I ordered Restorative Commons for every student in my course this year,

and I plan to use it again next year. This important volume speaks to
reunifying urban planning and public health, which is central to our
Interdisciplinary Planning for Health course. I recommend Restorative

and Well-being through Urban Landscapes

Restorative Commons: Creating Health
Commons enthusiastically to all my students.
Dr. Mary E. Northridge
Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University

Professionals and citizen advocates concerned with the planning

and design of 21st-century American cities will find a wealth of
valuable insights in this broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary essays.
Restorative Commons:
Creating Health
Dr. Reuben M. Rainey
Professor Emeritus, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

There is undoubtedly an inextricable link between healthy people and

healthful qualities of their environments. Restorative Commons illustrates
the many dimensions of this connection with detailed case studies
that serve as exemplary references for my colleagues at the Parks
and Well-being through
Urban Landscapes
Department. I’m proud that one of our own projects is featured in the
book and I welcome its presence in my personal library.
Adrian Benepe
Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

The need for the world’s urban ecosystems to nourish human populations Edited by
and serve as restorative ecological landscapes is one of the most
pressing of the 21st century. This book is an excellent intellectual and Lindsay Campbell and Anne Wiesen
practical introduction to this mission. Together, the sections on theory
and concepts, on case studies, and on interviews with practitioners
Foreword by Oliver Sacks, M.D.
present a comprehensive view of the compelling idea of restorative urban
commons. I will certainly find the insights and perspectives useful as we
plan our future activities in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term
Ecological Research project.
Dr. Steward T. A. Pickett
Senior Scientist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

General Technical Report NRS-P-39

I S B N 978-0-16-086416-2 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800
90000 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001

I S B N 978-0-16-086416-2

9 780160 864162

General Technical Report NRS-P-39

Restorative Commons:
Creating Health
and Well-being through
Urban Landscapes
Edited by
Lindsay Campbell and Anne Wiesen
U.S. Forest Service, Meristem
Northern Research Station

General Technical Report NRS-P-39



Proceedings

The findings and conclusions of each article in this publication are those of the individual
author(s) and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
or the Forest Service. All articles were received in digital format and were edited for uniform
type and style. Each author is responsible for the accuracy and content of his or her paper.

Trademark

The use of trade, firm, or corporation names in this publication is for the information and
convenience of the reader. Such use does not constitute an official endorsement or approval

by the U.S. Department of Agriculture or the Forest Service of any product or service to the
exclusion of others that may be suitable.


ISBN 978-0-16-086416-2

Published by For sale by

USDA Forest Service  Superintendent of Documents,
Northern Research Station U.S. Government Printing Office
11 Campus Blvd., Suite 200  Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov
Newtown Square, PA 19073 Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800
Cover Photo: DC area (202) 512-1800
New York City Housing January 2009 Fax: (202) 512-2104
Authority community Revised January 2011 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001
garden, Marlboro Houses,
Brooklyn, NY.
PHOTO USED WITH PERMISSION BY
Visit our homepage at: Designed by
PHOTOGRAPHER LLOYD CARTER, NYCHA http://www.nrs.fs.fed.us Pure+Applied, New York
 Contents

1 Foreword
Oliver Sacks

5 Preface and Acknowledgments

11 Introduction
Lindsay Campbell and Anne Wiesen

Theory
26 Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy
Urban Spaces in 19th Century America
Robert Martensen

38 Biophilia, Health, and Well-being

Judith Heerwagen

58 Cultivating Resilience: Urban Stewardship as a Means

to Improving Health and Well-being
Erika Svendsen
Photography by Steffi Graham

Thought Pieces
90 Re-Naturing the City:
A Role for Sustainable Infrastructure and Buildings
Hillary Brown

96 Urban Gardens: Catalysts for Restorative

Commons Infrastructure
John Seitz
 Case Studies
110 Creating Restorative Settings:
Inclusive Design Considerations
Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden, Cleveland, OH
David Kamp

122 The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space:

Community Gardening in New York City
NYC Department of Parks and Recreation
GreenThumb Program, New York, NY
Edie Stone
138 Environmental and Community Health:
A Reciprocal Relationship
Fresh Kills Park, Staten Island, NY
Jeffery Sugarman
154 From Front Yards to Street Corners:
Revitalizing Neighborhoods through
Community-Based Land Stewardship
Urban Resources Initiative, New Haven, CT
Colleen Murphy-Dunning

164 Creative Uncertainty
Monroe Center for the Arts, Hoboken, NJ
Victoria Marshall and Dil Hoda


178 Restoring Lives, Transforming Landscapes:
GreenHouse Program at Rikers Island Jail, New York, NY
James Jiler

188 Memoryscape
The Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial Preservation Land,
Westfield, MA
Lindsay Campbell
 Interviews
202 Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture:
Red Hook Community Farm
Added Value, Brooklyn, NY
Ian Marvy

216 Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable,

Multicultural Resource
Queens Botanic Garden, Flushing, NY
Susan Lacerte

232 The Re-Greening of Public Housing

New York City Housing Authority Garden and Greening Program,
New York, NY
Rob Bennaton

248 Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation

American Friends Service Committee, Bosnia-Herzegovina
Davorin Brdanovic

Appendices
266 About the Editors
268 Meristem 2007 Forum Agenda
Restorative Commons for Community Health
270 Forum Participants
272 Contributor Biographies
Reciprocity
Children from Martin
Luther King, Jr. Recreation
Center in Franklin Square
visit Gwynns Falls/Leakin
Park, Baltimore, MD (1995).
Photo used with permission
by PHOTOGRAPHER STEFFI GRAHAM
viii Restorative Commons
 1

Foreword
All of us have had the experience of walking through a
garden, by a river or ocean, or climbing a mountain and
finding ourselves simultaneously calmed and reinvigorated,
engaged in mind, refreshed in body and spirit. The
importance of these physiological states on individual
and community health is fundamental and wide-ranging.
In 40 years of medical practice, I have found two types of
non-pharmaceutical “therapy” vitally important for patients
with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.
I have recently been thinking and writing a lot about music
and I have just published a book called “Musicophilia” — 
a title I chose as a reference to E. O. Wilson’s term “biophilia.”
Indeed, I think there is a biological need and craving that
goes across all cultures and all times both for music and
for greenness. I would even suggest that a sort of subtype
of biophilia may be hortophilia, or a special desire for
gardens. I can’t quite claim that hortophilia is in the genes
because, of course, gardens have only existed presumably
since the beginnings of agriculture. But I have often seen
the restorative and healing powers of nature and gardens,
even for those who are deeply disabled neurologically.
In many cases, gardens and nature are more powerful
than any medication.
 2 RESTORATIVE COMMONS OLIVER SACKS

I have one friend with moderately severe Tourette’s syndrome — 

in his usual, busy, city environment, he has thousands of tics and
verbal ejaculations each day — grunting, jumping, touching things
compulsively. I was therefore amazed once when we were hiking
in a desert to realize that his tics had completely disappeared. The
remoteness and uncrowdedness of the scene, combined with some
ineffable calming effect of nature, served to defuse his ticcing, to
“normalize” his neurological state, at least for a time.
Another patient, an elderly lady with Parkinson’s disease, often
found herself “frozen,” unable to initiate movement — a common
problem for those with parkinsonism. But once we led her out into the
garden, where plants and a rock garden provided a varied landscape,
she was galvanized by this and could rapidly, unaided, climb up the
rocks and down again.
I have often seen patients with very advanced dementia or
Alzheimer’s disease, who may have very little sense of orientation to
their surroundings. They have often forgotten, or cannot access, how to
tie their shoes or handle cooking implements. But put them in front of a
flowerbed with some seedlings, and they will know exactly what to do — 
I have never seen such a patient plant something upside down.
The patients I see often live in nursing homes or chronic-care
institutions for decades, and so the physical environment of these
settings is crucial in promoting their well-being. A number of these
institutions have actively used the design and management of their
open spaces to promote better health for their patients. For example,
Beth Abraham Hospital in the Bronx, New York (which opened in 1920
for the first victims of the sleeping sickness — encephalitis lethargica)
is where I saw the severely parkinsonian post-encephalitic patients of
“Awakenings.” At that time the hospital was a pavilion surrounded by
large gardens. As it expanded to a 500-bed institution, it swallowed
most of its gardens, but it did retain a central patio full of potted plants
that remains very crucial for the patients. There are also raised beds
so that blind patients can touch and smell and wheelchair patients can
have direct contact with the plants. I also work with the Little Sisters of
Previous Page: the Poor, who have nursing homes all across the world. This is an order
Horsetail
Equisetum hyemale. originally founded in Brittany in the late 1830s, and it spread to America
Photo used with permission
by photographer John Seitz in the 1860s. At that time it was common for an institution like a nursing
FOREWORD 3

home to have a large garden and sometimes a dairy as well. Alas, this is
a tradition which has mostly vanished, but which the Little Sisters are
trying to reintroduce today. At the Little Sisters of the Poor in Queens,
when it becomes warm enough, all of the residents like to be out in the
garden. Some of them can walk by themselves, some need a stick, some
need a walker, and some have to be wheeled. But they all want to be in
the garden.
Clearly, nature calls to something very deep in us, and biophilia,
the love of nature and living things, is an essential part of the human
condition. Hortophilia, the desire to interact with, manage, and tend
nature, is also deeply instilled in us. The role that nature plays in
health and healing becomes even more critical for people working
long days in windowless offices, for those living in city neighborhoods
without access to green spaces, for children in city schools, or those
in institutional settings such as nursing homes. The effects of nature’s
qualities on health are not only spiritual and emotional, but physical
and neurological. I have no doubt that they reflect deep changes in the
brain’s physiology, and perhaps even its structure. As a physician, I take
my patients to gardens whenever possible; as a writer, I find gardens
essential to the creative process.
I was honored to give the keynote address at the first Meristem
Restorative Commons Forum in 2007 and I am honored to introduce this
volume, which is inspired by that conference. The proceedings from the
Forum, and related case studies included here, mark an important step
in fostering new interdisciplinary collaborations in the design and use of
common urban green spaces to support public health and well-being.

Oliver Sacks, M.D.

New York, NY
 5

Preface
see appendices page 268
p 


The Meristem 2007 Forum, “Restorative Commons for

Community Health”, introduced the concept of Restorative
Commons as a broad vision for 21st century urban open space.
Convened at the New York Academy of Medicine, the Forum
organized thought leaders and practitioners from the fields
of health (medicine, psychology, social epidemiology), design
(urban planning, landscape architecture, and architecture),
and urban natural resource management to give specificity
and meaning to this vision. Through presentations of research,
theoretical frameworks, design processes, built examples,
programmatic innovations, and clinical experience, some
basic considerations for creating public spaces conducive
to individual and community health began to emerge.
Participants asserted that these spaces should be accessible,
especially to vulnerable populations; should respond to needs
at the neighborhood level; and should create opportunities for
social engagement, economic empowerment, nature access,
and stewardship. They are community-driven, ecologically
sustainable, and answer the very human impulse to seek
and create beauty in our everyday surroundings. They are
a primary foundation for a resilient community. Facilitated
sessions revealed a need to expand this dialogue and inspired
the creation of this volume.
 6 RESTORATIVE COMMONS

This volume is a joint endeavor of Meristem and the U.S. Forest

Service Northern Research Station to explore the relationship between
human health and the urban environment. Both organizations are
working to strengthen networks of researchers and practitioners to
develop new solutions to persistent and emergent challenges to human
health, well-being, and potential within the urban environment.
Culled from the Meristem Forum presentations, participant
contributions and additional innovators in the above-named fields,
this volume documents compelling practices and principles that are
currently utilized to create Restorative Commons —  either as small-
scale experiments or as larger efforts to “institutionalize innovation”.
It includes academic writing of researchers in the fields of medical
history, evolutionary biology, and urban planning. And it couples this
writing with practitioners’ experiential knowledge presented as essays,
thought pieces, and interviews. Thought pieces written by architects
are short essays intended to provoke reflection on changes in urban
infrastructure. Case studies present reflections and lessons learned
from both the practitioner and the research perspectives. Interviews
provide a vehicle for practitioners who are busy in the day-to-day
operations of their field programs to share their insights and points of
view from their on-the-ground experiences. The photographs and design
drawings are intended not just as illustrations to the text, but as data
that communicate what cannot be conveyed through words.
In the way that Oliver Sacks uses the clinical case study as a
rich means of communicating insight, we believe that there is value
for research and practitioner communities in sharing case-based
innovations. When describing interactions between complex systems
(such as the urban built environment, socio-cultural systems, globalized
economic systems, the biosphere) particularly at the neighborhood
or city scale, it is necessary to draw on equally nuanced evidence.
Experimental, quasi-experimental, and quantitative data alone are
necessary but not sufficient to understand the interactions of the urban
ecosystem. There is also a need for textured, qualitative narratives
Previous Page:
New York City Housing that convey the how behind the relationships that catalyze and the
Authority community
mechanisms that produce change. To that end, narratives in this volume
garden, Boston Secor
Houses, Bronx, NY. include first-hand accounts of project participants and impassioned
Photo used with permission by
photographer Lloyd Carter, NYCHA voices of community leaders speaking of their own work in their own
PREFACE 7

neighborhoods; systemic reflections of program directors; and research

that explores the significance of the Restorative Commons.
Throughout the volume contributors offer an informal dialogue
about the development of their vision, discussing what inspires them
personally in a parallel text noted in the margin. We asked several
practitioners to respond to the writing of a colleague whose work
reinforces or contrasts their own, in an effort to promote dialogue and
mutual learning. Because programs are comprised not just of good
ideas and principles, but also of tangible resources (human, financial,
material) and organizational strategies, attempts are made throughout
this compendium to describe the evolution of projects and their critical
resources, partnerships, and turning points along the way.
Because the Meristem Forum was designed to convene New York
City leadership, the cases in this volume are also largely rooted in the
city’s landscape. We asked speakers to write about the work they
presented as informed by their subsequent reflections upon the Forum.
Despite the strong New York City focus, the recurrence of ecological
site types and the common concerns that these programs are designed
to address broadened our research (to Connecticut, Massachusetts,
New Jersey, Ohio, and one international example) and ensures this
work’s relevance to a broader public. The observations of practitioners
and writings of theorists echo each other’s recognition of the primacy
of citizen stewardship and creative design in developing new health-
promoting environments. Brief summaries of findings and new questions
raised in the context of these themes are offered in the introduction.
8 RESTORATIVE COMMONS

Acknowledgments
We thank Dr. Oliver Sacks for sharing his passion for gardens, his
compassion for human vulnerability, and his ability to catalyze
collaboration between New York City agencies, organizations, and
individuals at the Meristem 2007 Forum.
We offer special recognition and gratitude to David Kamp, FASLA,
LF, a founder of Meristem, and co-organizer and co-convener of the
Meristem 2007 Forum.
For their sustained enthusiasm, intellectual underwriting, and
outreach to their network of experts in urban health, design, and natural
resources management, we thank Robert Martensen, John Seitz, Jeffery
Sugarman, and Erika Svendsen.
We thank our project funders: The Harvard-Loeb Fellowship Forum,
David Kamp FASLA, LF of Dirtworks, PC Landscape Architecture,
Institute for Landscape Studies, Terrapin Bright Green, and a generous
individual who wishes to remain anonymous. Without all these partners
the Forum would have been impossible.
We dedicate this work to the health, well-being, vitality, and
resilience of New York City — our home.
The commons represent both the natural
systems (water, air, soil, forests, oceans,
etc.) and the cultural patterns and
traditions (intergenerational knowledge
ranging from growing and preparing
food, medicinal practices, arts, crafts,
ceremonies, etc.) that are shared without
cost by all members of the community.
— Ecojustice Dictionary
2008
The very notion of the commons implies
a resource is owned, managed, and used
by the community. A commons embodies
social relations based on interdependence
and cooperation. There are clear rules
and principles; there are systems of
decision-making. Decisions … are made
jointly and democratically by members
of the community.
— Vandana Shiva
2005
 11

Introduction
Lindsay Campbell
U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station

Anne Wiesen
Meristem

The collection of writings presented in this volume offer a starting point

for a multidisciplinary understanding of Restorative Commons. Although
the notion of commons is broad and includes natural commons,
such as the atmosphere, international waters, and rangeland; as well
as information commons from folktales and myths to freeware and
shareware; we focus here on open space and its interface with the
built environment. For open space to function as a commons, it should
be publicly accessible, nonexcludable, and managed through shared
governance. We consider sites restorative if they contribute to the
health and well-being of individuals, communities, and the landscape.
Individual health includes physical, mental, emotional, and social health;
community health is considered in terms of rights, empowerment, and
neighborhood efficacy; and landscape health is measured by ecosystem
function and resilience — all of which act together in a complex web
of relationships.
Vandana Shiva (2005) argues that democracy and environmentalism
have mutual underpinnings in ubiquitous models of common natural
resource management across time and cultures. There are long legacies
as well as substantial contemporary efforts in community stewardship in
both rural, developing contexts (such as community forestry in Nepal and
Bhutan; peasant farming in India; or cooperative ecotourism in Namibia)
and urban contexts (such as the Urban Resources Initiative programs
in Baltimore and New Haven discussed here). It is no coincidence that
these interventions are successful at a local scale. The notion of a global
commons seems almost untenable, and potentially susceptible to the
“tragedy of the commons” or the failures of collective action among large
12 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

groups (Hardin 1968, Olson 1971). However, at the localized scale, social
institutions, myths, mores, norms of reciprocity, kinship, and community
ties can enable the development of sustainably managed commons.
There is evidence in a variety of contexts of enduring common property
regimes that successfully manage natural resources through shared,
local decision-making (see, for example, Ostrom 1990). Thus, this
volume emphasizes cases and models of community-based, civic
stewardship.
Parks, community gardens, building exteriors, rights-of-way,
botanical gardens, urban farms, vacant lots, public housing campuses,
and closed landfills offer unique opportunities for restoring social
and ecological function in the public, urban sphere. These fragments
of the commons must be considered as individual and unique, and
simultaneously as parts of a larger system. Even a jail’s yard can serve
as a restorative space for the inmates and staff. Cooperation with land
owners, developers, designers, building managers, and tenants will be
required to work creatively at the critical junctures where public meets
private urban land: including apartment and office building interiors,
front yards, and rooftops. Humans are unique in that we actively
participate in creating conditions for our own health through the design
of our buildings, neighborhoods, and cities at a global scale. Thus,
innovative design is a key approach for building Restorative Commons.

