Siempre Verde Garden

The garden has received donations from members of the Stanton Street Shul (and the Shul is also a garden member!). Donations were submitted in multiples of $18 for purchasing plants to honor the memory of artist and gardener Lluba Stanivuk. Why $18? Keep reading ...

Lluba Stanivuk was a deeply thoughtful and thoroughly opinionated person. Trained as an art historian, she could happily debate chiaroscuro techniques or 20th century politics. She  was an artist who used garden and culinary materials to create a body of work that spoke to her life as a gardener and a cook. Ljuba had come to New York from the former Yugoslavia; after a career in the arts, she became part of downtown's gardening and Jewish communities by just ptiching in including by cooking in Shuls. She and Jaroslav Andel  raised their daughter Anna, here in the LES, We remember her at Stanton Street and White Street with fondness as well as sorrow. The gift for Siehmpre Verde is given in Lluba's memory since it was important to her that a new green space flourish in the LES; it is in multiples of $18, a number called Chai, traditionally associated with Life and Health.

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One year ago, local residents and many helpful friends first organized to access the forlorn vacant lot at 181 Stanton Street and began cleaning up, with the dream of starting a new garden. The Siempre Verde community that is growing stronger and richer every day, the talent and creativity and hard work that people have put in, have turned the dream into a living reality. Please join us on Sunday to celebrate with friends old and new.                         

Global meets local as German artist Hendrik Beikrich’s 65 foot mural now stretches over the Siempre Verde Garden lot at 181 Stanton Street. Here neighbors in August 2012 rallied to save and have since resurrected a green space, battling the corporate push to develop on every scrap of land.  

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World renowned Beikrich has shared “mirrors of the soul” art on countless walls all over the world, most prominently his 230 foot piece of a fisherman in South Korea.  Finally finding a canvas in Manhattan on the L.E.S – on a building dating back to the early 1900s – he was enthused to be part of the artistic struggle that embodies one of the last remaining art meccas of NYC.  Hendrik most humbly reminds us that New York City is “where dreams do come true” in projecting the youthful student Maischa’s image, echoing the past, present and future of all who have settled and passed through on the journey; reflecting the ambivalent change that encompasses us all.  

With a community of neighbors truly uniting in a “collaboration without borders,” via his 10-year friendship with Staten Islander and fellow artist Veng (from www.robotswillkill.com), Beikrich was connected with Irish artists and activists Clare Costello and Frances Hanlon, both of who live on the Lower East Side and are members of the garden.  Art Supply Company Molotow donated paint and equipment.  

This project has unleashed a renewal of positive energy and hope in the L.E.S.

Free! Wednesday, August 7 at 7:00 pm

This is the next in our series of vermicomposting workshops. In June we covered Starting Your Own Worm Bin. Now we look at issues like amount & frequency & content of feeding, varying approaches to adding bedding and food to the bin, co-inhabitants you might find living in the bin alongside your worms, problems you might encounter and how to remedy them. Everyone welcome, members, neighbors, visitors, and extraterrestrials.

Sunday, July 28 at 11 a.m.
Donation-based (all proceeds to garden). 

RAIN OR SHINE!!

Free childcare for children aged 2 and up in the playground right alongside our garden! Have a little one? No problem, please come and take an hour for yourself! (RSVP very important if you will be requesting childcare.)

Garden member Lala Bhakti, an advanced yoga practitioner and teacher and permaculturist, will lead a bilingual (English/Spanish) hatha yoga class in the garden under the trees! How often do you get the chance to take a bilingual yoga class, under trees?? Read more...

The whole community turned out to celebrate the first day of summer in Siempre Verde Garden. The garden was a venue in the 7th annual Make Music NY festival, held each year on Summer Solstice, with musicians of all stripes playing in all kinds of locations all around the City. We are still building our garden, and planters and crops are still a little ways off, so we leveraged all this open space for community use, and flung the gates open to host no fewer than 12 performances in 6 hours!

Story, pix, vid, and a l-o-n-g list of shout outs...

Have you seen the artwork next to our Attorney Street lot? It all started with a Swoon wheatpaste that appeared in May... and through the efforts of some local heros turned into this! The whole story with links to photos here.

Of course the foundation of any garden is the soil. The "bed" is the major task of any group rehabilitating a vacant urban lot into a community garden. Throughout the month of June, members and friends of Siempre Verde Garden busted their booties spreading fill soil, top soil, and wood chips -- and probably gallons of sweat -- over most of our 2600 square feet of land. Click through for a slideshow and a big shout-out to all the folks who helped!

On Sunday, June 16 we were so lucky to have "SAED", a professor at SUNY New Paltz who brought his research study to Siempre Verde Garden among many statewide sites, give a presentation on Do-It-Yourself Soil Analysis. We were shown how to learn much about the soil(s) in our urban gardens by using our senses and some basic materials. Saed taught us so much about soil composition and chemistry and liberated us to get to know our soil better & to determine what it might need.

Why was our June 15th workshop named "Living Plastic-Free (or almost!)"?

The concept of eliminating plastic from our lives is a goal and a personal process of revising our choices and behaviors. Some plastics cannot be avoided, and as a society we need to demand and develop alternatives.

At our workshop, we had a great convo about the reasons "reduce, reuse, recycle" just isn't good enough when it comes to our consumption of plastic. And we were treated to the strangest demo in a city garden ...