidewalk.

With all of the chaos surrounding us, it’s nice to have this little oasis of calm to pass through every day.