Human Health and Well-being

The notion of linking human health and the form and function of open
space is not new. For example, Robert Martensen discusses how
American landscape architects of the 19th century developed parks
in collaboration with medical expertise to positively influence public
health even when relationships between environments and disease
were not fully understood and mechanisms were under-theorized.
While the development of germ theory unlocked many mysteries about
the spread and treatment of disease, it is worth considering what may
also have been lost by abandoning our more holistic understanding of
“salubrity” and beneficial environments. Without full understanding of
the causal mechanisms between mental and physical health and local
environments, can we design spaces guided by the precautionary
principle? Can we use our intuition — and perhaps even our evolutionary
INTRODUCTION 13

impulses—as guides toward what sorts of environments are vital to

promoting health and quality of life, such as access to sunlight, water,
clean air, and vegetative diversity? Evolutionary psychologist Judith
Heerwagen details elemental features of nature that convey feelings of
safety, opportunity, connection, and pleasure in our environment. Both
the foreword of Dr. Oliver Sacks and the broader work of biophilic design
theory suggest that positive references to our shared evolutionary
heritage in the design of our current habitats can confer psychological
benefits and promote healing at the neurological level in ways we are
just beginning to understand (Kellert et al. 2008).
As the absence of disease in human life does not constitute health
(WHO 1946) so, too, the absence of contamination in our environment
does not constitute environmental health. Indeed, the World Health
Organization’s constitution defines human health as “the state of
complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.” Can we craft an equally complete
definition for environmental health? Global climate change impacts
and the accompanying encroachment of new and resurgent diseases
illuminate our vulnerability and the intimacy of the health of our land,
the health of our communities, and strength of our relationships within
our community. Wendell Berry (1994) writes:

“If we speak of a healthy community, we cannot be speaking

of a community that is merely human. We are talking about a
neighborhood of humans in a place, plus the place itself: its soil,
its water, its air, and all the families and tribes of the nonhuman
creatures that belong to it. What is more, it is only if this whole
community is healthy …[and] the human economy is in practical
harmony with the nature of the place, that its members can
remain healthy and be healthy in body and mind and live in a
sustainable manner.”

How do we proceed to expand our definition of health to include the

health of the land and further, to invest in the health of our landscapes
as part of our healthcare programs? What would it look like for a hospital
to steward the land it inhabits and that of the neighborhood it serves?
Current research in health-related fields reveals patterns in human
healing processes that affirm the experiences recounted in the cases
14 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

studies of this volume. Psychoneuroimmunology, the study of

connections between psychological states and the nervous, endocrine,
and immune systems, tells us that “mind-body interactions are so
ubiquitous that it may no longer be possible to refer to body and mind
as separate entities” (Lerner 1994). This means that our physical health,
safety and welfare may profoundly affect our emotional and mental
health, including our ability to form relationships, to conduct productive
work, and to enjoy recreation. Reciprocally, emotional states of mind
and behavioral patterns may profoundly affect our physiological health.
(Lerner 1994). Further, studies of trauma survivors suggest that
people become traumatized not by a catastrophic event alone, but by
the ensuing breach in a former relationship or community of safety,
connection, acceptance, and empowerment (Herman 1997). Can we design
public places that elicit feelings of security and connection? If we invite
activities that foster experiences of acceptance and empowerment,
can we build places that strengthen community health?
We also consider the notion that health outcomes are tied to the
impacts of our social and economic status. One public health theory
holds that “social conditions and self-management are more powerful
determinants of health than access to care” (Pincus 1998). An editorial
in the American Journal of Public Health states:

“That certain conditions commonly referred to as social determin-

ants — including access to affordable healthy food, potable water,
safe housing, and supportive social networks — are linked to health
outcomes is something on which most of us can agree. The unequal
distribution of these conditions across various populations is
increasingly understood as a significant contributor to persistent and
pervasive health disparities. If attention is not paid to these conditions,
we will most surely fail in our efforts to eliminate health disparities.”
(Baker et al. 2005)

Many of the cases in this volume describe programs that are built
on the above assumption. How can we continue to build from these
models to create local economic systems that are rooted in stewardship
of the urban environment? Can socioeconomic status be improved
in situ, at the neighborhood scale, without causing gentrification
and displacement? What are the limits to what natural resource
INTRODUCTION 15

management can accomplish?

Finally, there are both ends-based and rights-based reasons
for considering the health of the natural environment. As health is
increasingly recognized as a human right, environmental health that
promotes human health and well-being is also being considered by
some as a human right (Earthjustice 2004, Taylor 2004).

Civic Stewardship
As the human population in both the United States and globally
becomes — for the first time — more urban than rural, new approaches
to urban planning, urban design, social service delivery, and the
management of open spaces, are required. To that end, local
governments have demonstrated ability to lead, as exemplified by the
127 initiatives in New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long-term
sustainability plan known as PlaNYC 2030. This plan has fostered a
new era in development of parks and open space in New York City, and
dedicated the most resources to parks creation and maintenance since
the time of Robert Moses. Unlike that period, a new understanding
of citizen knowledge and shared governance has shaped the values
and methods of urban planning. From the individual citizen pruner,
to the block association beautification committee, to the community
garden, to the parks conservancy group, and to the nonprofit land
trust — civil society has articulated a wide array of responses at many
scales addressing the management of the urban ecosystem. Many
innovations in the design and maintenance of parks and the public
rights-of-way were inspired by the pioneering work of civic groups that
sought creative solutions to old neighborhood-based problems.
This publication focuses largely on programs that encourage
citizen stewardship and caretaking of the land as a means to promoting
health. Perhaps the “hortophilia” that Oliver Sacks posits does indeed
exist. Or perhaps, as Erika Svendsen suggests, there is something
basic and important for the quality of human life in the ability to
create change in the physical environment. The significance of citizen
self-help through environmental stewardship is explored through the
practitioner writings of Edie Stone, Colleen Murphy-Dunning, and Rob
Bennaton. As sustainability interventions move from plan, to policy,
to implementation, they will rest on the engaged actions of citizen
16 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

stewards. One million newly planted trees will not survive without
constituents to care for them; community supported agriculture cannot
exist without its members; farmers’ markets require consumers; and
green buildings require tenants. In essence, the urban ecosystem cannot
function without citizen engagement.
Stewardship consists not only of physical land management,
but also of longer-term engagement in education and advocacy.
Experiential, field-based environmental education is taking myriad
forms that occur off school grounds, sometimes with formal classroom
partners and sometimes without. A recent assessment of New York
City stewardship groups conducted by the Forest Service Northern
Research Station (STEW-MAP) found that 83 percent of these groups
say that they aim to educate friends, neighbors, and representatives
about the environment and 38 percent say that their primary focus is
“education” — which was second only to “environment” (Svendsen et
al. 2008). A number of the projects profiled in this publication focus
on education, employment, and capacity building. Ian Marvy offers a
model of youth empowerment, local economy, and food justice at Added
Value’s Red Hook Community Farm; James Jiler teaches horticulture
and job-readiness through the Rikers Island Prison Horticulture
Program; Susan Lacerte discusses culturally specific educational events
that were developed with and for the most diverse county in America at
the Queens Botanic Garden. Human health and well-being are intimately
connected to a sense of agency that can be cultivated through
education and community organizing, particularly when focusing on
underserved populations, such as youths, racial and ethnic minorities,
inmates, or ex-offenders.
Open space stewardship is being used in response to grave
tragedies such as war, ethnic conflict, and loss of human life — pushing
the boundaries of how we believe natural resources can be used.
Surely, gardens cannot solve the problem of war, but they do offer
tools for reconciliation, rebuilding, and self-reliance, even in the most
devastated of environments, as shown by Davorin Brdanovic’s Bosnia
and Herzegovina community garden program. These gardens provide
not only income and food security, but they also serve as common,
unprogrammed space — as a space in which people once divided by
war can come together on their own terms. The Living Memorials
INTRODUCTION 17

Project research shows the way in which hundreds of individuals,

community groups, and towns chose to use trees and open space in
remembrance of September 11, 2001, as a way of marking a tragic
event and reflecting on the cycle of life. Lindsay Campbell’s case study
of the Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial Preservation Land probes how
landscape can function as a living memorial, serving another basic
human need — to remember.
These case studies offer new approaches to the old paradigm of
“natural resource management.” Are we witnessing the beginning of
a new environmental stewardship ethic, one that moves us beyond
‘control over’, or even ‘responsibility for’, to an ethic based on
mutual nourishment between people and the landscape? What are
the inherent returns to our health and well-being that we receive by
engaging in this reciprocal act of caring?

Design
Without attempting to define or categorize all types of ecological
design, we highlight forms that create unique opportunities for
social and ecological interactions at multiple scales, including the
individual/experiential and the collective/systems level. We explore
the development of biophilic and systems design and the codification
of high performance infrastructure guidelines. We believe that the
examples of public design documented in this volume achieve the
efficiency of the green building movement, while retaining the “sensuous
experience of nature” — to quote Hillary Brown. Brown contends that
designers should create high performance buildings and infrastructure
that take cues from natural features and systems. Further, Heerwagen
encourages designers and decision-makers to “create places imbued
with positive emotional experiences — enjoyment, pleasure, interest,
fascination, and wonder —that are the precursors of human attachment
to and caring for place.”
Architects and landscape architects are generating rich, new
models of buildings and open space that expose and explore human-
environment relationships. For example, the Monroe Center for the Arts
in Hoboken, NJ, emerges from Victoria Marshall’s practice of “thinking
about the nature we want to create.” With her emphasis on processes,
Marshall’s design works to restore the function of whole systems.
 18 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

Stewardship Groups

Social Network
Map of the 2800 civic
stewardship groups in
New York City.
Data source: STEW-MAP,
U.S. Forest Service unpublished
data as of may 2008; Map created
by Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne,
University of Vermont
INTRODUCTION 19

In this case, a building complex is designed to engage the Hudson River

Estuary and the water cycle more generally in the daily lives and thus
daily consciousness of the buildings’ occupants. Marshall writes about
the potential to cultivate stewards, so, too, does Susan Lacerte present
the Queens Botanical Garden’s (QBG) LEED platinum certified building,
its publicly accessible green roof and on-site stormwater management
system, and the broader QBG grounds as a site for ecological education.
John Seitz recalls early efforts of earth artists and community gardeners
to focus attention on nature and natural systems in New York City — 
introducing interactivity with the landscape, as opposed to prior models
based more on creating pastoral viewsheds. These efforts helped to
catalyze the current greening of infrastructure, by capturing public
attention and imagination as to what might be possible.
David Kamp’s designs show an attention to the variety of intimate
impressions that all people can experience in a single space. Design
considerations for the restorative garden at the Cleveland Botanical
Garden were developed by Kamp and reflect collaboration with
healthcare and horticultural therapy professionals. Indeed, we can think
of David Kamp’s garden designs as clinically informed approaches
to many of the infirmities and disabilities that Sacks highlights in the
foreword. While designed to accommodate the needs of those physically
and mentally disabled, the garden ultimately is intended to engage all
garden dwellers in healing benefits. In the words of Nancy Gerlach-
Spriggs (1998), “…a Restorative Garden is intended by its planners to
evoke rhythms that energize the body, inform the spirit and ultimately
enhance the recuperative powers inherent in [the] body or mind.”
This raises the important question, particularly in an urban context:
How can we design with the broadest understanding of local needs? Jeff
Sugarman offers the example of the redevelopment of Fresh Kills landfill
into Fresh Kills Park. The project is a model in pioneering restorative/
ecological design at a grand scale that responded first and foremost to
community priorities and needs. The notion of participatory planning
explored in Sugarman’s case study brings design full circle to the notion
of civic stewardship. Erika Svendsen illustrates that we can use open
space not only to accommodate multiple users, or even respond to
community priorities, but further, to strengthen social capital and foster
resilience in our social systems.
20 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

This volume offers exemplary cases of designs that recognize the

need to cultivate stewards and stewards working toward ecological
design — design that is flexible, adaptive to use, and that exposes the
relationships between people and their environments.

Lessons Learned and Persistent Questions

Collected together and considered as a body of data, certain principles
begin to emerge across the research, programs, and sites explored
here. To support healthy cities, we must engage with multiple open
space site-types using systems thinking, while championing civic
creativity and self-expression. Understanding the profound impacts of
social and economic inequality on health outcomes, we must commit
to social justice; promote social cohesion; tailor programs to serve
diversely resourced communities; and cultivate local economic systems.
Retaining the best of previous calls for sustainability, there is a need to
support future generations through education and youth empowerment.
This publication also discusses challenges that prevent projects
from realizing their fullest potential. It may indeed be the case that
some of these innovations work best at the small scale and in a
specific context. But if so, what does this mean for the broader urban
environment and the population as a whole? And what components of
models can be adapted from one site-type to another (green building to
green infrastructure), from one discipline to another (ecology to public
health), and from one nation to another (Bosnia to America)? An area
for further exploration is the question of how programs can strike a
productive balance between “expert” ecological and therapeutic design
and the local knowledge of community based stewards. A final challenge
arises from the issue of adaptability. Even the most thoughtfully
designed space originates at a particular place and time. How should
sites be designed to adapt to changing conditions and populations?
This volume is intended to provoke further debate. How can our
basic human needs be respected in the development of our cities,
including in the many new forms of emergent green infrastructure? Can
we imagine the city as a mosaic of gardens — products of both nature
and culture that serve both? What policies will help us to build the
resilient communities we need to meet imminent challenges? What kind
of nature do we want to create?
INTRODUCTION 21

Green Infrastructure
Map of parks, community
gardens, and greenstreets
in New York City.
DATA SOURCE: NYC DEPT OF PARKS
AND RECREATION AND COUNCIL ON THE
ENVIRONMENT OF NEW YORK CITY; MAP
CREATED BY JARLATH O’NEIL-DUNNE,
UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
22 Restorative Commons Lindsay Campbell AND ANne Wiesen

Literature Cited

Baker, Elizabeth; Metzler, Marilyn; Galea, Sandro. 2005. Addressing

social determinants of health inequities: learning from doing.
American Journal of Public Health. 95(4): 553–558.

Berry, Wendell. 1993. Sex, economy, freedom & community: Eight essays.
New York: Pantheon Books.

Center for Ecojustice Education. 2008. Ecojustice dictionary.

Online resource: http://www.centerforecojusticeeducation.org/index.
php?option=com_rd_glossary&Itemid=35. Accessed 1 July 2008.

Earthjustice. 2003. Human rights and the environment. Issue Paper for
60th Session of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. Geneva.
15 March 2003–20 April 2004. 80 p.

Gerlach-Spriggs, N; Kaufman, R.E.; Warner, S.B. 1998. Restorative

gardens: The healing landscape. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Hardin, Garrett. 1968. The tragedy of the commons. Science.162:

1243–1248.

Herman, Judith. 1997. Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence   

—
from domestic abuse to political terror. New York: Basic Books.

Kellert, S.R.;Heerwagen, J.H.; Mador, M. 2008. Biophilic design:

Theory, science, and practice. New York: Wiley.

Lerner, Michael. 1994. Choices in healing: integrating the best of

conventional and complementary approaches to cancer. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press.

Olson, Mancur. 1971. The logic of collective action: Public goods

and the theory of groups. Revised edition. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press.

Ostrom, Elinor. 1990. Governing the commons. The evolution of

institutions for collective action. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.

Pincus, Theodore; Esther, Robert; DeWalt, Darren A. 1998. Social

conditions and self-management are more powerful determinants of health
than access to care. Annals of Internal Medicine. 129(5): 406–416.

Shiva, Vandana. 2005. Earth democracy: justice, sustainability and

peace. Cambridge, MA: South End Press. 205 p.

Svendsen, Erika; Campbell, Lindsay; Fisher, Dana. 2008. Understanding

urban environmental stewardship in New York City. In: Proceedings of the
international symposium on society and resource management (ISSRM): Past
and future; 2008 June 10–14; Burlington, VT. Burlington, VT: University
of Vermont. Abstract.
INTRODUCTION 23

Taylor, David. 2004. Is environmental health a basic human right?

Environmental Health Perspectives. 112(17): A1007–A1009

World Health Organization. 1946. World Health Organization constitution.

