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.

Pollinator-Friendly Seeds

Thanks to our neighbor Anne who donated a pint of seeds harvested in her own garden last season from pollinator-friendly flowering plants: yarrow, coreopsis, echinacea, joe pye weed, black eyed susan, and sage.

These have been scattered into planters and tree beds throughout the garden and I expect to see some of them later this summer, with others remaining dormant and cropping up in subsequent years.

Thanks again, Anne!

Violets in Bloom

Our violets are not shrinking — in fact, they’ve fully established themselves in one corner of our sidewalk treebeds and come back in full force every year — although admittedly you do have to slow down and look in order to notice their blooms.

Daffodils on Broadway

The daffodils I planted in the giant barrel on the corner of 105th Street have made a small but decent showing this spring.

After cleaning out some litter, I spent a few minutes digging in a couple dozen sunflower seeds in the open spaces in hopes of having another big display later in the summer.

Spring Bulbs in Bloom

With our weather pattern shifting from daytime high temperatures in the 40s a few weeks ago to now 50s and even 60s, the perennials in our sidewalk garden have woken up and kicked into gear. The crocuses were the first to bloom, followed a week or so later by the daffodils and now hyacinths.

Sidewalk Tree Beds in the Times

The myriad benefits and occasional conflicts over the city’s sidewalk tree beds were the subject of an article in the New York Times this week:

In the Fight Over N.Y.C. Sidewalks, Tree Beds Are the Smallest Frontier

In a city with little private green space, tree beds on public streets have become coveted territory. But who gets to decide how they’re used?

Over 660,000 trees line the streets of New York City, and the beds around them take up more than 400 acres, according to a city estimate. While many people just walk by the rectangular openings in the sidewalk from which the trees spring — or, worse, use the spaces as trash cans and doggy litter boxes — others lay claim, unofficially, to these pocket-size patches of land.

As the weather warms, these caretakers swing into action…

Mr. Resler said neighbors have praised his miniature garden, but that he has also had to fish out beer cans and once felt compelled to speak to someone who was letting his pit bull jump over the tree guard and kick up dirt after it had relieved itself.

“This kind of thing lets you meet your neighbors, good and bad,” he said.

American Asters

This six-foot-tall mini-thicket of late-blooming asters is providing another lovely spot of color in our garden despite the recent cold snap — I almost cut them back in November and I’m so glad I waited!

I don’t know which variety of asters this is, but I have my fingers crossed that it’s one of the rhizomatous perennial species and will return again next year.

Fall Mums

Just as all of the other plants in our sidewalk garden are starting to die back, the mums are flowering.

Grandpa Ott

My favorite variety of morning glories continues to be the Bavarian “Grandpa Ott” with its deep purple blooms.

They do a great job of climbing the fence — or bamboo rods, or tall plants, or anything else they can find for support — and although their flowers don’t stay open for long, there are so many of them that they provide a constant stream of color for months throughout the late summer and into the fall.

Sweet Potato Vines

Someone left a sprouted sweet potato lying on the dirt in one of the garden planters this spring, so I dug it in just to the level of the surface and it’s been very happy, with four vines coming off of it, each six feet long and happily tangled in the fence trellis.

I’ll need to do some research to know how to over-winter it — do I just leave it in place and assume it will die back and resprout in the spring?

Summer’s End Update

There’s not a huge amount of floral color left this late in the season, but we still have a decent wall of green along the hundred feet of sidewalk frontage.