In The Neighborhood – Bloomingdale Garden

Sunflowers On Broadway

I tossed some seeds in the bare sidewalk treebed on Broadway just north of 104th Street this spring, and now I get to walk past this burst of color every time I take the subway back home.

Planting the Broadway Median

A number of volunteers joined the staff of the Broadway Mall Association this week to add some native plants to the median between 106th and 107th.

It was fun to meet other folks who care about greening urban spaces, and to spend a couple of hours digging in some aster cuttings and spreading a layer of mulch to nourish and protect the soil.

The association’s horticulturist, Ian, shared a bunch of interesting details about the median plantings — it’s amazing how much life can be sustained in just a couple of feet of soil piled up on top of an urban subway line!

[Update, June 8:] A pair of contractors swung by that same spot this afternoon to repair a rusted-out section of the low chain boundary that runs along the edge of the median.

Broadway Treebeds

I did a bit of cleanup work in the treebeds along the east side of Broadway from 106th to 104th Street this week: cleaning out some trash, breaking up the compacted top soil, and mixing in a couple of bags of compost. I’ll come back next week to scatter some flower seeds and hope that a few of them will come up over the summer.

Caring for treebeds in this high-traffic area can be frustrating — fresh trash is tossed in them on a regular basis, dogs routinely urinate along the edges, and it’s challenging to get the storefronts to put any effort into maintaining them — but I remind myself that they’re still better off with some care than without, and perhaps over time we’ll see greater community engagement.

Mid-Winter Treebed Work

In addition to planting a few hundred bulbs (yes, we know that it is late in the season), Peter and Michael of the Columbus Amsterdam BID also put in some work to remove invasive shrubs from the cycle lane median along Columbus.

(Not pictured: my son Alex, who had been operating the power auger to speed bulb planting.)

Neighborhood Bulb Planting

I spent a few hours out with volunteers from the nascent 109th Street block association and then with the Columbus Amsterdam BID, planting flowering bulbs in the tree beds on four blocks just around the corner from us to bring up a little color in the spring.

Neighborhood Treebed Mulching

The Columbus-Amsterdam BID, which coordinates neighborhood-improvement efforts along those avenues, arranged for a bulk delivery of mulch from the city’s Parks Department, and asked for volunteers to help apply it to neighborhood treebeds.