Kelly Bare: Excavating a backyard garden, that rarest of New York rarities

 No comments  
 E-mail Story
 Print Story
  Share

 digg it!
 Facebook
 del.icio.us
Seed Newsvine
Fark It
Reddit

Text Size: 

Tools Sponsor

From time to time, when I find myself engaged in the tiresome game of real-estate one-upmanship that New Yorkers are so fond of playing, I'll casually play my trump card: an honest-to-goodness back yard.

I don't know anyone else in New York who has anything that a Nebraskan would classify as such. It's big. And in the spring, brave little things grow there: daffodils, tulips, grape hyacinth, crocus. And weeds.

Last year, my roommate Joyce and I decided to tackle the weeds. We put on our overalls and we yanked and pulled and answered the ceaseless questions of our 9-year-old next-door neighbor, Elian, patiently tossing back the Star Wars toys he kept chucking over the chain-link fence at our bent-over, cramping backs, all because we had a glorious vision for that back yard. A vision that included a grill, lounge chairs, tiki torches.

So we weeded and we hoed and we filled endless garbage bags with the hunks of concrete, battered work boot, jar of rancid mayonnaise, sprouted potato, Buzz Lightyear action figure and 3-D glasses we found among the weeds. We excavated years of urban neglect and we dreamed as we worked: Should we try to plant grass? Just do groundcover? Maybe it would be more realistic to lay down gravel, with some paths and border gardens?

Somewhere is a sketch on a piece of notebook paper, with graceful, fluid paths, a vegetable garden, flower beds. Olmstead and Vaux, watch out. I even marked a spot for a rustic outdoor dining table and chairs, like something you'd see in Tuscany, placed in the shade of our one tree, next to our crumbling, ivy-covered brick wall.

We were prepared for hard work. My mom sent me a sturdy trowel and a pair of beautiful garden gloves. On our little deck, we did a few pots of herbs, some basil and rosemary, some geraniums. While cleaning under the stairs, I found a battered yellow metal toy dump truck and planted pansies in its back end. On a walk around the neighborhood one day, I bought hardy-seeming seeds at a Polish grocery store: radishes, carrots, beets, pumpkins, watermelon.

We'd have coffee on the sunny porch in the morning, looking out, pleased with our progress. We got some great pink lounge chairs and had drinks on the porch at night.

One evening, when I was outside watering, out came my neighbor Linda, occupant of the only other unit in the building with backyard access. "So you used my son's dump truck as a planter," she said. "That's cute."

Oops. We literally hadn't seen anyone from her family set foot outside, ever. I didn't even know she had a son. I stammered some kind of response.

"You know, I usually plant stuff back here, too," she said. She eyed the shiny new garden hose, fluffed her hair, and went back into her apartment.

I got a little discouraged at that point, beginning to wonder how one negotiates a situation like this and whether we had the time and energy to do it properly. But Joyce, a constant soul, forged ahead and planted some of the seeds, after painstakingly clearing the ground of rocks and aerating the soil.

That weekend we went out of town. When we got home Sunday night, I looked out back and noticed that her beets had sprouted! Only they looked a lot like impatiens. Evidently, Linda couldn't resist the newly turned soil. Paybacks are hell.

Ultimately, and sadly, last summer was a stalemate. No one's vision for the yard was executed, partially because it's hard to invest time and money in something you're only renting. We used the yard occasionally, for an outdoor drink or dinner and one party where we pulled out the living room couch and plopped it in the middle of the indefatigable weeds. Our cat, Biscuit, got the most use out of it, prowling with her kitty friends and discovering gifts of field mice to deposit at the foot of the bed at midnight.

Our interest in it did get the landlord's attention, however. Last fall, when we were away and without warning, he had people come and clear it out so astonishingly and completely that it looked like it had been napalmed. Later, he said something like "So you saw the back yard, right? Can you please make an effort to keep it clean?" I almost thanked him for reminding me that being a good neighbor means not throwing your bath toys and condiments in the yard, but I held my tongue.

Luckily, in a city full of public spaces designed to soothe its citizens' longing for green, there are other ways to get my fill. Tompkins Square Park is full of forsythia and tulips. Central Park leapt to life several weeks ago. There were daffodils absolutely everywhere and crocuses too, and the palest tiny green leaves on the trees.

Now Prospect Park, my favorite running haunt, is entirely green. So is the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, a true wonder. There's a grove of lilacs ranging from white to palest purple to deep magenta, a huge rose garden, the only magnolia trees I've ever seen that rival the one in my parents' back yard (the biggest and oldest in town, so a few arborists have told us) and a lily pond, with perfectly still water lilies, some so gigantic that they look like something from outer space.

And there's the cherry esplanade. All those intricate, ruffled pink blossoms just dazzle me — they make all human attempts to create beauty seem wildly inadequate.

One of the best things about New York is that even dire lack of space can't quash the impulse to create beauty, so in many neighborhoods you'll find communal gardens where everyone has a little plot to grow whatever they want.

Inevitably, these gardens make me think about my back yard and all its unfulfilled potential. I wish I had the time and the means to make it the oasis I know it could be, but I know I never will. So my wish is that someday someone else will take all that waiting dirt and fill it up with blooming things and quiet spots to sit and reflect. And that they'll find a way to share it.

Kelly Bare is a writer and editor in New York. She can be reached at kellybare76@yahoo.com.