Community Gardens of Manhattan
There are many things I was not expecting when I visited the city of Manhattan for the first time. People who have never been to the city, sometimes fear the city. I was warned about pick-pockets and angry people. I was told that the city was not clean, that it was simply a concrete jungle. For me, none of this was true. I had left my luxury Manhattan hotel room just shortly after checking in and was headed towards Central Park.
The first thing that happened was that I noticed that off of all of the fire escapes there were hanging plants and flowers. The second thing that happened was that someone tapped me on the shoulder, when I turned around a woman was holding a five dollar bill, and telling me that I had dropped it. She handed me back my five dollars and when on her way. The next thing I noticed was that in many of the abandoned lots between the apartment buildings were filled with perfectly designed gardens. A patchwork of tomatoes, and peppers, and carrots and flowers…this was the first time I had been aware of community gardens in the city. It’s funny, because the more time I spend now in the big cities of the United States, the more I notice that they are not the over-crowded and cold places that many people claim them to be.
In my southwestern home town, there were never community gardens, but in the high rise capitals of Manhattan and Chicago, they are everywhere. People of a neighborhood get together and plan out the gardens in a very organized way. The cool thing about it is that while working your own plot, you become friends with those working around you. Conversations happen, and friendships are made as people trade some carrots for some corn, or some tomatoes for some freshly cut flowers. I am now back in my southwestern home town, and just exchanging smiles in grocery stores is a rare occurrence. Some day I will go back to one of the big cities to live, and I will have a little corner of a big city community garden to call my own.