Online resource: http://www.who.int/governance/eb/who_constitution_
en.pdf. Accessed 21 July 2008.
Theory
Authors from three academic disciplines offer theoretical
grounding for the Restorative Commons concept. From a
historical perspective, we look to our immediate past for
evidence of holistic practice in large scale urban park design
and development. From evolutionary psychology, we are
urged to recognize our needs and preferences for beneficial
environments that are common and shared across humanity.
And from urban planning, our attention is called to the
health opportunities presented through citizen stewardship
and management of urban open space. Understanding,
creating, and sustaining the impacts of new ‘green’ forms
in the urban sphere will continue to require cross- and
interdisciplinary research.
Theory
Authors from three academic disciplines offer theoretical
grounding for the Restorative Commons concept. From a
historical perspective, we look to our immediate past for
evidence of holistic practice in large scale urban park design
and development. From evolutionary psychology, we are
urged to recognize our needs and preferences for beneficial
environments that are common and shared across humanity.
And from urban planning, our attention is called to the
health opportunities presented through citizen stewardship
and management of urban open space. Understanding,
creating, and sustaining the impacts of new ‘green’ forms
in the urban sphere will continue to require cross- and
interdisciplinary research.
26 Restorative Commons
 27

Landscape Designers,
Doctors, and the Making
of Healthy Urban Spaces
in 19th Century America
Robert Martensen, M.D., Ph.D.
National Institute of Health, Office of NIH History & Museum

During the middle decades of the 19th century, a loose collaborative of

landscape designers and physicians looked to each other for ideas and
support as they crafted an urban vision that combined environmental
health, aesthetics, and a democratic ethos in a uniquely American
mixture. From approximately 1840 to 1880, they crafted a health/
environmental dualism that informed the design not only of large urban
Previous Page:
parks, which were then a contested public undertaking, but also of
New York City Housing
military encampments and hospitals, the one-room schoolhouse, ‘rural’ Authority community
garden, Marlboro
cemeteries, and early suburbs (Szcygiel and Hewitt 2000). My Meristem Houses, Brooklyn, NY.
Photo used with permission by
Forum presentation of March 30, 2007 discusses two of the movement’s photographer Lloyd Carter, NYCHA

leaders — John Rauch, a Chicago physician whose environmental

Left:

analyses shaped landforms of the Chicago park system, and his Bethesda Fountain in
Central Park was created
correspondent and muse, Frederick Law Olmsted, the leading landscape to celebrate the completion
of the Croton Aqueduct
designer of the 19th century.
(1842), which for the first
Olmsted, Rauch, and their collaborators made use of the time provided all New
Yorkers with clean
predominant communicable disease conception of the pre-bacterio- drinking water. Crowning
the fountain, The Angel of
logical-era — miasma theory — to guide their urban reforms. At its
the Waters sculpture
simplest, miasma theory, which has a history stretching back to the references the biblical
angel who rendered the
ancient Hippocratics and Vitruvius, assumes that the products of Pond of Bethesda healing
water such that “whosoever
stagnation and decay, be they bad air, dirty water, or rotting meat and
stepped in were made
vegetables, account for most human afflictions. If stagnation and decay whole of whatever disease
he had.” (John 5:4).
can be prevented at both physical and social levels, the argument ran, Photo used with permission by
New York City Parks Photo Archive.
health is likely to ensue. For them, ‘health’ meant ‘salubrity,’ which is an Photo by Alajos L. Schusler (1934)
28 Restorative Commons ROBERT MARTENSEN

ancient Latin word that suffuses discussions of environmental health

from Vitruvius in second century Rome onward through Ulysses S.
Grant’s analysis of sites for potential military encampments.
According to Webster’s Dictionary, “salubrity” means “favorableness
to the preservation of health” and “a quality of wholesomeness,
healthfulness.” Any major environmental e lement — land form, water
moving and still, climate patterns, vegetation, wind patterns, history
of local epidemics — had its role to play in whether or not an observer
assessed a site as salubrious or not. Observers could judge an area
to be rich in agricultural potential, such as the Mississippi delta,
but insalubrious due to its poor drainage and history of pestilence,
for example. Historian Conovery Bolton Valencius (2002) recently
published a superb book, “The Health of the Country”, that explores
how American settlers in the early 19th century often spoke in terms
of salubrity as they assessed the agricultural potential and sustainability
of various locations.
Nineteenth century city dwellers also employed a rhetoric of
salubrity. Unlike today, when the infant mortality rate in New York
City — 6.7 per 1,000 live births in 2007 — is lower than in many rural
and suburban areas, many large cities in the U.S. and Europe during
the early 19th century were so unhealthy that their populations could
not maintain themselves without substantial net in-migration from the
country. Even as wages for urban industrial workers began to rise in
the early 19th century, contemporary commentators noted that urban
environments were becoming less healthy than their 18th century
counterparts. New York City was less healthy than London, but even
along the Thames mortality rates for all decades worsened from 1815
to 1845. Writing on conditions in Manhattan in 1865, reformer Stephen
Smith lamented: “Here infantile life unfolds its bud, but perishes before
its first anniversary. Here youth is ugly with loathsome diseases and the
deformities which follow physical degeneracy. . . . The poor themselves
have a very expressive term for the slow process of decay which they
suffer, viz.: ‘Tenement-house Rot’” (Szreter and Mooney 1998)

Chicago and Rauch

Chicagoans might be accumulating personal wealth, but an 1835
editorial in the “Chicago Democrat” bemoaned that, “The atmosphere
Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century America 29

has already become poisoned” due to standing water that was “green”
and “putrid” from decaying vegetable matter (Grob 2005). The cause
was Chicago’s natural situation, which consisted of a flat topography,
high water table, and clay soils — all perceived by contemporaries as
pre-disposing cause for miasmatic afflictions such as cholera. Chicago’s
early streets, for example, did not drain; instead, filth and water
accumulated. To ameliorate the unhealthful effects of limited natural
drainage, Chicago leaders in 1852 established a new street grade that
necessitated raising Chicago’s streets, an activity they repeated in 1857
and 1868 to counter perceptions that their roadways remained “too
damp” and “unhealthful” (Pierce 1937-57).
Rauch, an early leader at Chicago’s Rush Medical College, used
mortality statistics and a then-new instrument of environmental
assessment — the eudiometer — to construct environmental profiles of
places Chicagoans perceived as unhealthful. Chicago’s cemetery, then
located where Lincoln Park is today, along the shores of Lake Michigan
northwest of downtown, was perceived as particularly miasmatic.
Suspecting the cemetery as a point source for the pollution of the city’s
potable water supply, which came from the Lake, Rauch documented
shoreline currents that proceeded from the cemetery site toward the
city reservoir. Finding a correlation between high water tables and rates
of putrefaction in the cemetery, Rauch organized a public campaign
to remove the cemetery’s occupants to a ‘rural’ location. Although the
desire to make more profitable use of urban land, esthetic fashion, as
well as health concerns, drove the calculus for rural cemeteries in Boston
and Philadelphia, Rauch’s Chicago effort seems motivated solely by his
concern for public health (Rauch 1866).
Moving the cemetery away from the Lake and settled areas would
only stop the production of morbid poisons, however, and Rauch
thought something additional was required to ameliorate the former
cemetery ground’s reservoir of miasma. His solution was to transform
the cemetery grounds into a public park. The park’s new plantings
and engineered land forms would “detoxify” the contaminated soils
and contain gases that, if emitted into the air, would prove “otherwise
injurious” (Rauch 1866, 66).
Politically, Rauch faced the task of persuading civic leaders
that it was wise to use substantial public sums to transform one
 30 Restorative Commons ROBERT MARTENSEN

The dairy in
Prospect Park,1909.
Photo used with permission
by Prospect Park Archives,
Bob Levine Collection
Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century America 31

area — the former cemetery — and not another. In his influential 1868

report — “Public Parks: Their Effect upon the Moral, Physical and
Sanitary Conditions of the Inhabitants of Large cities; with special
reference to the City of Chicago” — Rauch sought to finesse the issue
with a medical rationale. Miasma, he declared, does not reside in any
one community or place. Its “subtle and invisible influence may be
wafted to the remotest parts, abated in virulence, but still pestiferous.”
In 1869, in response to the campaign Rauch led, Illinois created a multi-
park system for Chicago that would surround what was then the city’s
perimeter. Ten years later, Rauch boasted that “at least one million”
trees had been planted in Chicago and that its planned 2,500 acres of
new parks would lead to “diminished mortality rates and the improved
general health of all city residents” (Rauch 1879, 15).

New York and Frederick Law Olmsted

As Rauch prepared his “Public Parks” report, he became acquainted
with Olmsted’s approach, and the two began corresponding. By the
time Rauch and Olmsted became aware of each other, the latter had
a well furnished imagination concerning how to prevent disease and
encourage health through environmental manipulations of various
kinds. Active during the Civil War as General Secretary of the U.S.
Sanitary Commission, the New York-based volunteer organization
that oversaw design and support for Union military camps and field
hospitals, Olmsted was familiar with medical arguments for maximizing
air circulation in dwellings as well as the dangers of decay of vegetable
and animal matter. He recommended that Union military hospitals be
designed so that each patient received no less than 800 cubic feet of
fresh air each day, for example.
For parks and early suburbs, he and Calvert Vaux, his frequent
collaborator, believed, like Rauch, that if the land did not generate
salubrity, then the land needed to be re-engineered so that it did.
Though it may seem counterintuitive to us, who may perceive Central
Park (Manhattan) and Prospect Park’s (Brooklyn) landforms as
preserved natural scenery, Olmsted described the Central Park project
as a “transformation of a broken, rocky, sterile, and intractable body
of land, more than a mile square in extent, into a public ground.” (In
fact, constructing Central Park was the largest public works project see SUGARMAN page 138
p 
32 Restorative Commons ROBERT MARTENSEN
Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century America 33

Bethesda Fountain in
Central Park, circa 1902.
Photo by Benjamin J. Falk
used with permission by
Library of Congress Prints
and Photographs Division
34 Restorative Commons ROBERT MARTENSEN

undertaken by New York City during the 19th century (Sutton 1971).
Olmsted, Vaux and their reformist contemporaries drew on an
aesthetic sensibility that owed much to British and American designers
of the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Capability Brown, William
Kent, Humphrey Repton, and the American house designer Andrew
Jackson Downing. None of these men embraced either cities or large-
scale industry. Instead, their designs tended to evoke either a sanitized
version of cottage life (Downing) or tidy arcadias replete with grazing
livestock and sonorous rivulets (Brown and Repton). Olmsted and Vaux
took cues from them. In its original version, Prospect Park, for example,
contained an active dairy where visitors might purchase fresh milk,
and in its first years Bethesda Fountain in Central Park provided free
and clean drinking water. Prospect Park’s dairy cows and the Bethesda
Fountain provided vital commodities — safe milk and water — that
ordinary city-dwellers of the 1860s and 1870s could not easily obtain
otherwise. According to Olmsted:

It is one great purpose of the (Central) Park to supply to the hundreds

of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their
summers in the country, a specimen of God’s handiwork that shall be to
them, inexpensively, what a month or two in the White Mountains or the
Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances
(quoted in Sutton 1971).

Olmsted and Vaux also wanted ‘natural features’ in parks to promote

harmony in human bodies at the individual and group levels. According
to Olmsted, however, experiencing harmony was not something that
one willed into being; instead, he wrote, parks had to be designed so
that harmonious perceptions could arise spontaneously. How different
groups of people and vehicles moved among each other was a crucial
factor when considering public harmony. Careful consideration of
circulatory pathways, which Olmsted pursued in a different register in
his sanitary designs for military hospitals and camps, assumed great
importance. He and Vaux designed separate roadways and grade
changes to prevent unwanted and dangerous encounters between
pedestrians, carriages, and horseback riders without having people use
conscious judgment. For Olmsted, to be in one of his large urban parks
was to experience “each individual adding by his mere presence to the
Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century America 35

pleasure of all others, all helping to the greater happiness of each. You
may thus often see vast numbers of persons brought closely together,
poor and rich, young and old, Jew and Gentile” (Sutton 1971).
Olmsted’s contemporaries came to see large urban parks as among
democracy’s finest achievements. As Henry Bellows rhapsodized in the
“Atlantic Monthly” in the late 1860s, Central Park was “the most striking
evidence of the sovereignty of the people yet afforded in the history
of free institutions…It is a royal work, undertaken and achieved by the
Democracy — surprising equally themselves and their skeptical friends
at home and abroad” (Sutton 1971, 75). When Henry James took up the
“social question” of public mixing in his “The American Scene” of 1905,
he observed of Central Park that “to pass…from the discipline of the
streets to this so different many-smiling presence is to be thrilled at
every turn” (James 1968).

Conclusion
As Meristem and others advocate for Restorative Commons of various
kinds, they receive the response from skeptics that the “scientific data”
is not sufficiently established to warrant the initiative. They will hear that
scientific consensus is necessary before society ought to embrace a
significant change or new policy. Some of this country’s most successful
environmental initiatives, however, have been implemented when the
science was still inchoate. When Congress passed the Clean Air & Water
statutes of the 1970s, for example, environmental studies were in their
infancy from a modern scientific perspective. What carried the initiatives
forward politically was not a settled view from the scientists, but a mix of
science and public resolve that America should not continue to poison
its water and air so profligately. In the 19th century, Olmsted, Rauch,
and their allies were able to curry public favor not on the basis of then
cutting-edge science, the germ theory that was taking form in Louis
Pasteur’s lab in remote Paris, but by persuading city dwellers that they
could enjoy each other in large public spaces that promoted health at
the individualand social levels.
The shared vocabulary of health, disease, and environmental
conditions that inspired them began to wane in the 1890s. Influential
physicians began abandoning miasma theory and its preoccupation
with general environmental conditions in favor of laboratory models of
36 Restorative Commons ROBERT MARTENSEN

disease causation based on discrete species of bacteria, viruses, and

parasites. If, for example, one wanted to control diphtheria, the then-new
logic ran, one did not need to build a great park; instead, one should
develop a mass vaccination campaign to immunize the young. Instead
of going broad in their environmental manipulations, the new medical
sensibility recommended going narrow.
Now, early in the 21st century, many factors favor a return to
the health/environmental dualism that flowered in the middle of the
19th century, notably in the great public parks of New York City and
Chicago. Meristem, along with urban leaders, has great work to do as it
reinvigorates in contemporary terms an approach that has generated
much pleasure and sense of well-being among city dwellers.
Landscape Designers, Doctors, and the Making of Healthy Urban Spaces in 19th Century America 37

Literature Cited

Grob, G. 2005. The deadly truth: A history of disease in America.

Cambridge, MA: Harvard University. Press. 349 p.

James, H. 1968. The American scene. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University

Press. 486 p.

Pierce, B.L. 1937-57 (3 volumes). A history of Chicago. New York: Knopf.

Rauch, J. 1866. Intramural interments in populous cities and their

influence upon health and epidemics. Chicago: Tribune Co.

Rauch, J. 1879. The sanitary problems of Chicago, past and present.

Cambridge, MA: Riverside Press.

Sutton, S.B., ed. 1971. Civilizing American cities: a selection of

Frederick Law Olmsted’s writings on city landscapes. Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press. 310 p.

Szczygiel, B.; Hewitt, R. 2000. Nineteenth-century medical landscapes:

John H. Rauch, Frederick Law Olmsted, and the search for salubrity.
Bulletin of the History of Medicine. 74(4): 708–734.

Szreter, S; Mooney, G. 1998. Urbanisation, mortality and the standard

of living debate: new estimates of the expectation of life at birth in
nineteenth-century British cities. Economic History Review. 50(84):
84–112.

Valencius, C.B. 2002. The health of the country: how American settlers
understood themselves and their land. New York: Basic Books. 388 p.
From infancy we concentrate happily on
ourselves and other organisms. We learn
to distinguish life from the inanimate
and move toward it like moths to a porch
light….To explore and affiliate with life
is a deep and complicated process in
mental development. To an extent still
undervalued in philosophy and religion,
our existence depends on this propensity,
our spirit is woven from it, hope rises
on its currents.
— E.O. Wilson 1984
“Biophilia”
 39

Biophilia, Health,
and Well-being
Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D.
J.H. Heerwagen & Associates

If there is an evolutionary basis for biophilia, as asserted by E.O. Wilson

in the opening quote, then contact with nature is a basic human need:
not a cultural amenity, not an individual preference, but a universal
primary need. Just as we need healthy food and regular exercise
to flourish, we need ongoing connections with the natural world.
Fortunately, our connections to nature can be provided in a multitude
of ways: through gardening, walking in a park, playing in the water,
watching the birds outside our window, or enjoying a bouquet of flowers.
The experience of nature across evolutionary time periods has left
its mark on our minds, our behavioral patterns, and our physiological
functioning. We see the ghosts of our ancestors’ experiences in what
we pay attention to in the environment, how we respond, and what
the experience means to us. The biophilia hypothesis and supporting
research tells us that, as a species, we are still powerfully responsive to
nature’s forms, processes, and patterns (Kellert & Wilson 1993, Kellert
et al. 2008). Using knowledge of our affinity for nature, adapted and
refined over millions of years, we can generate experiences of health and
wellness through the environments we create. Work environments can
become both more relaxed and productive, homes more harmonious,
and public spaces can become more inclusive; offering a sense of
belonging, security, and even celebration to a wider cross section
of people.
40 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

To understand the deep underpinnings of biophilia and its

manifestation in today’s cultural and physical landscape, we need to
go back in time to our ancestral life as mobile hunting and gathering
bands. Buildings are newcomers on the evolutionary scene — a mere
6,000 or so years old. For the vast majority of human existence, the
natural landscape provided the resources necessary for human survival,
chief among them water, sunlight, animal and vegetable food, building
materials, shelter, vistas, and fire. The sun provided warmth and light
as well as information about time of day. Large trees provided shelter
from the midday sun and places to sleep at night to avoid terrestrial
predators. Flowers and seasonal vegetation provided food, materials,
and medicinal treatments. Rivers and watering holes provided the
foundation for life — water for drinking and bathing, fish and other
animal resources for food. Waterways also provided a means of
navigation to reach distant lands.

Our Restorative Commons:

Linking Nature to Human Health and Well-being
The Restorative Commons idea represents a significant new approach
to the development of common urban spaces. Like restorative garden
design, it incorporates findings from recent and interdisciplinary
research on human experiences with the natural environment. The
Restorative Commons approach also builds upon best practices
in urban restoration ecology as well as the persistent concerns for
equitable access to nature-rich environments in urban settings. Nature
is beneficial to all, regardless of age, gender, race, or ethnicity and it
should be available to all urban dwellers, not just those who can afford
to live on the edges of parks and open spaces. Connection to nature on a
daily basis reinforces the values of respect and care for the environment
that are necessities for sustainable communities.
However, not all nature is equally attractive or beneficial. Spaces
with dead and dying plants and trees signal habitat depletion and are
largely avoided. In contrast, places with rich vegetation, flowers, large
trees, water, and meandering pathways that open suddenly to views
are sought out by many as places of relaxation and enjoyment. These
features characterize the most beloved urban parks and arboreta
across the globe. But even small spots of nature — a flower pot, tree,
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 41

Brooklyn window box

and fire escape gardens
enrich both inside
and outside views.
Photo used with permission
by PHOTOGRAPHER John Seitz
42 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

or a small garden — also delight. That is the real story of our connection

to nature — it has many faces and many ways to create positive
experiences in our homes, offices, backyards, or common spaces.
The genetic basis for biophilia does not, of course, dismiss cultural,
geographic, or ecotype specificity. In fact, using inspiration from both
the local natural environment and vernacular cultural expressions for
creating a sense of place is critical to the success of biophilic design.

