Earthcare Grant Supports Nyack Garden
NYYM’s Earthcare Fund was pleased to be able to give a grant to the Central Nyack Pollinator Pathway Garden (see “A Little Eden in Nyack” on the next page). Here are a few highlights from their application:
A well traveled foot path, which the town had been spraying with the weedkiller Roundup, follows the southern edge of a low income housing project. People walk through here to catch the bus to work, to play basketball at the community center, to take a stroll with their dogs, and sometimes to do drugs. The housing complex and the surrounding neighborhood is a beautiful mix of people of many colors and backgrounds.
This year, this dusty, burnt earth walkway has been transformed into a vibrant community garden with native plants that are key to supporting native bugs (especially caterpillars), which in turn support native birds.
We also are bringing importance and beauty to a lane that many working people and children walk every day, helping us envision the earth as a nurturing gathering space rather than an abandoned dumping ground. Cultivating this spot as a place of growing beauty shifts our sense of relationship to nature from something someone owns to something we share.
At least 100 people have contributed to the cultivation of the garden. This helps build community resilience; if something happens, neighbors know each other from positive interactions and won’t jump to negative assumptions about each other.
By planting some species that are edible to humans, we promote children’s understanding that food comes from the plants that grow in the earth while creating a place of harmony and fun for children. Since the walkway cuts through a residential section without being adjacent to a road, children can run the length of the walkway without the danger of cars, giving a feeling of safety and a sense that people, and not just machines, have the right to pass over the earth.
RELATED RESOURCE: Douglas W. Tallamy’s book, Nature’s Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, was written to show how homeowners can turn their yards into conservation corridors that provide wildlife habitats. The Central Nyack Pollinator Pathway Garden shows that the same principles apply to urban and shared spaces.