On a recent trip to New York City, I traveled to the corner of Bowery and Houston Streets in midtown Manhattan. I think few tourists would make this trek – there aren’t any noteworthy structures, no theatres or museums. Just a little corner garden, the Liz Christy Garden.In 1973, this little corner in the Big Apple was blighted when Liz Christy decided to make a difference. She had already organized the Green Guerillas garden group – neighbors and friends that would clear debris and plant window boxes around the neighborhood. She and her friends asked the city for official use of the land. But before they received approval, they started to work, removing the garbage, applying several loads of topsoil, installing a fence and planting the garden.
A year later, the garden won the city’s Mollie Parnis Dress Up Your Neighborhood Award. The group created experimental plots and worked with horticulturists to learn what plants flourish in tough urban landscapes. Before long, they were teaching workshops and hosting plant give-aways for others who were starting similar projects across New York City. Liz Christy and the Green Guerillas had become leaders in a growing national movement to transform urban blight into a place of transcendent beauty.
The garden was renamed the Liz Christy Bowery-Houston Garden in 1986, in memory of its founder, who was also the first winner of the American Forestry Association's Urban Forestry Award.
Today, the area is far from blighted. A fabulous new Whole Foods opened across the street, and little boutiques dot the landscape. The garden really makes the scene.
Lots of people have great ideas. But few ideas linger long past the cups of coffee over which they are shared. Liz Christy and the Green Guerillas didn’t just plant the seed of a great idea. They watered it, tended it, and cultivated it until they were literally giving transplants to other projects across New York City. That, to me, is very cool.
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