The Value of Nature to Human Health and Well-being

Improved moods and reduced stress are the most consistent benefits of
nature contact across research studies, regardless of whether they are
controlled laboratory experiments or field studies. Furthermore, contact
with nature can be purely visual or multi-sensory, active engagement
(walking, running, gardening) or passive (viewing only). Benefits are
found in multiple settings, multiple cultures, and across the age span,
from early childhood to late adulthood.
Although the belief in the therapeutic benefits of nature contact is
ancient, the first well controlled empirical test of this hypothesis was
published in 1984 by Roger Ulrich using data from a hospital setting.
Ulrich tested the effect of window views on hospital patient outcomes.
Half the patients had a window that looked out onto a brick wall while
the others viewed an outdoor landscape with trees. All patients had the
same kind of surgery, with the two different view groups matched for
age, gender, and general health conditions. Ulrich found that patients
with the tree view used less narcotic and milder analgesics, indicating
lower pain experience. They also stayed in the hospital for a shorter time
period and had a more positive post-surgical recovery overall than did
patients who had the view of the brick wall.
A decade of subsequent research by Ulrich and colleagues at
Texas A&M University, largely in laboratory experiments, reinforces
the findings from the hospital study. Subjects exposed to a stressor
recover faster and more positively if they are shown nature scenes or
urban scenes with nature, rather than urban scenes devoid of natural
elements. Subjects viewing the completely natural scenes do the best
overall, with the greatest and most rapid reduction in physiological
stress and more rapid mood enhancement. Ulrich’s work has shown that
nature contact can be beneficial, whether it is real or simulated. In fact,
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 43

in many environments, such as windowless spaces, simulations may

be the only way to create beneficial experience. A study of windowed
and windowless offices by Heerwagen and Orians (1986) supports this
conclusion. They found that people in windowless spaces used twice as
many nature elements (posters and photos especially) to decorate their
office walls than those who had window views to natural areas outdoors.
Research on nature benefits has blossomed from this early
beginning to encompass a huge body of studies and findings (see Kellert
et al. 2008, for an overview of biophilia research and applications). A few
select benefits of nature and natural processes explored in the literature
are touched on here.

Sunlight
We have known for a long time that people prefer daylight environments
and that they believe daylight is better for health and psychological
functioning than is electric light. However, a clear delineation of the
health and well-being benefits is relatively recent. We know now that
bright daylight has medicinal properties. It entrains circadian rhythms,
enhances mood, promotes neurological health, and affects alertness.
(Figueiro et al 2002, Heerwagen 1990). Research in hospital settings
shows that patients in bright rooms recover more rapidly from illness,
show reduced pain levels, take fewer strong analgesics, and stay in
the hospital fewer days than patients who are in more dimly lit rooms
located on the north side or in locations where nearby buildings block
sun penetration (Walch et al. 2005). The benefits of sunlight can be
experienced in even brief walks outdoors on a sunny day or through
design of spaces that integrate daylight and sun into the interior.

Outdoor green space

Research conducted in outdoor spaces expands on the benefits
discovered in laboratory settings (Sullivan et al. 2004, Kweon et al.
1998). The study of public housing projects in Chicago by Sullivan see bennaton page 232
p 

and colleagues (2004) from the University of Illinois has found many
benefits from having large trees close at hand. Using behavioral
observations and interviews, the researchers found that housing
developments with large trees attracted people to be outdoors and,
once there, they talked to their neighbors and developed stronger
44 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 45
 46 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

social bonds than people in similar housing projects without green

space and trees. Furthermore, related studies found that children
performing activities in green settings have shown reduced symptoms
of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (Faber et al 2001, Kuo and
Faber 2004). The researchers concluded that providing “green time” for
children may be an important supplement to medicine and behavioral
therapies. The research from these studies supported one of the most
extensive tree planting program in Chicago’s history.
In another large scale urban nature project, researchers in the
Netherlands are conducting a nationwide study of the benefits of green
space — which they call Vitamin G — at the household, community
and regional levels (Groenewegen et al. 2006). Using national health
survey data arrayed on a geographical information system that shows
the location of green spaces, the researchers have found preliminary
evidence that residents who are closer to green spaces, including
household gardens and neighborhood parks as well as large green
spaces, have better health profiles than residents who are farther away.
To develop these profiles, researchers used data from the Netherlands
national health survey on physical and mental health and perceptions
of social safety and also conducted interviews of residents living near
or at a distance from green spaces. The data analysis controlled for
socio-economic factors, which have known links to health outcomes.
Future research will focus on identifying the mechanisms behind the
relationships, particularly stress reduction, emotional restoration,
physical activity, and social integration.

Gardens and Gardening

There is also growing evidence that both active and passive contact
with gardens provides psychological, emotional, and social benefits.
In their book “Healing Gardens…”, Cooper-Marcus and Barnes (1995)
show that benefits of gardens include recovery from stress, having
a place to escape to, and improved moods. Benefits also occur with
see KAMP page 110
p  horticulture therapy, especially in clinical settings and nursing
homes. Other studies provide evidence that dementia and stroke
Previous Page:
patients show improved mobility and dexterity, more confidence, and
Washington Market Park,
Manhattan. improved social skills as a result of gardening activities. (Rappe 2005,
Photo used with permission
by Photographer Anne Wiesen Ulrich 2002). According to Ulrich, gardens will be more likely to be
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 47

calming and to ameliorate stress if they contain rich foliage, flowers, a

water feature, congruent nature sounds (bird songs, moving water), and
visible wildlife, particularly birds.
Other researchers also have found improvements in emotional
functioning and reductions in stress. For instance, a laboratory study of
“green exercise” tested the effects of projected scenes on physiological
and psychological outcomes of subjects on a treadmill. They found
that all subjects benefited similarly in physiological outcomes, but that
subjects who viewed pleasant nature scenes (both rural and urban)
scored higher in measures of self-esteem than those viewing totally
urban scenes or “unpleasant” rural scenes with destroyed landscapes
(Pretty et al. 2003, 2005). Similar results have been found in field
studies by Hartig and colleagues (1991) who looked at the stress
reducing effects of walking in an urban environment with nature as
compared to a similar walk without natural elements.

Nature and Child Development

The cumulative research on the benefits for children of playing in
natural environments is so compelling that it has resulted in an
outpouring of response to Richard Louv’s (2005) book, “Last Child in
the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder.” Playing
in outdoor environments, whether at home, school, or camp, has
sustained benefits for social, emotional, and cognitive development
in children. Nature provides both the platform and the objects for see stone page 122
p 

play (Kahn and Kellert 2002). It encourages exploration and building

among older children which aids orientation and wayfinding, group
decision-making, knowledge of how to respond to changing contexts,
and improved problem-solving. Among younger children, small-scale
natural environments with props (flowers, stones, sticks, water)
stimulate imaginative play which is considered a cornerstone of social
and cognitive development.

Qualities and Attributes of Nature in Biophilic Design

Our fascination with nature is derived not just from natural elements,
but also from the qualities and attributes of natural settings that
people find particularly appealing and aesthetically pleasing. The
goal of biophilic design is to create places imbued with positive
 48 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

emotional experiences — enjoyment, pleasure, interest, fascination, and

wonder — that are the precursors of human attachment to and caring
for place (Kellert et al. 2008). Although these biophilic design practices
are not yet integrated into standards or guidelines, there is increasing
interest in this topic, particularly as it relates to sustainability and social
equity. We know from everyday experience that nature is not equitably
distributed in urban environments. Those who can afford to do so live
near parks, have large street trees and rich landscaping around their
homes, and work in places that have design amenities. However, as
the section below shows, there are many ways to incorporate biophilic
see brown page 90
p  design features throughout the urban built fabric. While living nature
is always highly desirable, it is possible to design with the qualities and
features of nature in mind, thereby creating a more naturally evocative
space. Design imagination can create many pleasing options out of this
biophilic template:

Heraclitean Motion
Nature is always on the move. Sun, clouds, water, tree leaves,
grasses — all move on their own rhythms or with the aid of wind.
Katcher and Wilkins (1993) hypothesize that certain kinds of movement
patterns may be associated with safety and tranquility, while others
indicate danger. Movement patterns associated with safety show
“Heraclitean” motion that is a soft pattern of movement that “always
changes, yet always stays the same.” Examples are the movement of
trees or grasses in a light breeze, aquarium fish, or the pattern of light
and shade created by cumulus clouds. In contrast, movement patterns
indicative of danger show erratic movement and sudden change, such
as changes in light and wind associated with storms, or birds fleeing
from a hawk.

Change and Resilience

All natural habitats show cycles of birth, death, and regeneration.
Some life-like processes, such as storms and the diurnal cycle of light,
also may be said to show developmental sequences. When stressed,
natural spaces show remarkable signs of resilience. Yet, often in
our built environments, stress leads to the onset of deterioration
(e.g., vacant and abandoned buildings) that seems inevitable and
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 49

incapable of renewing itself. Resilience is affected by the web of

relationships that connect the composition of species within an
ecological community. Waste from one animal becomes food for
another; unused space becomes a niche for a newcomer; decaying
trees become resources and living spaces for a variety of plants
and animals. The use of recycled elements and the natural aging
of materials can create this impression of resilience in built
environments (Krebs 1985).

Variations on a Theme
Natural elements — trees, flowers, animals, shells — show both
variation and similarity in form and appearance due to growth patterns.
Nicholas Humphrey (1980) refers to this phenomenon as “rhyming”
and claims that it is the basis for aesthetic appreciation — a skill that
evolved for classifying and understanding sensory experience, as well Clematis spp. and Boston
Ivy (Parthenocissus
as the objects and features of the environment. He writes, “beautiful tricuspidata) on a Brooklyn
‘structures’ in nature and art are those which facilitate the task of rooftop garden display
change and resilience
classification by presenting evidence of the taxonomic relationships across the seasons.
Photos used with permission
between things in a way which is informative and easy to grasp.” by photographer John Seitz
50 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 51

Children transform their

play environment with
found natural materials.
Photo used with permission
by PHOTOGRAPHER Anne Wiesen
 52 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

A closer look at
plants forms reveals
“rhyming” and
“discovered complexity”.
Photo used with permission
by photographer John Seitz
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 53

Designers could more effectively use the principles of rhyming in a wide

array of applications — in the design of circulation systems that use

positive emotional experiences — enjoyment, pleasure, interest,

varied sensory conditions to reinforce wayfinding, in interior spaces
with varied patterns and color, and for transitions between the outdoors

fascination, and wonder — that are the precursors of human

The goal of biophilic design is to create places imbued with
and indoors.

Discovered Complexity
All living organisms display complex design that may not be apparent at
first glance, but is discovered through sensory exploration. The desire
to know more about a space or object with increased exploration is
considered by many to be at the heart of learning: the more you know,
the more you want to know and the deeper the mystery becomes. In
contrast to living forms and spaces, most built objects and spaces
are readily knowable at first glance, and thus do not motivate learning
and exploration. Although complexity is a desirable feature, spaces
and objects that are too complex are difficult to comprehend.
The key may be the combination of ordering and complexity that
allows comprehension at higher levels first and then engages our

attachment to and caring for place.

sensory systems at a more detailed level with successive exploration
(Hildebrand 1999, Kaplan and Kaplan 1989).

Multi-sensory
Natural habitats are sensory rich and convey information to all human
sensory systems, including sight, sound, touch, taste, and odor. Life-
supporting processes, such as fire, water, and sun, also are experienced
in multi-sensory ways. Many of our built environments shun sensory
embellishment, creating instead caverns of grey and beige, as well
as outdoor soundscapes that stress rather than soothe. Although the
vast majority of research in environmental aesthetics focuses on the
visual environment, there is growing interest in understanding how
design appeals to multiple senses. Both the Japanese practice of
“Kansei engineering” and emotion-centered design are grounded in
links between sensory perception and emotional responses to artifacts
and to specific features of products (McDonagh et al. 2004; also see
www.designandemotion.org).
54 Restorative Commons Judith Heerwagen

Transformability
Natural outdoor spaces appeal to children because they are
transformable and have multiple uses. As Robin Moore notes, what
children really need for play is “unused space and loose parts” (Moore
and Cooper-Marcus 2008). If given the opportunity, children will use
whatever they find in nature as play materials. Leaves, rocks, sand,
water, branches, and flowers are all used to construct and transform
an ordinary space into a magical one through imaginative play. Natural
spaces also support imaginative play more effectively than most built
structures because their features are readily transformed into different
contexts. In a study of children’s play in Seattle, Kirkby (1989) found
that the most popular place on an elementary school yard was a cluster
of shrubs that children could transform into a house or a spaceship,
using flowers and twigs as play artifacts. Transformability and multi-use
are much discussed in the design world, but seldom implemented.

Reflection
This brief overview of research on biophilia and human well-being
is only the tip of a widening knowledge base that says strongly
and unequivocally that people need daily contact with the natural
environment. Fortunately, the research also shows that there is a
multiplicity of ways to ensure that people get their daily dose of “Vitamin
G.” Indoor sunlight, flower pots on the doorstep, large street trees, vest
pocket parks, rooftop gardens, green roofs, large parks, water features,
views to a garden, and even positive images and representations of
nature all contribute daily perks and emotional uplifts that together
generate improved health and well-being for urban residents and for
those confined to indoor environments.
I would like to end with an anecdote from a recent talk on biophilia
to a group of designers. After discussing the emotional and physical
benefits of nature and, as a good scientist, talking about the need for
more research to clarify mechanisms and build a better business case
for biophilic design, an interior designer in the audience asked me: “Why
do we need more research? Don’t we already know this? Why aren’t we
putting money instead into creating these kinds of environments?”
Why, indeed? When a body of research reinforces what we know
intuitively and emotionally, isn’t this really the best guide for the design?
Biophilia, Health, and Well-Being 55

The ideas and principles behind biophilia, built upon our understanding
of human evolution in a biocentric world, enrich the design palette
enormously. The biggest challenge we face is to ensure that the benefits
are equitably distributed to people of all ages, abilities, and economic
status. This can happen when we look at every design as an opportunity
to invest in human health and well-being.

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58 Restorative Commons AUTHOR NAME
 59

Cultivating Resilience:
Urban Stewardship
as a Means to Improving
Health and Well-being
Erika S. Svendsen
U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station

Photography by Steffi Graham

The notion that urban open space can be a catalyst for improving
human health and societal well-being is embedded throughout the
history of human settlements. Public open space is part of the dynamic
history of the city as it is a place of social protest and cohesion, of
leisure and recreation, of exchange and use values. Yet, there are
particular moments where certain characteristics of ‘nature’ are
selectively discussed within the public discourse, thereby shaping
distinct periods of urban park and open space development. These
characteristics often draw upon the properties of nature that are
calm, restorative, and redemptive as opposed to wild, dangerous,
and disruptive.
The history of parks and open space within the American city is
episodic, with distinct periods responding to a crisis, a perceived risk,
or disturbance in the social order. During the 19th century, civic and see martensen page 26
p 

industry leaders joined forces with public health officials to support

the use of parks as a way to address negative consequences of the
rapidly growing industrial city. Unprecedented industrial growth created
unsanitary living conditions, environmental degradation, and unsafe
workplaces (Duffy 1968, Hall 1998). By the turn of the 19th century, Force of Nature
leaders of the progressive movement were actively calling for a ‘return Anne Adams,
Grant Avenue Community
to nature’ to address the perceived moral deprivation of the poor and Garden. Bronx, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
to better integrate them into civil society (Cranz 1982, Rosenzweig by photographer Steffi Graham
60 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

and Blackmar 1992, Lawson 2005). Later, urban planners in the

1960s shifted emphasis from central and regional parks to reclaiming
neighborhood open spaces in vulnerable areas as a way to promote
social inclusion and urban renewal (Shiffman 1969). In the 1970s and
1980s the environmental justice movement argued that access to well
maintained parks and open spaces was systematically denied to certain
groups and was a visceral example of urban inequity (Francis et al. 1984,
Fox et al. 1985). Reflecting on this history, one finds that in some manner
or degree nearly every generation of park and open space advocacy has
been driven by the pursuit and maintenance of health and well-being.

The Sustainable City

Today, urban designers, planners, and health practitioners alike are
shifting from notions of the 19th century ‘Sanitary City,’ (Melosi 2000)
to consider the ‘Sustainable City,’ where parks and the greater open
space environs are understood as part of a larger system offering a
wide range of interdependent benefits that include socioeconomic
and biophysical factors (Cranz and Boland 2004, Grove, in press).
These multiple benefits are important as we try to understand how
urban environments, particularly parks and open spaces, contribute to
the varied stages of wellness and recovery. Still, 19th century lessons
regarding our health and the built environment are relevant today as
populations in many parts of the world continue to become ill from
typhoid and cholera while others suffer from a host of entirely new
health problems such as obesity and cardiovascular disease. Ultimately,
what we may discover is not only do we need innovative building design
and well maintained open space but to sustain the connection to public
health we need to know more about how different designs, programs,
and levels of stewardship contribute to collective well-being and health.
The restorative aspect of the commons may depend, in part, upon
the characteristics of place and, in part, upon us. Use and restoration
of space, according to long-term research in environmental psychology,
often depends on age and lifestyle as much as overall design and
species composition (Kaplan and Kaplan 1989, Schroeder 1989, Dwyer
et al. 1992, Lewis 1996, Gobster 2001). That is, different types of
restorative spaces are required at different stages of life and the use of
space depends upon personal preference. One day an individual might
Cultivating Resilience 61

prefer the experience of a serene woodland walk and the next, desire
the lively social experience of a community garden. Dr. Howard Frumkin
suggests that sense of place is a public health construct. Frumkin writes:

“People are heterogeneous in response to place. Some like forests,

others like deserts, others like manicured back yards, and other
like bustling city streets. A person’s ‘place in the world,’ including
socioeconomic status, sense of efficacy and opportunity, and cultural
heritage, affects the experience of place” (Frumkin 2003:1451).

