This is a new SPRING blog dedicated to things beautiful and horticultural in New York City and Brooklyn. Pollen abound, here are our first thoughts:
Carmen and I are garden designers here in the "gritty city" and pride ourselves on the initiative to improve City living through plant inspired environments - this blog will document and articulate such initiaves - created by ourselves, and our friends, in and around the City that doesn't sleep. Where applicable, we will draw relationships to our heritage of Italian and Irish descents because without horticulture, where are we really?
Strangely enough, as most people know, New York City is called "the Big Apple" and we thought our blog should begin as such - with a horticultural explanation and "shout out" to Michael Pollen's amazing book: The Botany of Desire of the great city that we call home and the apple's ironic relevance to life in the City.
"Apples are treated with more pesticides than any other food crop. A solution would be to introduce genes from the apple’s wild ancestors in the hills of Kazakhstan, which are quickly being lost to real estate development. Paradoxically, the viability of domestication is dependent upon the preservation of wildness."
Life in NYC is, on one hand, becoming increasingly similair to the story of the Apple's demise - subject to human hand and "involvement for betterment" - gentrification of neighborhoods, increase in high rent housing development, loss of middle class etc...and, like the genetic modification of the seed, the wildness is lost and life becomes sterile and uninteresting. So, the term "Big Apple" takes on more than the meaning of tourism as started in the 1971 advertising campaign to reinvent a city that had become ruled by gangs...it has become a symbol of sweet and sour, wildness and loss of identity through gentrification and herewith the perfect articulation of NYC past and present...unbeknownist to the first that coined the term, Big Apple.
Horticulture in the city is a unique niche business and one that can improve and make relevant connections for city dwellers...we look forward to meeting new friends this spring, via this blog, and creating lots of dialogue here..we welcome your ideas and discoveries!
Like the bag in the tree says: "thank you thank you" - at least it's a polite bag!
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