El Jardín de La Calle Cinco - en Español

The story of the Fifth Street Garden is deeply connected to the story of the Fifth Street Squat. The old squat watched its adjacent building go from vacant tenement to dumping ground for the next building's landlord and his renovation blunders. Apartment after apartment's piles of plaster, rotted lumber and old steel bloated the empty building until it collapsed due to neglect (and loneliness). Through the eighties Jimmy Stewart, among a slew of others, kept the old squat company and helped stitch it together and hold it up. Jimmy watched the city come and finish off the adjacent building and haul it away. The residents came and went until, starting with a small group of refugees from Glass House Squat, a new ("third generation") group of younger squatters moved in. Fresh blood and renewed energy got the building moving full time -- renovation and structural improvements and, lo and behold, clearing out the junk yard next door and starting a community garden. Constant harassment from the Sanitation Dept. did little to deter the green emergence, though some of the dog squatters sure put a dent in the momentum.

I met Kzrt out at Dreamtime Village in way rural WI sharing the permaculture organic farming, collective living, and alternative building techniques. He wandered India and landed in NYC penniless and moved into Fifth St. working for a city landscaper. I moved to the big shitty wandering wonder-eyed and landed desperate at his doorstep. Kzrt brought home the righteous kickdowns from the snobs and their terrace penthouse gardens back to the street. I remember the company truck pulling up and Kzrt yelling for help -- must have been a hundred sacks of soil and peat. We finally finagled regular garbage pick up in front of the building and a huge amount of space opened up in the garden for community pursuits.

Slevitch and Patrick were beaming when they finished the barbeque -- an oil drum sliced down the middle that sat long ways and opened up like a giant clam on hinges and an angle iron lip. We pledged a cook out every sunny weekend and made good on our promise, feeding all kinds of folks from the neighborhood, one side carnivorous and the other vegan delight. The kids from the block with negligible parents running around playing in the fresh dirt. Friends showed up with food for the grill or just empty bellies. A little music and mayhem and all the dogs going at it crazy.

My friend John moved to the neighborhood and started volunteering hard core, putting his pirate garden experience and stone masonry to work. He used to yell up to my window with a huge window sill stone cradled in his arms. "There's a dumpster full of them, come on!" He organized turning the scrap pile of bricks into an ornate walkway and worked over the raised beds with retaining walls. He told me a story about the cobble stones that used to pave old New York. They were ballast stones cut by prisoners in England and brought over by big wooden ships and left on the docks with with huge old growth white pines weighing down the boats. Slevitch would scavenge a van full of them from the abandoned docks in Williamsburg and here we were, turning all that pillage and roadways into simple garden blocks, holding the new soil above the lead nasty dust below.

What we transform with our hands and this simple soil. Kzrt had this plan for a spiral bed of spices crawling upward toward a peak with two trails curving around either side. Jimmy busted up the whole program on a daily basis, mumbling that the trail went straight through for ten years and he wasnÕt gonna stop now. A battle was brewing. John showed up with some fat ass stone from the east river and we laid a beautiful walkway through the bed and shored up the sides all spiffy.

Kzrt: "Wow, this is great. I had decided that I had to kill Jimmy, and then everything would be all right. This is a much better option."

A crew of us from the house went out to the Elizabeth Christy Garden for the Green Guerrilla annual plant giveaway. We begged. They let the respectable regulars have a first nab while we held off on the sidelines and cleaned house when they gave us the go ahead. They floated us a dozen pine two by fours, a rickety wheelbarrow, plants galore, and a prefab compost bin. It took three trips to haul it all back by push cart. We planted a row of thorny bushes that would bear bird attracting berries come springtime but doubled as a security against the pesky super next door. The sunflowers sprang up tall and the morning glories surpassed the fence and started climbing up the squat. It took three trips to haul it all back by push cart. We planted a row of thorny bushes that would bear bird attracting berries come springtime but doubled as a security against the pesky super next door. The sunflowers sprang up tall and the morning glories surpassed the fence and started climbing up the squat. Even made peace with the "dirt lady" in the Section Eight lot behind ours who stirred up a feud by snagging a huge pile of dirt we were supposed to share. But she took a liking to me and told us to transplant this little redbud tree in the hopes that we could give it a little more light and a bit better home.

Me and John were standing outside surveying the rapture and two nuns from the Cabrini old folks home across the street came over to tell us what a lovely garden we had. Whoa. A couple weeks later an office high up came by to spread the same sentiment. This from the place that started a petition on the block to get us evicted. Oh the transformative power of the green good space. We were dirty. Only running water from the hydrant, just a couple of toilets for the whole building. It was hard just to get by and keep the toilets from freezing in the winter. And you have to deal with the city wanting to pounce any chance they get. It was a miracle making the block safer, cleaner, prouder. Just fine. Old Sammy the plumber got everyone hired shoveling coal at the Rivington school off the books five an hour. A real sweet heart -- old school from 13th street squats, did all the plumbing for the squats, a jolly drunk that sobered up and started doing bad ass work with ACT UP. We took him in when he fell off the wagon head first and not too long after was found dead down by the river. We planted a pear tree for the bastard, Slevitch and Patrick all proud and silent.

Never got to see it come to fruit. Fuckers dumped my building on top of that garden -- ready to kill me tearing at the building while they knew I was inside, all the exits blocked off, and the gestapo horde ready to crush any revolt. Hundreds in the street to say "no" and me all alone in the building hearing them scream when the crane started to rise. Crashed a cloud of lead paint and asbestos into the air three days running and smashed a ten by ten foot hole into the next door neighborÕs house. Violated: our home, our garden, our neighbors, our community. Somehow a little sliver of the garden hugging the next building survived burying. That red bud tree is still there, a bit abused by the crackheads camping out under it. Slowly returning to a garbage filled, junky lot. I ran into some schmuck who said there would be a parking lot there soon. Oh joy. But the EPA had some hold on the property until blah blah blah. It is hard to turn your back and just walk away. But you do.

Now I trade off from lovely Dos Blocos Garden on lowly East Nine and the Cherry Tree Association Garden up in South Bronx. In the little meditation nook behind Dos Blocos the bean vines crawled up and bloomed in the razor wire. All the goods: composting, food and herb harvest, urban arbor, seed saving and permaculture praxis. Other gardens to fight the good fight for. No matter. This earth will not die. Little humans come and go like a virus. We cling, tear and breed. But our greatest achievements are little pimples in this coursing life beat. We are a birth stone split from this earth. There is no nature. It is everywhere and yes, even here in this city of concrete slab tombstones. We are life. And life always wins.

love and soil
Brad Will