Calling All Gardeners and Green Thumbs! 
Xavier Peace & Justice invites all parishioners to join us at Wanaqua Garden — a community garden being created in the Bronx.
On a beautiful Saturday morning, April 27th, I set off to meet Sylvia and Jack, two members of the Justice and Peace group, in Union Square: our final destination, Wanaqua Garden, 136th Street in the Bronx. Gerard Lordhal from GreeNYC had invited our group to volunteer, along with members of the local community, to help clean up the Garden in preparation for planting.
Several days before, the forecast for Saturday had been heavy rain, all day – what a delight to realize that the forecast was wrong! We arrived at Brooke Avenue in good time, and met up with Greg as we headed towards the exit. The neighborhood was interesting – distinctive Spanish speaking stores and coffee shops – with a sense of space that is often lacking in Manhattan. Following our directions religiously, we found our Garden within a ten minute walk from the subway. We were looking for signs that GreeNYC were present and were expecting to find at least a few people at work in the Garden; instead we found Carlos and Luis sitting on chairs, at the far end of the rather empty wasteland, wedged beside an elementary school and overlooked by residential apartments. The entrance from the street was set into a high wire net fence that set the land apart from the sidewalk.
Carlos and Luis, we discovered, were the neighborhood elders and the self styled liaison between the community and GreeNYC. They had planted peach trees in previous years which were the only real evidence of green living things in the place. We found plenty of evidence of the throw away items of human living, that once constituted the living environment for many in the tenement buildings which had occupied the space, in years gone by. These buried, broken, used objects would provide an archaeological dream, according to Greg!
We communicated with Carlos and Luis in broken Spanish and heard of the desire from the community to clean up the space and to create a fertile, green park area that would serve many needs. After politely chatting for several minutes, we set about making ourselves useful, by picking up any utensils we could find to begin the process of cleaning up and raking the ground.
There was a sense of real excitement when Gerard along with Andrew and Lillian, arrived in their huge truck; GreeNYC emblazoned across the side for all to see! Gerard immediately set about organizing all of us, in the nicest possible way, to turn the wasteland into an oasis! We were issued with gardening gloves, bottles of water, rakes; and a wonderful array of flowering plants, trees, and vegetables, ranging from cucumbers to broccoli and cauliflower seeds. Andrew, a horticulturalist with a specialism in design, showed us the overall and long term plan for the Garden; vegetable plots, flowering plants and evergreen trees were assigned to particular sections of the Garden. Paved areas with facilities for teaching groups of children were included alongside places for people to simply sit, and enjoy the green abundance. There was clearly a lot of work to be done.
Gerard’s huge spirit and enthusiasm was infectious as we each took on assigned tasks. I found myself raking the ground at the periphery and spent much of my time disengaging boulders/pieces of wood from the underlying poor soil. There was something satisfying about seeing the texture of the ground change very slowly over a period of time. Every time I stopped to drink water, I would be surprised at how many more people had arrived to help including many local children. There was a festive atmosphere reinforced by the children’s clear enjoyment of the whole endeavor. As the sun grew stronger, Gerard invited us all to stop for lunch and share an array of pizzas which he provided, along with delicious desserts and candy for the children! The pizza tasted so good and as we ate we had a chance to see the real progress that had been made in such a short space of time!
The Garden is an ongoing project which involves the local community and volunteers, meeting every Saturday from 10am -2pm. Also, the third graders from the elementary school next door have become involved in their own planting project on Fridays, from 9am -12pm. We, in the Justice and Peace group, intend to continue our support of this very worthwhile project for the foreseeable future, and would encourage anyone in the parish with green fingers, or with a desire to become involved with the project, to contact Jackie Gibbs 1-646-273-7775 or jackiegibbs9@hotmail.com. See you there!
Photos by:Greg Guiteras
