Lead Review

  • Book: Rooted in the Hood
  • Location: Manhattan
  • Author: Anna Angelidakis

Review Author: tripfiction

Location

Content

Did you know there are over 550 community gardens around New York? That is a staggering number and I really had no idea!

In this beautifully produced tome, the author explores selected gardens in the Lower East Side, West Side and up in Harlem. She brings together musings, observations and a beautiful and eclectic selection of photographs. The sheer diversity of the gardens is astounding, the creativity and enthusiasm of the people who maintain them absolutely shines through the book. There are herb gardens, random ones, floral displays, vegetable plots, and statues and murals aplenty. The statues sometimes are wrapped up by the greenery and have experienced the heat and cold so they are truly becoming weather-worn, and yet stunning.

The plots for the most part have been reclaimed from empty areas, which had gone to seed during the 60s/70s/80s when the city was experiencing quite a dark period in its history – drugs, attacks, arson and general mayhem were rife. The author says that no book on community gardens is complete without the mention of Liz Christy who teamed up with Green Guerrillas, who then took over the vacant lot and specialised in “seed bomb” (balloons stuffed with peat moss, fertiliser and wild flower seeds; they were then lobbed into the wastelands, and lo and behold a greener city was born)

On my next visit I would love to spend a day checking some of them out, it’s like the city has its secrets that just need to be discovered. It would be one way of exploring at the next level – once you have seen all the big sites you want to see you can delve into the feel of local neighbourhoods, perhaps meet some of the people maintaining the gardens and just shoot the breeze. Brilliant for anyone who loves gardens and the city and something just a little bit different and quite inspirational!

I spent a couple of hours immersed in the city, tantalised by the narrative and heartened by what people – if they set their minds to it – can create. The author, as I write, is exploring the gardens in the other boroughs of New York.

Love New York? You need this book!

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