From The Villager
A morning in Liz Christy Garden by the turtle pond
By: Keith Crandell June 06, 2001
Donna Leon, who lives on First Ave., wrote to her community board (C.B. 3) last week. She let them know that the Liz Christy Garden tipped the scales for living in New York City. "I needed a place of solace to collect my thoughts. The garden has become that place that I go to in order to relax, breathe and reflect on the wonders of Manhattan. It has helped me to appreciate the underlying beauty and surprises that the city has to offer."
She is one of the many who have come to love this enchanted amenity that graces an unlikely corner, the Bowery and E. Houston St.
"Please," Leon asked the board, "do what you can to save this garden."
Leon wrote because she had learned that the garden might be endangered by a major urban development project in the neighborhood surrounding Liz Christy.
Her concern was roused by the reported plans to extend a heretofore obscure cul de sac called Extra Pl., which runs north from First St. The extension would run south from First St. bisecting the garden with a 20-foot-wide pedestrian walkway
Last Tuesday morning, many of those who hold the garden's future in their hands gathered in a circle near the turtle pond to try to reach agreement on its fate. They did not succeed, but once some of the initial testiness had worn off, they did agree that Liz Christy was a valuable amenity, well worth preserving. How? That will take another meeting, probably in a couple of weeks at the offices of Green Guerillas.
The Tuesday conclave brought together the major players: Green Guerillas was there. Lisa Kaplan, the chair of C.B. 3, was one of the first to arrive, pulling up on her bike. Representatives of the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development were there. City Planning came later. Cooper Sq. Committee was there. Avalon, the developers, sent four men. And most important, the people with dirt under their fingernails, the gardeners who put Liz Christy together plant by plant, were well represented. Among them was one of Liz Christy's pioneers, John English, whose name appears on a founders' plaque nearby.
The issue confronting the circle was whether or how to create a passage from Houston to First St. with minimum damage to Liz Christy. Gardeners want it to go north from garden's blacktopped utility area at the garden's east end. Jim Lima, the spokesman for H.P.D., wouldn't make a commitment. Hector Rodriguez, a gardener, assured the city and developers that gardeners did not want to be confrontational nor did they want to block the project. "We simply want to protect what we've made."
And English, who is not only a founder of Liz Christy but a developer, made on-the-spot design suggestions and offered his expertise without charge to help resolve the issues.
The consensus of the garden advocates seemed expressed by Steve Frillman, Green Guerillas' executive director, who wrote to H.P.D. that "at this point, we would prefer not to be adversaries to H.P.D., the developers, or the Cooper Sq. project. We just want what everyone has been promising us for years - a preserved, whole, Liz Christy Garden."
That the Liz Christy Garden exists at all is a minor urban miracle. Its location seems absurd. Liz and cohorts like English and Jim Addiss, who still lives two blocks away, decided that this rubble-strewn, city-owned mess would be a swell place for a garden. This was at a time when the Bowery was in its heyday, thronged with alcoholics, and Houston St. was a foul-smelling passage for trucks coming from the East Side to make their way through the West Village to the Holland Tunnel. Green is a wonderful color for this corner - not only aesthetically pleasing but as a chemical foe of diesel fumes.
Not only did Liz's gang clear the site and create a most charming garden, but their successors kept it alive and full of little niches of beauty. One can only pray that it will remain so forever. The inexorable march of big, clumsy boxes makes its way down Manhattan, headed for the Village and the East Village and Noho and the Lower East Side and Soho. Liz Christy will stand as a little monument to beauty and also to common sense - a place that Donna Leon and all her future neighbors will love.
©The Villager 2003