A key objective of this paper is to examine how different motivations

and preferences may lead to collective modes of civic environmental
stewardship such as conservation, management, monitoring, advocacy,
and education. Further, how does active stewardship strengthen our
resiliency at the individual, interpersonal, and community scale?
Resiliency, rather than ‘good health,’ is considered to be a more effective
indicator for measuring community well-being particularly as we grow
to understand that both human and overall ecosystem health is not
static but changing over time. At the same time, stewardship and the
active enjoyment of urban open space may produce the type of social
and spatial relationships that help us to endure stressful episodes and
conditions at the societal level.

Resilience, Adaptive Capacity,

and the Non-equilibrium Paradigm
Derived from its Latin roots, the meaning of resilience is literally ‘to jump
or leap back’ to some earlier state of being. We often marvel at instances
of nature’s resilient return after damage from fire, flood, or wind. At
the same time, we praise the ability of our own species to recover from
misfortunes brought about by a change in health, social status, or
financial security. The notion of restoring any system to a prior point of
existence following a disturbance or traumatic experience is misleading.
Instead, we find ourselves, as well as our environments, to exist as part
of a dynamic continuum. Urban ecologists refer to this dynamic as the
non-equilibrium paradigm (McDonnell and Pickett 1993). Despite all our
technological achievements, humans — along with all the other species
on Earth — ultimately coexist within a murky world of feast and famine,
triumphs and failures, good days and bad. However, there is hope to
 62 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

Battleground
Trash-strewn Lot,
Eagle Avenue.
Bronx, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
by photographer Steffi Graham
Cultivating Resilience 63
64 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN
Cultivating Resilience 65

Phoenix Rises
on Eagle Avenue
Dimas Cepeda,
El Batey Borincano.
Bronx, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
by photographer Steffi Graham
66 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

mitigate our misfortunes as theories, methods, and tools have been

developed to deepen our understanding of the beneficial link between
human health and the environment. For example, a key component to
our individual and collective pursuit for a healthy society and ecosystem
function is what many fields of science refer to as an ‘adaptive capacity’
(Olsson et al. 2004). Or, in other words, how well do we adapt to change?
The more resilient we are the more likely we are to successfully adapt
to the changes inherent in a dynamic system. How well we manage
to adapt, both plants and people alike, depends upon a wide range of
social and biophysical factors. Our likelihood for improved health and
well-being depends upon our past histories but also our current and
future situations in life. Recovery from an illness, similar to recovery
of ecosystem functions, often depends upon what public health
researchers refer to as the ‘life course’ (Ben-Shlomo and Kuh 2002) and
what urban ecologists have termed ‘subtle human effects’ (McDonnell
and Pickett 1993). The life course approach focuses on the long-term
effects of physical and social exposures through the course of one’s
life — from gestation to old age. It considers the biological, behavioral,
and psycho-social pathways that have the potential to impact one’s
health over time. Similarly, the ecological approach considers historical
effects, which are essentially biological legacies of a particular system;
lagged effects, which are the result of some past event; and unexpected
actions at a distance, which are impacts far from the initial action or
event (pollution impacts are a prime example). (McDonnell and Pickett
1993, Pickett et al. 1997). Together, if we consider the life course and
subtle human effects approaches we begin to understand that the
resilience and adaptation of our species are important not as a singular
event, but as multiple and multidimensional events over time and space.

Open Space: A Dynamic and Resilient Resource

Urban systems are, of course, very complex. Northridge et al. (2003)
suggest a model of this complex system with four interacting levels:
a fundamental, macro level including the natural environment and
highest level social factors like economic structure; an intermediate level
of the built environment and social context; a proximate level
at the interpersonal level; and finally the scale of health and well-being
(Fig. 1). Urban planners and designers often work at the nexus of the
Cultivating Resilience 67

more intermediate factors of the built environment and social systems

(i.e. land use, transportation, environmental policies) while public health
professionals delve into more proximate factors that include stressors
such as financial insecurity, environmental toxins and unfair treatment
as well as health behaviors (i.e. dietary practices, physical activity).
Through this model we can see the relationships between open space
and well-being as part of this systems approach. This interdisciplinary
framework emphasizes the intermediate domain of the urban natural
resource planner (i.e. the built environment), the proximate domain
of the public health practitioner (i.e. social stressors) as critical
components in improving individual-collective health and well-being.
Viewed this way, we can begin to understand how public goods such
as parks and open spaces are critical resources that can negatively or
positively impact proximate levels of stressors, enable or discourage
certain behaviors, and become mediating spaces that affect social
integration.
However, the provision of physical space is only part of the story.
Provision of open space is necessary, but not sufficient, to provide
restorative environments. Design, stewardship, and engagement with
open space can enhance the restorative elements open spaces can
offer. This paper will present findings that focus on one aspect of this
experience of place: active stewardship. Active stewardship can include
a wide range of human interactions, ranging from membership and
decision-making to active, hands-on work in a place. The difference
between more passive forms of engagement and active stewardship
is that the former explains a particular state of being while the latter
indicates a level of responsibility, rights, and preferences within an
interdependent system. Theoretically we are all stewards of the earth.
Active stewardship is one way for us to contribute and find individual
and civic meaning within this larger system (Burch and Grove 1993).
For example, studies of environmental volunteers find that stewardship
activities help to lessen feelings of isolation and disempowerment that
can lead to depression and anxiety (Sommer et al. 1994, Svendsen and
Campbell 2006, Townsend 2006). Many of these studies are based on
single work days or during specific or extreme periods of crisis. In 2003,
the notion of whether there might be a longer-term connection between
stewardship and well-being was put to the test as part of a citywide
 68 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

I. F UNDAMENTAL II. I NTERMEDIATE

macro level meso/community level

Natural Environment
topography, climate, water supply

Built Environment

• land use
industrial, residential; mixed use or single use
Macrosocial Factors
• transportation systems
• historical conditions
• services
• political orders shopping, banking, health care facilities,
waste transfer stations
• economic order
• public resources
• legal codes parks, museums, libraries

• human rights doctrines • zoning regulations

• social and cultural institutions • buildings

housing, schools, workplaces
• ideologies
racism, social justice, democracy

Social Context

Inequalities • community investment

economic development, maintenance,
• distribution of material wealth police services

• distribution of employment opportunities • policies

public, fiscal, environment, worksplace
• distribution of educational opportunities
• enforcement of ordinances
• distribution of political influence public, environmental, workplace

• community capacity

• civic participation and political influence

• quality of education

Figure 1
Northridge et al. (2003)
urban systems model.
Public goods such as
parks and open spaces
are critical resources
that can negatively or
positively impact proximate
levels of stressors, enable
or discourage certain
behaviors, and become
mediating spaces that
affect social integration.
Cultivating Resilience 69

III. P ROXIMATE IV. H

 EALTH & WELL-BEING
micro/interpersonal level individual or population levels

Stressors Health Outcomes

• environmental, neighborhood, • infant and child health

low birth weight, lead poisioning
workplace and housing conditions
• obesity
• violent crime and safety
• diabetes
• police response
• cancers
• financial insecurity
• injuries and violence
• environmental toxins
lead, particulates • infectious diseases

• unfair treatment • respiratory health

asthma

• mental health

• all-cause mortality

Health behaviors

• dietary practices

• physical activity
Well-being
• health screening
• hope/despair

• life satisfaction

• psychosocial distress

Social Integration and Social Support • happiness

• social participation and integration • disability

• shape of social networks and • body size and body

resources available

• social support
70 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN
Cultivating Resilience 71

Feeding the World

Gardener’s name unknown.
Harding Park
Beautification Project.
Bronx, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
by photographer Steffi Graham
 72 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

assessment of over 300 community garden groups — 23 percent of

which were in existence for 21-30 years and 36 percent for 11-20 years
(Svendsen and Stone 2003). The assessment was conducted through
the New York City’s Parks and Recreation’s GreenThumb Program in
partnership with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station’s
Urban Field Station in New York City. These findings along with city-
wide study on stewardship groups are discussed here in support of
a theoretical framework for active stewardship, social networks, and
well-being.

The GreenThumb Study:

Understanding Individuals’ Motivations for Gardening
see sTONE page 122
p  The GreenThumb program was established in 1978 to assist
emergent community groups in reclaiming vacant, derelict space into
neighborhood gardens. By the early 1990s, over 700 GreenThumb
community gardens flourished in New York City neighborhoods
serving thousands of residents and visitors daily. In the late 1990s, the
Giuliani mayoral administration attempted to restrict the capacity of
the GreenThumb program by transferring it from the Department of
Parks and Recreation to the Department of Housing Preservation and
Development in the hopes that the current land use would eventually
be converted from gardens to housing as part of the administration’s
neighborhood development strategy. At the same time, the
administration prepared hundreds of gardens for sale through the city’s
public land auction (Englander 2001). Gardeners, along with greening
organizations, private foundations and the general public, joined
together to protest these sales. New York City found itself in court over
the garden preservation issue and in 2002, a State Attorney General-
initiated lawsuit on behalf of the gardens was settled, ensuring the
rights of citizen garden stewards and the preservation of the majority
of gardens as public parkland or private land trusts. During this time
of crisis, it was thought important to capture original participants’
motivations for community gardening: what impulses were connecting
these stewards to their sites such that they would advocate vigilantly
to protect them? Each garden group identified a representative to
participate in the assessment. The assessment was conducted by a
parks staff person in a structured interview setting within the public
Cultivating Resilience 73

offices of GreenThumb. Eighty-four percent of respondents cited

the need to ‘beautify the neighborhood’ as a primary motivation for
founding their particular community garden. Sixty-three percent
identified with the need to ‘create/improve green space’ and to ‘create
a place of relaxation and peace.’ Forty percent recalled the need to
‘provide food’ or for ‘economic development.’ These findings suggest a
motivational purpose tied to self yet that motivation ultimately becomes
much greater than self. This subtle meaning links the individual to
the collective as both become embodied in public spaces that are
restorative. Further evidence of this can be found in the way that
gardeners talk about their motivations for active stewardship

The Language of Health and Well-being

Individual respondents to the question of ‘why garden?’ echoed each
other’s statements through the repetition of words such as beauty,
identity, memory, food, clean, safe, education, youth, work, outdoors,
satisfaction, peace, and therapy. These words were constantly chosen
to counter words such as violence, trash, crime, drugs, and stress. A
few key quotes are selected below to illustrate this connection between
individual well-being, stewardship, and the built environment.
Often the same space can offer different restorative qualities for
each individual. For example:
“Cookie works for the garden because she cares about the community space.
Miguel gardens because he wants to plant food to help feed people and to
grow food for his family.”

“Mr. Martinez likes the garden as a place for social activities. Mr. Estrada
likes to garden because it is like a dream, he wants to create a garden like
no other in the city.

Garden stewardship is an experience that uniquely engages all the

senses and aids in helping individuals to relax.
“It’s like a therapy and it keeps your mind off of things.”

“It’s the quiet, the green, the work itself”

“It gives me peace of mind. I can leave my house and go sit in the garden:
it’s so peaceful to smell the air. It relieves stress and takes a whole lot of
problems away.”
 74 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

Life Between the

Brooklyn Buildings
Walter Faison,
Warwick Street Greenery
Glow Garden.
Brooklyn, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
by photographer Steffi Graham
Cultivating Resilience 75
 76 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

Gardeners, quoted below, often respond that being an active steward in

the garden helps mitigate the stress associated with transitions such as
moving to a new place, growing older, and death.
“I was a gardener at home in Puerto Rico and when I moved to New York
I was shocked by the lack of greenery. I had to become a gardener here.
It’s part of my life.”

“Most of us are from the south, and we miss working with our hands”

“It’s a wonderful resource for the community and for many immigrants
who found it to be a relaxing and peaceful place.”

“Besides beautification, it gives me something to do. I’m a retired man.

I don’t have time to complain about aches and pains.”

“The garden helps me to relax. Also it reminds me of my mother. She helped

to start this garden 25 years ago. Working the soil and seeding keeps me
centered.”
Gardeners report a high degree of personal satisfaction associated with
gardening as a hobby but they also derive satisfaction as they see their
efforts to be an important part of neighborhood resilience. Recall that
the gardens emerged during a time of crisis when government services
were severely cut, businesses and residents were moving out, and crime
rates skyrocketed:

“Years ago our community was full of drugs and prostitution, and the
community needed a strong group to fight for the right of our space.
The corner of the block was empty and full of rats. We started the garden
to clean the area and for safety reasons. This is what motivated us to
create this beautiful garden.”

“We were motivated to beautify our neighborhood, to create a place of

relaxation and peace and to create a safe place of environmental restoration to
escape from the negative elements like all the drug dealers. On the abandoned
lot we found dead human bodies, dead animals, and garbage on it.”

“It’s the overall achievement that a change has been made in our community”

“I like to see things grow. Everything comes down to quality of life — clean air,
local schools — we try to make it look like Central Park for the kids as they
walk to school”
Cultivating Resilience 77

Stewardship in this context helped to re-establish trust, social networks

and efficacy among neighbors essential for strengthening social
cohesion, resiliency, and maintaining a sense of community well-being:
“We enjoy being in the park and giving something back to others in our
community. Sometimes people just come and have lunch — that’s such
a gift. Soon the schools will be back in session and they come in. It’s helped
to beautify this community.”

“With respect for each other we created this place together. Now we
take care of the garden and have fun with the kids. They can learn
about the pleasure of having a place and being together.”

“It’s like home, it’s everyone’s backyard.”

Based on this understanding, we find that the reciprocity that exists

between individuals and their environments through pubic stewardship
is tangible, visible, and not at all abstract. While stewardship is
commonly triggered by a personal need or desire, the outcome often
benefits both the person as well as a greater collective.
Satisfaction and accomplishment often leads to a sustained positive
outlook and the personal self-confidence essential for taking proactive
measures to care about one’s health. In the context of the devastated
urban landscapes of the 1970s and 1980s, neighbors regained a sense
of control through greening open spaces. This act of stewardship was
intimately tied to addressing the psycho-social and biophysical impact
of abandoned streets as well as an individual need for control in one’s
own life and surroundings. “Control” here refers to the fundamental
need humans have to create change in the environment and their lives
rather than to maintain control over them. Gardens became important
expressions of self as well as community.
Hence, the diversity of community garden design functions in New
York City suggests that gardening is not only defined by the active
growing of fruits, vegetables, and flowers but also is infused with issues
of identity, economy and efficacy. This sense of individual-collective
agency has a unique ability to tie together the built environment and
larger social context with very proximate levels of human stressors,
behaviors, and social integration. While the degree and type of
 78 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

stewardship may vary according to people and place ultimately,

involvement with space is a non-passive act fundamental to activating
a collective resilience inherent in both humans and the landscape.
Another critical public health and well-being aspect that emerges
from the motivational evidence is that stewardship enables us to share
knowledge and leave a legacy. This research on the role of legacy and
collective memory as expressed in the landscape is further explored
see CAMPBELL page 188
p  through the Living Memorials Project.
Many of the gardeners cited the need to teach and leave a legacy for
children — and to create a physical space that could motivate and inspire
others in their community overtime. As a result, gardeners take great
pride in their work and often receive positive public acknowledgement
for their efforts. A critical aspect of human resilience and well-being
is a personal outlook tied to the notion that our individual lives are
important and that they contribute to a continuum of life. Active
stewardship — whether it is out on the Great Plains or on an urban
street corner — is an act of great public service. Stewardship satisfies
a fundamental human need to matter.

STEW-MAP:
Understanding Organizational Motivations for Stewardship
Evidence of the need for restorative actions, to share knowledge, to
leave a legacy, and to establish social bonds can also be found in the
density of urban environmental civic groups in New York City. STEW-
MAP is the Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project of the U.S.
Forest Service, Northern Research Station’s Urban Field Station in New
York City in cooperation with Columbia University’s Department of
Sociology and the University of Vermont Spatial Analysis Lab. In 2007,
working with citywide environmental groups, we developed a sample of
see MAP page 18
p  2,793 civic stewardship groups (Svendsen et al. 2008). These groups
were assessed in terms of their organizational structure, capacities,
networks, and stewardship geographies. Many of these groups use
similar restorative language such as to strengthen, to improve, to create,
to reclaim, and to connect as part of describing the mission of their
stewardship activities. An overwhelming amount of these groups stated
that they became active environmental stewards as part of a larger
organizational focus area summarized as “community improvement and
Cultivating Resilience 79

capacity building.” In other words, the notion of the environment and

stewardship is embedded within organizations rather then being the
sole function or purpose.
The majority of groups studied began as small groups of friends or
neighbors who formalized their organizational structure and capacity
over time. These groups now typically work within a network of other
organizations, some of which are embedded within their neighborhoods,
and others that connect across the city and beyond. In this sense, urban
stewardship as a form of social organization may help to re-establish
critical social networks historically disrupted by shifts in neighborhood
demographics and changes in the built environment. Social networks,
especially those that help to bridge spatial divides, can lead directly
to community development and well-being opportunities through
improved access to resources such as information, education, and
multicultural experiences (Altschuler et al. 2004). At the same time,
spaces that involve people in design, maintenance, use, or stewardship
may foster the type of local community cohesion critical for defending
against periods of economic hardship, rising crime and debris and even
neighborhood stereotyping (Sampson et al. 1997). Communities with
these types of dense social networks are thought to have a greater
ability to adapt to change and endure during episodic incidents of stress
(Klinenberg 2002). Long-term human ecology studies from Chicago
(Sampson and Raudenbush 1999, Sampson 2003) have found that
stewardship spaces such as community gardens are precisely the type
of intervention that can make a significant difference in the public health
outcomes of a given neighborhood because they have the capacity to
impact the intermediate level or built environment and social context
as well as proximate level social stressors such as housing conditions,
unfair treatment, poor diet, or financial insecurity.
Exploration and understanding of neighborhood health geographies,
access to resources and networks has become enlivened through recent
writing from the field of public health (Link and Phelan 1995, Kawachi
and Berkman 2003, Macintyre and Ellaway 2003, Andrews and Kearns
2005). While social networks are import catalysts for building up social
capital, urban planning and more recent public health research raises
a key point that all social networks are not necessarily helpful (i.e.,
drug and crime networks, obesity) and that what is needed in certain
 80 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

Cultivating Resilience
Jim Williams,
Red Gate Garden.
Brooklyn, NY (1999)
Photo used with permission
by photographer Steffi Graham
Cultivating Resilience 81
82 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

instances is different networks of information and experience that are

often exogenous to a particular community (Kelly 1994, Marcuse 2000,
Christakis and Fowler 2007, Christakis and Fowler 2008). A critical
question emerging from the STEW-MAP evidence is whether New
York City-based stewardship groups and individuals operate in trans-
neighborhood networks that may help to sustain critical resources such
as capital, materials, knowledge, and power in situ. This may enhance
our understanding of these places from having limited environmental
and social benefits to being integral to sustaining our collective
resilience, efficacy and well-being within a much broader spectrum
of time and place.

Conclusion: Sustaining the Restorative Commons

The reciprocity between ‘nature’ and humans happens within one
system as the land that we steward — no matter how small — becomes
part of both a biological legacy, contributing in some measure to cleaner
air and water, wildlife habitats, and healthy soil as well as a social legacy,
strengthening our collective identity and social cohesion. Urbanization
creates diverse, dynamic and emergent landscapes (Jacobs 1961, Clay
1973, Johnson 2001). Urban open spaces in all their manifestations
(e.g., parks, gardens, green roofs, urban farms, greenways) exist within
a public sphere of social norms, laws, and property rights. This dynamic
and heterogeneous landscape is influenced by both biophysical and
ecological drivers on the one hand and social and economic drivers
on the other. While design and technology can help to knit together
this landscape, it is our social structure that will most likely sustain
it (Spaargaren and Mol 1992). Social ecologist William R. Burch, Jr.
wrote at a critical time in the 1970s environmental movement, “...
our encounter with history seems special only because we look at
our awesome machines and ignore our even more awesome social
organizations” (Burch 1971). This is particularly salient to the pursuit
of the Sustainable City. Green and restorative urban designs become
sustainable solutions only when they are complimented by a self-
organizing human or social system of stewardship. Or in other words,
when they matter to people.
From the story of community gardeners and other civic groups
in New York City, one learns how urban stewardship can be both an
a Cultivating Resilience 83

act of personal recovery and mechanism for maintaining individual

well-being as well as a way to strengthen community efficacy and
cohesion. It is suggested here that stewardship may contribute to
resiliency and a positive health outlook as active stewardship builds
confidence, strengthens social ties, broadens social networks, and
provides the steward (or group of stewards) with social status as
a positive contributor to society. This type of resiliency can have a
community-wide impact. However, these benefits can be difficult to
quantify or understand from the general purview of some policy and
decision-makers. Too often it is not until these spaces are threatened
by competing development (as in the case of community gardens in
New York City), or our desired use of them is restricted, that we come to
understand the full weight of their societal meaning. It is only then that
we begin to understand that the true value of open space is as part of
our larger collective health and well-being.
Policy-makers, designers, and planners interested in cultivating
resiliency may want to consider first the most vulnerable populations
and seek to recapture the flow of critical resources within these
communities. It is the most vulnerable that have fewer material
resources available and in some cases the type of social networks to
adapt to change and challenge adversity. At the same time, we need
not only to celebrate city life and difference but also to design social
systems that can support and nurture a heterogeneous system of open
space over time. This includes recognition of emergent open spaces and
a pro-active cultivation of civic stewardship during times of crisis and
change. For it is stewardship and engagement that can deepen social
meaning to ensure that the Restorative Commons will be a resource
that not only exists but persists through the life course. While it may be
impossible to know the full extent of how local acts of stewardship have
inspired others, I am reminded of a particularly evocative quote from my
multi-city research:
“It’s simple. I do it [garden] so the kids around here see me taking care
of things. When I’m gone or they’re grown, they might remember….”
Ms. Shirley Boyd. Franklin Square Neighborhood. Baltimore, MD
(Svendsen and Graham 1997)

Within the history of the city one can find evidence of individuals and
84 Restorative Commons ERIKA SVENDSEN

groups not only creating restorative spaces as part of their own desire
for health and well-being but with the hope that it might also trigger
resilient processes in others and benefit a larger commons.

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Schroeder, H.W. 1989. Environment, behavior and design research on urban

forests. In: Zube, E.H.; Moore, G.T., eds. Advances in environment,
behavior and design. Vol 2. New York, NY: Plenum Press.

Shiffman, R. 1969. The Vest-pocket park as an instrument of social
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Sommer, R.; Learey, F.; Summitt, J.; Tirrell, M. 1994. Social benefits
of residential involvement in tree planting: comparison with developer
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Spaargaren, G.; Mol, A.P.J. 1992. Sociology, environment and modernity:
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Svendsen, E.; Graham, S. 1997. Personal communication with Ms. Shirley
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Svendsen, E.; Stone, E. 2003. New York City Parks & Recreation
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Svendsen, E.; Campbell, L.; Fisher, D. 2008. Understanding urban

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Thought Pieces
These brief pieces offer the reflections of architects on
the development of restorative green infrastructure. They
are points of entry for those unfamiliar with green building
and green infrastructure, offering an overview of the intent,
impact, and importance of this movement in the design
and building fields. They call attention to the legacy of
early innovators from the worlds of art and activism. Going
forward, they encourage us to utilize systems thinking in
the retrofitting and development of our built environment,
rights-of-way, and urban public spaces.
Thought Pieces
These brief pieces offer the reflections of architects on
the development of restorative green infrastructure. They
are points of entry for those unfamiliar with green building
and green infrastructure, offering an overview of the intent,
impact, and importance of this movement in the design
and building fields. They call attention to the legacy of
early innovators from the worlds of art and activism. Going
forward, they encourage us to utilize systems thinking in
the retrofitting and development of our built environment,
rights-of-way, and urban public spaces.
90 Restorative Commons
 91

Re-Naturing the City:

A Role for Sustainable
Infrastructure and Buildings
Hillary Brown, FAIA
New Civic Works

Design professionals and planners are learning new ways to weave

nature into the urban experience through the vehicle of high
performance or green building. With energy- and resource-efficient
building practices joined to metrics such as air quality, indoor lighting,
and thermal comfort, environmental quality is being expressly redefined
by better human outcomes. Put back in touch with daylight’s full
spectrum, embracing the lost logic of passive solar heating and natural
ventilation, reconnecting with the world outside, enjoying designs that
promote views for everyone to experience weather, seasons, and views,
we may once again benefit from proximity to the natural world.
Sustainability, many are coming to understand, is not about
austerity, but to the contrary, may proffer a richer, more sensuous
experiential dimension. Practiced well, it’s about keeping abundant
the visual, tactile, acoustic, and thermal cues that are our link to see HEERWAGEN page 38
p 

natural processes. Locked in conventionally lit, hard-surfaced, climate- Previous Page:

Street tree and skyline,
controlled interiors, with ever more social and business transactions Brooklyn, NY.
Photo used with permission
being mediated electronically, human senses can wither. They become by PHOTOGRAPHER IAN CHENEY

anaesthetized. Green design privileges access by all of our faculties to Left:

daylight, views, and fresh air, enabling us to feel or hear sound of wind The West Side Highway
looking north from the
or water, providing the “thermal delight” experienced indoors in a sunny pedestrian bridge at Rector
Street. Planted medians
spot or outdoors on a green roof. Vegetated roofscapes and rain gardens buffer adjacent pedestrian
bring nature close to hand while beneficially catching, cleaning, or even and bicycle pathways from
highway car traffic and
infiltrating stormwater right on site. In sum, buildings that celebrate provide welcome views.
Photo used with permission
local microclimate, topology, vegetation, hydrology, and material by photographer Anne Wiesen
 92 Restorative Commons HILLARY BROWN

Green roof on Chicago’s

City Hall.
Photo by Lindsay Campbell,
U.S. Forest Service

Green infrastructure and

redesigned streetscape
improve bicycle and
pedestrian transportation.
Photo USED WITH PERMISSION
by NEW YORK CITY DEPARTMENT
OF TRANSPORTATION
RE-NATURING THE CITY 93

Front yard urban tree

canopy in Carroll Gardens,
Brooklyn.
Photo USED WITH PERMISSION
by photographer IAN CHENEY
 94 Restorative Commons HILLARY BROWN

resources, may realize both greater efficiency and effectiveness, being

more comfortable and conducive to productivity, than conventional
buildings that ignore their surroundings.
The techniques and resultant benefits of closely coupling built
and natural systems described above can today be applied to the
design and construction of the public right-of-way — that familiar
urban cross-section of sidewalk, street trees, parking and travel lanes,
and associated subsurface utility and stormwater infrastructures.
Indeed, the right-of-way remains today a typology of the “commons”
and is, in fact, an undervalued public space that can offer significant
ecological and human health benefits. Our city streets can move toward
high performance by application of the core principles of sustainable
design — using materials, energy, and resources more effectively,
limiting hazardous substances and waste, and reducing other
detrimental impacts to the air, water, and soil.
Best practices for the right-of-way marry nature’s economy of
means to her beneficial processes. A few examples may illuminate
see lacerte page 216
p  this point. Treating stormwater runoff as close to its source as
see marshall and hoda
p 
 possible by using landscaped or “bioengineered” structures in roadway
page 164
medians or in sidewalk areas can return cleaner water to its natural
hydrologic pathways. In lieu of the conventional, miserly 5 ft x 5 ft tree
pit, trees may be connected continuously under the sidewalk pavement
with continuous trenches filled with structural soil (organic matter
mixed in a matrix of large stones). This allows trees’ roots air and room
for growth, while providing a useful stormwater reservoir. Through
shading and evaporation, trees combat the local “heat island effect”
of higher summertime city temperatures while reducing heat stress
on asphalt pavement. So can light-colored asphalt and concrete on
streets and sidewalks that deflect some incoming solar gain. At night
the city also benefits from pavement’s greater reflectivity as it boosts
the effectiveness of streetlight illumination. Diversified native (water
efficient) plant and tree species, brought in greater density to our
streetscapes, enhance the walkability of the right-of-way — improving
public health, safety, and quality of life.
Envision, if you will, such a transformation of New York City’s largest
real estate holding, namely its 20,000 lane- miles of right-of-way — an
aggregate area greater than the island of Manhattan. By combining
RE-NATURING THE CITY 95

these progressive “best practices” across landscape architecture,

civil engineering, and utility conveyance systems, the rights-of-way
become a whole system, an integration of many parts combined for
their higher performance in a densely urbanized environment. By
incorporating into engineered systems the intelligence of natural ones,
whose passive processes clean and cool air and water (using infiltration,
bio-retention, bio-remediation and evapo-transpiration), and by helping
to replenish and augment plant species health and diversity, utilitarian
public works can begin to transcend their single purpose functions.
This gentle ‘greening of gray infrastructure’ can also, over long time
horizons, achieve a subtle but profound re-naturing of the city. Locally
and nationally, as we proceed with a new era of infrastructure upgrade,
our goal should be to make this relatively taken-for-granted real estate
more resilient, functional, and beautiful, fostering a healthier urban
environment.
Overcoming our increasingly devastating disconnect from the
natural world has permitted us to accept as norms the terms of
pollution, sprawl, social isolation and a generalized diminishment
in human experience and potential. Re-energizing our symbiotic
relationship with nature in an urbanizing landscape is perhaps one
of the most pressing needs and potent opportunities of our time.
96 Restorative Commons
 97

Urban Gardens:
Catalysts for Restorative
Commons Infrastructure
John M. Seitz, AIA
HOK

Nature continues to define the restorative landscape. While our early

commons, a central shared field for grazing or crops, has changed
over the centuries, our urban infrastructure is a new necessity that
has paralleled the growth of cities and that carries with it remnant
functions of these commons. In New York City today, the commons
may be a pastoral memory of a field, Central Park, a paved opening see MARTENSEN page 26
p 

between buildings, Rockefeller Plaza, or a street lined with retail shops

and vendors. Our infrastructure is not often thought of in terms of living
tissue, but it is nothing less than the vascular system of our cities.
The Restorative Commons seeks to apply the restorative qualities
of nature to the urban landscape to enhance human and ecological
health and well-being. This possibility owes much to the community
gardeners who rebuilt the landscapes of our abandoned inner cities
in the 1970s and a group of environmental artists who, at about the
same time, began creating strong large-scale built works that reminded
us of our relationship to the Earth and to nature. While early green
infrastructure elements existed in the cellular network of green squares
James Oglethorpe designed for Savannah, Georgia, Frederick Law
Olmstead’s emerald necklace in Boston, and in many other urban parks,
these landscapes were not shaped by the culture of cities or to support
ecological systems in a concerted way. It was not until we saw large-
see STONE page 122
p 
scale urban gardening through community gardens that urban nature see bennaton page 232
p 

began to support neighborhood values, gathering and food production,

as well as places for human restoration and healing. The environmental
and ecological artists of the 1970s also began exploring large-scale
environmental art works that served to highlight natural systems and
 98 Restorative Commons JOHN M. SEITZ

Below and Previous Page:

Curbside gardens
expanded and nurtured
by local residents in
Brooklyn (2006).
PhotoS used with permission
by PHOTOGRAPHER John Seitz
URBAN GARDENS 99

in some cases worked to restore ecological

systems. Savannah’s squares and Olmstead’s
parks were designed primarily for viewing.
Nature is to be seen, fixed in approximation
of a pastoral ideal, and occupied in equally
prescribed measure. The gardeners and
the artists changed this paradigm and the
elements of a more decentralized, interactive,
restorative infrastructure began to appear in
our cities.

Earth Art and Community Gardens

In New York City we saw Alan Sonofist’s “Time
Landscape” completed in 1975 in the West
Village and Agnes Degnes “Wheatfield” planted
in 1982 in what would become Battery Park
City. Both of these large scale environmental
works of art introduced another kind of nature
into New York City. “Time Landscape” sought
to make visible the nature that existed before
the settlers arrived and “Wheatfield” created
a field of wheat on a pile of rubble on the edge
of Lower Manhattan. These projects were
instrumental in not only moving art out of
the studio and extending the palette to living
materials, landscapes, and nature, but also
they focused attention on urban ecological
issues by integrating the rhythms, seasons,
and lifecycles of nature into their designs. As
such, these artists refocused us on natural
process as a possibility in design. About the
same time, a group of East Village gardeners
began ‘seed-bombing’ abandoned lots and
organizing the first community gardens. Over
the next three decades, as our inner cities
were revalued and rebuilt, gardens began to
spill over into sidewalk gardens and tree pits.
100 Restorative Commons JOHN M. SEITZ
URBAN GARDENS 101

Tree allee, Brooklyn

Botanic Garden (2001).
Photos used with permission
by photographer John Seitz
 102 Restorative Commons JOHN M. SEITZ

Streetscape
We also began to place a higher value on this
“public” nature with neighborhood groups
installing tree guards and competing for
“Greenest Block” honors, a community
outreach program developed by Brooklyn see fields page 231
p 

Botanic Garden’s GreenBridge. Trees

began to be valued for an array of ecological
services, as well as their aesthetic value.
These newer valuations included contri-
butions to clean air, ability to support bird
populations, and lowering of summertime
street temperatures.
We are now beginning to see more
attention paid to plantings that can help
clean and manage urban stormwater flows.
In Portland a “Green Streets” program uses
curbside planting areas to both retain and
clean rainwater that falls on streets and
sidewalks.

Rain gardens filter street

runoff in Portland, Oregon.
Photos used with permission
by city of Portland
URBAN GARDENS 103

When these strategies are combined with

see marshall and hoda
p 

building strategies that may include green page 164

roofs, bio-swales, rain gardens, and rainwater see la 

p  certe page 216

storage tanks in a comprehensive urban

stormwater management plan, we begin to see
the potential to significantly alter the urban
landscape and restore a productive hydrologic
system to everyone’s benefit.

Waterways
Sometimes knowledge of an area’s natural
history will unearth former built-over springs
and stream courses. The daylighting of the
Woonasquatucket and Moshassuck Rivers, in
downtown Providence, RI, included uncovering
and restoring two-thirds of a mile of the once
covered rivers. In Yonkers, New York State is
spending $34 million to daylight part of the
Saw Mill River. As we revitalize these water
courses, and street and building water flows
into the public eye, there are an increasing
number of opportunities to not only tell a story
of sustainable water management, but also,
to begin creatively shaping this infrastructure
in resonance with the natural systems and
neighborhood cultures they traverse.
 104 Restorative Commons JOHN M. SEITZ

Walls
Public spaces within cities are defined as much
by the walls that border them as they are by
what is within them. Green walls can help us
shape our Restorative Commons from both
an ecological and human health perspective.
Historically most green walls have depended
upon climbing plants that were either able to
cling directly to a wall surface or were aided
by a trellis. This limited the palette to climbing
plants and the height to the reach of the plant.
Recent developments in green roof technology
have extended our ability to support healthy
plantings on walls and we are beginning to
see experimentation in this area; perhaps Ivy on abandoned
building, Newburgh,
most notably by the richly diverse planted wall New York (2001).
Photo used with permission
gardens of Patrick Blanc. by PHOTOGRAPHER John Seitz
URBAN GARDENS 105

Greenbelts, Corridors, Greenways

W. 39th St.

West Side Highway

Eleventh Ave.

Tenth Ave.

Ninth Ave.
W. 38th St.

While street trees and our pastoral urban W. 37th St.

parks have long been valued, it has generally W. 36th St.

Javits Convention Center

been difficult to integrate an understanding W. 35th St.

of plant communities and an appreciation for W. 34th St.

biodiversity into urban planting plans. Three-

W. 33rd St.

Post Office

quarters of the street trees in New York City

New Penn
Station
30th Street Rail Yards

W. 31st St.

represent less than 12 species; urban dwellers W. 30th St.

in both Europe and North America consistently W. 29th St.

prefer manicured pastoral urban landscapes, Chelsea Park

and appreciate more diverse alternatives only Starrett Lehigh Building

W. 26th St.

when they include obvious design elements Elliott Houses

W. 25th St.

that indicate human intent. As cities grow and

X

Eleventh Ave.

Tenth Ave.

Ninth Ave.
we continue to reduce our biological reserves
London Terrace

W. 23rd St.

outside of cities, our urban infrastructures will Dia Center

W. 22nd St.

increasingly be called upon to support plant Union Theological Seminary

W. 21st St.

W. 20th St.

and animal diversity. In the past some cities Chelsea Piers

W. 19th St.

created ecological reserves with both leisure W. 18th St.

and educational components like the Heem W. 17th St.

parks in Amstelveen, the Netherlands. Today

W. 16th St.

Chelsea Market

W. 15th St.

some municipalities are beginning to legislate

W. 14th St.

biodiversity in public plantings and Basel,

W. 13th St.

Switzerland requires that new buildings must

St.

not only include green roofs, but must also

rt
oo
ev
ns
Ga

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oS
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document diverse rooftop plantings and the

Ho

Gansevoort Peninsula
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ability of plant communities to support specific

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ing

th
12
ton

W.
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populations of insects and birds. HIGH LINE High Line

North

Another strategy available to public-space

planners is green infrastructure mapping and
the coordinated placement of green spaces
along corridors to facilitate the movement of
bird and animal species. Patch ecology teaches
us that the smaller an area of green space and
the more disconnected it is from other green
spaces, the less it will be able to support plant
Plan of existing
and animal life. This initial disadvantage can High Line (2002).
MAP used with permission
be mitigated by creating green corridors and of FRIENDS OF THE HIGH LINE
 106 Restorative Commons JOHN M. SEITZ

networks, allowing a mosaic of small green

spaces to function more like a continuous
edge community. These green infrastructure
networks become even more resilient when
they are connected to larger natural water or
land areas with plant and animal reserves.
As we begin to align open space design
and planning with corridor development that
includes green infrastructure and pedestrian
access, we can begin to understand how the
built environment can be shaped to support
ribbons of Restorative Commons throughout
the city.
Seattle’s Open Space Plan for the
center city, dubbed the “Blue Ring”, is a good
example of a U.S. initiative designed to guide
development that considers many of these
factors and works to put into place a series of
linked Restorative Commons. It is successful
in large part because it reconsiders the street
as open space and prioritizes pedestrians,
access to light and air, and an integrated
design approach. Designs are to utilize
rainwater, consider natural features, be guided
by community and neighborhood groups and
include public art and healthy green space.
In extending these design guidelines to the
street and creating an extended ring, Seattle
multiplies the potential of these commons
greatly.
In New York City, a group of visionaries
have created a plan for another green corridor
and open space network atop an abandoned
elevated railroad. The High Line spans 22 City of Seattle 100-year
open space strategy
blocks and, when renovations are complete, seeks to build connections
and create new center
will create a new raised linear series of gardens city “Blue Ring.”
MAPS used with permission
and open spaces for a mile and a half through by city of Seattle
URBAN GARDENS 107

Manhattan. Along the Bronx River to the north,

another type of greenway is forming. This one

As cities grow and we continue to reduce our biological reserves

seeks to improve the Bronx River and use the
river as a link between a series of new and

outside of cities, our urban infrastructures will increasingly

existing parklands. Plans include improved
access to the river, natural area restoration,
and conversion of former industrial sites to
parkland along the river.

be called upon to support plant and animal diversity.

Restorative Commons
The infrastructure of the Restorative
Commons is built upon an understanding of
natural systems and shaped to celebrate who
we are. It is a part of the living world and, like
a garden, it requires caretaking, yet it is about
more than making sure the plants have sun
and water.
We need to find a way to make vibrant
and beautiful places in resonance with a
nature we once knew: places that engender
human health and well-being in both tangible
and intangible ways. Biophilia helps us see HEERWAGEN page 38
p 

understand our inherent and essential

preferences for natural environments, life,
and life’s processes. These lessons can help
shape our commons into places that restore
us, that refocus us on the life-support systems
that sustain us and that involve, reassure,
and fascinate us. These are the environments
we need to thrive.
Case Studies
When describing interactions between complex systems
(such as the urban built environment, socio-cultural systems,
globalized economic systems, the biosphere) particularly
at the neighborhood or city scale, it is necessary to draw on
nuanced evidence. Experimental, quasi-experimental, and
quantitative data alone are necessary but not sufficient to
understand the interactions of the urban ecosystem. There
is also a need for textured, qualitative narratives that convey
the how behind the relationships that catalyze and the
mechanisms that produce change. To that end, this section
consists of case studies written by practitioners, research
analyzing the practice of others, and first-hand accounts
of project participants.
Case Studies
When describing interactions between complex systems
(such as the urban built environment, socio-cultural systems,
globalized economic systems, the biosphere) particularly
at the neighborhood or city scale, it is necessary to draw on
nuanced evidence. Experimental, quasi-experimental, and
quantitative data alone are necessary but not sufficient to
understand the interactions of the urban ecosystem. There
is also a need for textured, qualitative narratives that convey
the how behind the relationships that catalyze and the
mechanisms that produce change. To that end, this section
consists of case studies written by practitioners, research
analyzing the practice of others, and first-hand accounts
of project participants.
 111

Creating Restorative
Settings: Inclusive
Design Considerations
David Kamp, FASLA, LF
Dirtworks, PC Landscape Architecture

The Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden

Cleveland Botanical Garden, Cleveland, Ohio

When designers turn their attention to special needs populations,

there is a temptation to focus on particular, often restrictive aspects
of the project rather than explore the expanse of possible experience.
To think of design as providing for all people, it may help to look at
health and ill health as a continuum. Some of us have severe restrictions
or progressive decline while others have temporary problems or
minor, “normal” mobility restrictions. These may range from being in
a wheelchair with cerebral palsy to the neuropathy of aging, and from
a sprained ankle to maneuvering a baby stroller. When we design for see sacks page 1
p 

those with disabilities, we are, of course, designing for ourselves — 

or who we may become. In this context, it may be easier to project what
we want to provide rather than what we can’t provide.
Public gardens increasingly seek opportunities to provide more
Previous Page:
inclusive garden experiences, specifically addressing individuals with
1100 Bergen Street Garden
special needs. While such opportunities may include programmed in Brooklyn shows the site
in its neighborhood context.
activities, such as horticultural therapy, the broader challenge is to Photo used with permission
by Council on the Environment
accommodate the needs of all visitors in a context that enhances of New York City

everyone’s enjoyment of the garden. One example of a garden that was Left:

created to accommodate the full range of the human condition is the Window portal opening into
the contemplative garden
Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden in the Cleveland Botanical invites exploration.
Photo used with permission
Garden (CBG). by Dirtworks, PC
112 Restorative Commons david kamp

The Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden was completed

in 2005 on a site created to honor the memory of Nona Evans, a young
girl who died in 1958 while she was a student at Sarah Lawrence College.
On the death of her mother Elizabeth, the Evans family asked that this
lovely, mature “Reading Garden” be redesigned and expanded to provide
a garden experience for those with disabilities and that it include space
for horticultural therapy.

The Charrette
The first step in this process was a design charrette, hosted by the
Cleveland Botanical Garden. It brought together people interested in the
garden’s design, use, and maintenance, as well as its plant collections,
display, and education. Participants included the donor family, key
members of the CBG staff including the garden’s first-ever horticultural
therapist, and a local Cleveland landscape architecture firm that would
be involved in the garden’s construction. Patricia Owen, who was CBG’s
current horticultural therapist coordinated the event. Leading the
charrette were four landscape designers: Martha Tyson, Vince Healy,
Nancy Gerlach-Spriggs, and David Kamp. The charge was to gather
and synthesize enough information to develop a design concept for the
new garden.
The board of directors, staff, and donors agreed during the design
charrette that the garden should be “beautiful, natural, lush, green;
a setting that offers a range of opportunities, choices and experiences;
a setting engaging and enriching for all who visited.” While thoughtfully
creating a comfortable environment with a range of uses for all to
enjoy, the garden was also to reflect the warm and welcoming spirit of
Elizabeth’s own garden and terrace.
The charrette set the tone for the project through its collaborative
atmosphere and overall vision. During the 2-day work session, important
relationships, opportunities, and constraints were identified between the
site’s unique characteristics, the locations for proposed activities, and
the desired ambiance. The resulting concept design addressed these
parameters through a strategy of creating three distinct garden settings.
Perhaps most important, the charrette addressed the new garden’s
context. The garden’s 12,000-square-foot area was to fit quietly into
the surrounding gardens of CBG as part of a cohesive experience and
Creating Restorative Settings 113

not as a separate or special encounter. The result is a garden that sits

comfortably in its surroundings. As the garden visitor enjoys magnificent
views of the surrounding collections, so the surrounding gardens share
views of this new, restorative garden.
The charrette also addressed the realities of the site. The space
designated for the new garden had 6 feet of grade change and contained
a mature plant collection. It incorporated an important view from the
library and is located adjacent to what would become a busy dining
terrace. Finally, construction would be coordinated with a major building
renovation and expansion project under way.

The site plan reveals

unique gardens for
contemplation, learning
and exploration, and
horticultural therapy.
IMAGE used with permission
by Dirtworks, PC
 114 Restorative Commons david kamp

Design Development and Considerations

Under the direction of David Kamp, the landscape architecture firm
Dirtworks, PC designed the garden based on the design strategy
developed during the charrette. It responded to several parameters:

•  The site’s particular opportunities and constraints

•  The specific physical and psychological needs of visitors
•  The requirements of desired activities and levels of maintenance
•  The protection of existing plant material and new plant acquisitions
• The creation of a setting that offers a range of opportunities,
choices, and experiences

A close collaborative relationship between the botanical garden staff

and the landscape architect were critical to achieving the Restorative
Garden’s sensitive and responsive design. Dirtworks worked particularly
closely with CBG’s horticultural therapist and director to identify
critical considerations in the design, including program requirements,
material selections, safety and privacy issues, and maintenance. This
dynamic and productive collaboration was maintained through the
project, allowing the designer to consider and incorporate refinements
in a timely and cost-effective manner right through construction.
For example, grade changes were made to walkways just prior to
construction and later on, special stones with interesting textures,
colors, and shapes selected by CBG were added to several stone walls.

Design Considerations
Design considerations for the Restorative Garden were based on a
simple objective: to provide opportunity and choice for visitors to
engage with nature in their own way, on their own terms, and at their
see heerwagen page 38
p  own pace. The task was to balance very specific needs with the simple
pleasures of being in nature. The considerations extend a sense of
welcome for every individual, regardless of ability. They offer a sense of
familiarity as well as a sense of surprise and delight. The considerations
are not intended to look forced or obvious. They are often subtle details,
easily overlooked except by those who need them.
While some design considerations were specific responses to
complement the garden’s distinct settings and individual programs,
Creating Restorative Settings 115

the list below addresses general concerns and patterns that, taken
together, help to shape an inclusive garden.

•  Consider a range of physical limitations when determining the

width of pathways, areas for features or activities, seating types and
arrangements, and cues for the vision impaired. Visitors may use
motorized vehicles, walkers, or wheelchairs and may have vision
impairment, or strength, stamina, or mobility concerns. Throughout
the garden, changes in pavement, texture, material, and gradient
provide cues to note changes.

•  Consider path materials for their durability, aesthetic quality,

glare, and accessibility, balancing the need for slip resistance with
the degree of texture to minimize fatigue. Path gradients were
carefully calibrated to minimize fatigue and provide subtle places
to pause and rest and enjoy a fragrance or admire a focal point.
Using a paving system that incorporates native crushed stone and
pine resin, the pathways provide a unified, natural looking, secure
and smooth, low glare surface that connects the garden’s various
settings.

•  Consider what accommodations are necessary to create a sense

of welcome and conduct activities without distractions. Depending
upon the physical, emotional, and developmental needs of a
particular group of visitors participating in a program activity,
consider the space needed by caregivers, support people, and
volunteers, who might assist participants. Besides specific areas for
activities, the garden has several places in which to welcome groups
and to talk about a particular feature or activity. These places
are generous in size and adjacent to — but outside of — general
circulation allowing visitors to pass by (and perhaps listen in)
without intruding.

Three Distinct Garden Settings

One of the greatest challenges of this or any fully accessible garden is
to provide for all of the just mentioned needs without an overwhelming
amount of paving. CBG’s Restorative Garden considers all of the above
116 Restorative Commons david kamp

while it remains first and foremost, a garden. It is a place where plants

and the supporting elements of water and sky prevail.
The garden is composed of three settings, each with a distinct
character and level of activity: one for quiet contemplation, one
for individual exploration and teaching large groups, and one for
horticultural therapy.

A Garden for Contemplation

The Contemplative Garden serves as the entry point for all three
garden settings. Its location adjacent a busy dining terrace requires
clear separation. An 8-foot-high vine-covered wall screens the terrace
and frames the entry. A “window” in the wall reveals the reflecting pool,
magnolia, and lawn, hinting at what is beyond. The space is easy to
comprehend and inviting to first-time visitors who discover smaller
more private spaces within. This verdant, quiet garden is gracious and
welcoming. It is lush; its colors calm and serene. The design reflects
the proportion, scale, and fine detailing of the adjacent handsome
modern limestone library. The four symbolic “walls” that contain this
garden are the floor-to-ceiling windows of the library; an edge of mixed
shrubs and two limestone walls; a low retaining wall with a fountain
and pool; and the vine covered entry wall. A mature Yulan magnolia
(Magnolia denudata) stands at the head of a long reflecting pool that sits
in a panel of evergreen groundcover. The height of the pool in relation
to the adjacent path was carefully considered to allow visitors to see
reflections of trees and sky whether sitting or standing. Behind it a
fountain flows from the top of the low wall into a basin. The width of the
water channel, the distance it falls, and the depth of the basin combine
to create a deep, soothing sound that softens nearby conversations. An
elegant lawn panel is contained by large sandstone paving stones saved
and restored from the original garden. The stone walk connects the
entry to seating areas, water features, and an overlook with a view to
a deep ravine.
Details were carefully considered to provide seamless
accommodation as well as moments of delight. The lawn panel uses
a species of grass, supine bluegrass (Poa supine), that provides
accessibility to individuals in wheelchairs and walkers without the
need for in-ground support systems. The horticultural therapist assists
Creating Restorative Settings: Inclusive Design Considerations 117

Width, texture, the slope

of paths; height of planting
beds; and views through
the garden are some design
considerations that allow
all visitors to feel safe
and welcome.
Photo used with permission
by Dirtworks, PC
 118 Restorative Commons david kamp

visitors to remove their shoes and explore the grass with their toes
as they exercise their legs and feet. The path incorporates a raised
edge that serves as a subtle guide for those with wheelchairs, walkers,
canes and strollers. Large stone paving slabs are laid in a pattern that
minimizes joints in the direction and location of wheelchair and walker
wheels, thus minimizing the “bump” and fatigue of negotiating joints.
An overlook incorporates a custom handrail to accommodate arthritic
hands and Braille insets for the visually impaired. The insets feature
poems given by friends of CBG and are on the backside of the rails for
comfort. The location of the Braille behind the rail adds an element
of surprise for those who discover them – both for individuals who
Railings with Braille read Braille and for those who don’t. Outside of the featured magnolia,
inserts of poetry and
garden descriptions. seasonal color and fragrances in this garden are minimized, creating
Photo used with permission
by Dirtworks, PC a relaxing setting with specific but limited sensory stimulation.
Creating Restorative Settings 119

A Garden for Learning and Exploring

Behind the Contemplative Garden’s stone wall is a space with an
unusual sense of intimacy. Intended for both individual exploration
and group activities, the space is defined by a 6-foot-high stone wall
designed in close collaboration with the horticultural therapist and
director. It also represents a successful collaboration with the contractor
in its detail, craftsmanship, and in the careful placement of interesting
stones and planting.
The wall provides privacy and accommodates the grade change
between the two gardens and is itself a participatory feature offering
many opportunities for touching, smelling, and hearing. Selected
native stones, a variety of plants with sensorial interest, and water
features — a waterfall, pool, and water trickling over moss-covered
stone — engage users whether they sit or stand. The sound of moving
water is used strategically here as well. Falling in thin rivulets from the
top of the wall into a shallow basin, the water creates a bright, lively
sound to screen nearby traffic noise. Plants cascade over the wall and
grow in niches. The wall itself steps in height to encourage exercise
and develop motor skills while visitors engage in the simple pleasures
of smelling and touching as they explore and enjoy this garden. One of
the values of the wall and water elements is that it is part of the garden
where vision impaired individuals can explore and discover plants
independently. The configuration of the wall and water features also
creates distinct microclimates providing cues with changes in humidity
and temperature.

A Garden for Horticultural Therapy

The space designed for horticultural therapy programs is dynamic.
It is sunny, constantly changing, and overflowing with color, scent, and
sound, emphasizing sensory stimulation. Therapy clients, some with
severe disabilities, work with and enjoy carefully selected plants and
activities. Health care professionals and other groups are welcomed in
this area to learn about horticultural therapy, plants, and gardening. The
general public also has opportunities to participate in programs here.
The organic, curved shapes of the raised plant beds offer generous
and easily maneuverable spaces for individuals and groups. Participants
have a choice of planter widths, heights, and special displays. Generous
120 Restorative Commons david kamp
Creating Restorative Settings 121

work surfaces provide areas for tools and supplies. The higher raised
beds have indented toe spaces so participants can be closer to work
areas. Large individual planters enable several participants to work
together while allowing easy access for the horticultural therapist,
caregivers, and support people. One special feature enjoyed by all is the
“Basil Walk”. This is a narrow walkway between raised beds containing a
dozen varieties of basil that provide a long growing season and dramatic
display with cascading plants of various heights and blooms. Visitors,
whether walking or sitting in wheelchairs, have the same experience of
fragrant basil at eye and nose level.
CBG provides horticultural therapy activities for individuals with
cerebral palsy; aging populations with physical challenges or dementia;
individuals with vision impairments; adults with severe and multiple
physical challenges; autistic youths; and mentally challenged youths
and adults. The dynamics of conducting and participating in a therapy
activity in such a public setting was carefully considered and is another
example of the collaboration between the garden staff and landscape
architect. The use of planter walls and planted berms create interest
and privacy from nearby paths, allowing the general public to enjoy this
garden without distracting groups or activities.

Conclusion
The Elizabeth and Nona Evans Restorative Garden is an integral part
of the Cleveland Botanical Garden’s mission to blend education, social
responsibility, cultural and environmental stewardship helping people
of all ages, backgrounds, and abilities appreciate and benefit from the
positive role that plants play in their lives. It educates and entertains
visitors with sensory rich experiences and programs. It supports and
extends the organization’s purpose by providing a setting for the
collection and display of plants. And most important, the garden does
these things discreetly, comfortably, for people of all abilities.

Woman and her guide dog

both enjoy the aromas of
the planted wall.
Photo used with permission
by Dirtworks, PC
122 Restorative Commons
 123

The Benefits of
Community-Managed
Open Space:
Community Gardening
in New York City
Edie Stone
New York City Department of Parks and Recreation
GreenThumb Program, New York, NY

Community Management is Important

The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation GreenThumb
Program (GreenThumb) is the largest community gardening program
in the country, serving over 8,000 registered garden members in more
than 500 gardens citywide. As the program’s director since 2001,
I have become convinced that community gardening provides unique
benefits to its participants that are distinct from the well documented
health benefits provided by traditional parks. These benefits are directly
linked with community gardening’s ability to provide participants with
the opportunities to be actively involved in decision-making about
the use and development of the community garden space. As self-
governed spaces which are continually changed and modified by
their collaborative user groups, community gardens provide many
opportunities for exploring novel environments and situations.
Unlike traditional municipal parks and community gardens in some
Youth in Clinton
other programs, gardens managed by GreenThumb are true community- Community Garden,
Hells Kitchen, NY.
managed spaces. New York may go farther than many other cities in its Photo used with permission
by photographer Glenis Holder,
recognition of the rights of community volunteers to set the parameters GreenThumb
 124 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

Community Gardens

Map of more than 500

community gardens
in New York City.
Data Source: NYC Dept of Parks
and Recreation and Council on
the Environment of New York City;
Map created by Jarlath O’Neil-
Dunne, University of Vermont
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 125

Gardeners protesting
on the steps of NYC
City Hall (2000).
Photo used with permission
by Edie Stone, GreenThumb

of garden management. This is in part a legacy of the political struggle to

preserve the gardens in the late 1990s, when gardeners banded together
citywide to challenge the mayoral administration’s plans to develop or
sell the properties. The resulting public outcry culminated in a lawsuit
by the New York State Attorney General, which alleged the gardens’ right
to exist as de facto parkland. The settlement of this lawsuit in 2002
included specific language defining the rights of volunteer gardeners
to play an active role in the determination of future plans for the use of
garden spaces. This has led to a general acceptance on the part of the
Parks administration that community garden groups have wide latitude
in determining how their city-owned spaces will be designed, managed,
and used.
The spirit of the New York City community gardening movement
is also very much based in the activist agenda of the late 1970s and
early 1980s when citizen actors decided to take matters into their own
hands to reclaim their decaying neighborhoods. GreenThumb was
established in 1978 as a means for the City to manage and assist the
growing number of gardening groups that had taken over abandoned
city property. From its conception, the program was designed to be
demand-driven, to provide material resources, training, and legitimacy
to citizen volunteer groups who chose to clean up their neighborhoods
themselves rather than wait for municipal intervention (Von Hassel
2002).
 126 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

Gardeners transformed
dumping grounds and
abandoned lots into
thriving community spaces.
Photo used with permission
by Council on the Environment
of New York City

DOME community
garden on West 84th
Street, Manhattan (1979).
Photo used with permission
by Council on the Environment
of New York City
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 127

The general guidelines for the creation and operation of a

GreenThumb community garden are outlined in a license document that
is issued by the City of New York to the group of volunteers operating
the garden. Beyond these guidelines (which focus primarily on public
access and very general standards of maintenance aimed at preventing
hazardous conditions), the governance and operation of the gardens is
determined solely by the volunteers. As such, the gardens are managed
for a variety of uses and functions as recreational, cultural, and
educational spaces, as well as places for growing food and flowers.
During the last century, many gardening programs have been
started in New York and other cities as part of top-down strategies
to assist the poor. These programs, envisioned for numerous
purposes including education for schoolchildren, job programs for the
unemployed, or war gardens for providing produce during times of
shortage, have seldom continued once the crisis they were created to
address had passed (Lawson 2005). GreenThumb garden volunteers,
however, have shown commitment to continuing to operate gardens
over more than 30 years, and to organize politically against the City,
when it indicated that the program would be discontinued (Stone
2000). Garden volunteers in New York clearly value their independence
and the latitude they are given to govern their own licensed spaces.
Recognizing this independent spirit, I have deliberately taken
a hands-off policy regarding the physical and organizational
development of individual community gardens. As a civil servant
I am committed to ensuring that the gardens, as public lands,
provide a public benefit. I am not, however, convinced that anyone
other than the garden volunteers themselves can determine which
benefit is most needed in their communities. The numerous public
programs envisioned, designed, and operated by garden volunteers
are implemented with almost no input from GreenThumb staff.
Most of the gardens we work with receive less than $600 per year
in material support. GreenThumb provides gardeners with access
to basic materials necessary to the gardens functioning: access to
water, soil, plants, and tools. By employing outreach staff to work with
garden groups and organize workshops and events, GreenThumb also
provides a human network, someone to call when you have a problem
or want to connect with other gardeners.
128 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

This is important because the benefits provided by community

gardening to the neighborhood — and particularly the benefits provided
to the individuals running garden programs — depend, in part, on the
gardeners’ autonomy from the GreenThumb program. Limiting the
material resources we provide creates challenges to the garden group
that may ultimately strengthen both group dynamics and individuals’
skills. As gardeners strive to find creative, low-cost and culturally
appropriate ways to meet the community gardens’ operational needs,
they gain valuable problem-solving skills and create a network of
contacts among garden-supporting individuals, businesses, and
institutions in their neighborhoods. Volunteers asked to help maintain
traditional parks or gardens operated by groups with paid maintenance
staff have no need to develop these skills, and in my experience
seldom do.
The success and long-term sustainability of community garden
projects depends entirely on the vested interests of neighborhood-
based grass-roots volunteers. Disinterest and vandalism are frequent
outcomes of urban greening projects implemented without the degree
of project buy-in created by giving gardeners broad decision-making
latitude in designing and managing their spaces. Equally importantly,
the benefits to the gardening individual and community derived from
independent and creative decision-making are lacking in projects
designed and maintained by neighborhood outsiders, particularly
when they are institutional staff or organized, short-term volunteers.1

GreenThumb Garden Survey 2003

To document the many benefits provided to local communities by
GreenThumb garden volunteer groups, GreenThumb, in partnership with
the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station, undertook a study
of 324 community garden groups registered with the GreenThumb

1. Several gardens built in New York in the 1990s by the Parks Council provide
unfortunate examples of this problem. Although the not-for-profit organization
attempted to link each garden site with an institution, such as a local school,
neighborhood volunteers were not involved in the design or construction of the
garden sites. Once the Parks Council staff was no longer present, the garden sites
fell into disrepair when local grass roots volunteers showed little interest in
using or maintaining them.
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 129

Program in 2003 (Svendsen and Stone 2003). GreenThumb staff

collected data from garden groups using a standardized assessment.
Garden volunteers were asked a series of questions about their use
of and feelings about their spaces. The results provided valuable data
about how the gardens were being managed and which uses and
activities volunteers felt were important to cultivate. When asked what
types of events were held in the garden in the last 2 years, groups
responded to a list of options, illustrated in the chart (Fig. 2). The types
of activities that volunteer GreenThumb gardeners choose to sponsor
demonstrate both the needs of the urban communities in which they are
located as well as unique and inventive ways to address these needs.

Recreation
It seems obvious that community gardeners would report “recreation”
as a top activity taking place in GreenThumb gardens. Community
gardening may provide a uniquely beneficial type of recreation, however,
because it is unstructured and contains more opportunity for creativity
and novel experiences. Unlike traditional parks containing playground
equipment or fields designed for organized sports, community gardens
encourage creative play and risk-taking in an unstructured, natural see HEERWAGEN page 38
p 

environment. Leading play researchers believe that risk-taking is

an inherent part of play and that we cannot remove all risk from play
environments without seriously diminishing their benefit to users.
Structured recreation, such as athletics, while beneficial in some
regards, does not provide an essential creative element (Brown 1998).
Opportunities for rough and tumble play in a natural setting,
something that suburban and rural dwellers may take for granted, are
often unavailable in urban settings where open space is limited and
fear of crime and other dangers cause parents to keep children indoors.
A study of convicted murderers illustrated one of the more serious
possible outcomes of limiting this type of play behavior — none of the
men interviewed had engaged in normal roughhousing as youngsters.
The researchers believe that unstructured play helps children
understand limits, empathize with others, and determine boundaries
(Brown 1998).
By providing safe spaces where children can interact with nature
and come into contact with a diverse and multigenerational group of
 130 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

1100 Bergen Street Garden

in Brooklyn shows the site
in its neighborhood context.
Photo used with permission
by Council on the Environment
of New York City

Paradise Garden in the

Bronx shows the use of the
site as a recreation space
and a cultural space.
Photo used with permission
by erika svendsen, u.s. forest
service
 The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 131

Figure 2

GARDEN EVENTS
Types of events held in community gardens
Data source: GreenThumb Garden Survey (2003)

80

70

60

50
Percent (%) Gardens

40

30

20

10

0
School groups
Programming

Development
Quality of life

Public health
Faith-based
Recreation

Education

Advocacy

Housing
Seniors

Culture
Youth

Arts
 132 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

watchful adults, community gardens help provide one of the essential

ingredients of a healthy childhood (Louv 2005). Community gardeners
I have worked with, regardless of their exposure to academic research
on the subject or individual level of education, seem to realize that
bringing children into contact with nature is critically important to their
development. Many community gardeners have designed their spaces
intentionally to meet this recognized need by creating varied habitats
for many species. GreenThumb gardens contain fish ponds and butterfly
gardens, plantings for bird habitat and forage, as well as quiet seating
areas ideal for observing the natural world, and open spaces for kids
to run.

Education
For community gardeners, the act of instructing visiting children and
adults about the natural world, cultural traditions in agriculture, and
gardening techniques also benefits the teacher by providing a sense
of expertise and pride. This appears to lead to increased self-esteem
and sense of identity for many community gardeners with whom I have
worked. The fact that over 50 percent of garden groups reported holding
educational activities as well as events for youth and school groups,
demonstrates the important role that teaching plays in the lives of
community garden volunteers. The fact that GreenThumb does not in
any way instruct or require volunteer gardeners to provide educational
events also indicates that engaging in teaching and learning is a
satisfying pastime for many volunteers.

Seniors
Research on New York City community gardens indicates that many
of the volunteers providing these valuable educational lessons to their
see BENNATON page 232
p  communities are senior citizens (Sokolovsky in press). This is borne
out by my own observations. In addition, the 2003 garden survey found
that 43 percent of gardening groups reported having events for seniors.
Many seniors participate in gardening in New York City as a nostalgic
reflection of an agricultural background in childhood as well as to fulfill
a desire or economic necessity to grow fresh food. The overall
population of community gardeners is also aging. Many New York City
community gardens were founded in the early 1980s; as of 2003, 39
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 133

percent of gardens were less than 10 years old, 36 percent of gardens

were 11-20 years old, and 23 percent of gardens were 21-30 years old.
Many, if not most, GreenThumb gardens are still being operated by the
original founding volunteers who are now in their 60s and 70s.
Many gardeners in New York City hail from Puerto Rico or the
American South where they were actively engaged in farming for
their livelihood. Because of events such as the Great Migration, this
demographic trend has been observed and documented in other
large northeastern cities (Zeiderman 2006). Though their agricultural
memories are not always positive, aging gardeners often express an
interest in educating their city-raised neighbors about “what it was like.”
A gardener in Brooklyn who routinely grew cotton in her community
garden plot once told me, “I hate cotton—when I left South Carolina
I never wanted to see cotton again, but then I thought about all these Gardener at Hull Street
Garden in Brooklyn.
folks who never had to pick it, and I wanted them to see what we had Photo used with permission
by Council on the Environment
to do.” Nostalgia for a rural past is also reflected in garden names like of New York City
 Percent (%) Gardens

Figure 3

0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
Block
Associations

Community Board
134

Youth Groups
Data source: GreenThumb Garden Survey (2003)

Senior Groups
COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES

Faith-based
Institutions
Restorative Commons

Schools

Garden Coalition

Music Groups

Precinct Council

Environmental
Advocacy
Community events in which garden groups participate

Arts Groups

Food Pantries

Neighborhood
Watch

Field Trips

Food Markets

Sports

Health Care
EDIE STONE
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 135

“Down Home Garden,” “God’s Little Green Acre,” and “El Flamboyan,”
named after a favorite Puerto Rican flowering tree.
In a very real way, seniors who engage in community gardening are
remaking a small part of the urban environment into a rural, agrarian
society that better reflects their traditional values. Particularly for older
adults, research has shown that social integration and the strength of
social ties are important predictors of well-being and longevity (Kewon
et al. 1998). I believe that participation in the creation and management
of community gardens may be particularly beneficial in this regard, as it
gives urban seniors a platform to demonstrate their cultural knowledge
and history, and to act and be seen as “respected elders” in their
communities. The importance of “culture” to community garden groups
is illustrated in the 2003 survey results, with over 40 percent of groups
reporting holding cultural events.

Health and Social Benefits of Community-Managed Space

Individuals of all ages who are engaged in the creation and
implementation of garden programs designed to help others are likely
to benefit through the contribution such activities make to their sense
of identity and self-importance. Many studies have reinforced the see MARVY page 202
p 

important role self-esteem and identity play in promoting health in

individuals and communities (Thoits 1991). Participation in altruistic
activities, in particular, has been cited as being especially beneficial
to individuals by helping to reduce stress, alleviate pain, and improve
mental health (Lucs 1998, Dunlin and Hill 2003).
Volunteer gardeners surveyed in 2003 also reported participation
in community-improvement, political, and social activities not related
to the garden space. (Fig. 3.) These responses illustrate that gardener
volunteers feel empowered to take on additional challenges beyond their
garden gates. While the garden survey does not prove causality, I believe
it is the experience of having decision-making control over the garden
space and the ability to make significant and visible changes there
that gives garden volunteers the sense of empowerment they need to
participate in leadership activities outside the garden.
By creating a space that has improved their neighborhood in a
tangible, concrete way, volunteer gardeners are able to see a beneficial
transformation for which they were largely responsible as individuals
 136 Restorative Commons EDIE STONE

and groups. The pride garden volunteers feel is evident in the stories
they tell. Almost inevitably, a community gardener asked to tell the
history of his or her garden begins with the Herculean effort to remove
abandoned cars and mountains of rubble and trash. Often emphasizing
that “no one helped them, not the police, not the city, no one” garden
founders tell of evicting dangerous drug dealers and teaching ill-
mannered street children to respect the plants. As community gardens
evolved in response to the deplorable conditions in neighborhoods
see SVENDSEN page 58
p  caused by the 1970s fiscal crisis, it is not surprising that gardeners’
stories are similar. I believe that this “transforming the dangerous
abandoned space into a flourishing garden” story is archetypal; it
is a metaphor for the personal transformation many gardeners felt
while engaged in the creative process of building and maintaining
community gardens.

Lessons for Practitioners

By respecting the experiences, cultural traditions and wisdom of
volunteer community gardeners, municipal and nonprofit gardening
programs will reap the most benefits for local communities.
Organizations like GreenThumb enable and provide legitimacy to
the instinctive desire and natural ability of neighborhood residents
to improve their physical surroundings by providing a framework for
community garden volunteer activity, a physical space to implement it,
and minimal material support. GreenThumb provides gardeners with
access to the basic materials necessary to the gardens’ functioning,
and a human support network of outreach workers. By resisting the
bureaucratic temptation to over-design community spaces or engage
in regulatory micromanagement, support organizations also will
increase the mental health and social cohesion benefits community
gardening projects provide to individual residents and neighborhoods.
Strengthening individuals and empowering local grassroots decision-
makers allows community garden support organizations to best
contribute to individual health, urban revitalization, and neighborhood
cohesion.
The Benefits of Community-Managed Open Space 137

Literature Cited

Brown, Stuart. 1998. Play as an organizing principle: Clinical evidence

and personal observations. In: Berkoff, Marc; Beyers, John A., eds.
Animal play: evolutionary, comparative, and ecological perspectives.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 243–259.

Dunlin, P.L.; Hil, R.D. 2003. Relationships between altruistic activity

and positive and negative affect among low-income older adult service
providers. Aging and Mental Health. 7(4):294–9.

Kewon, B.; Sullivan, W.; Riley, A. 1998. Green common spaces and the
social integration of inner city older adults. Environment and Behavior.
30(6): 832–858.

Lawson, Laura. 2005. City bountiful: A century of community gardening

in America. San Francisco: University of California Press.

Louv, Richard. 2005. Last child in the woods: saving children from
nature-deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Agonquin Books.

Lucs, Allan. 1988. Helpers high: volunteering makes people feel good,
physically and emotionally. Psychology Today. October 1988.

Sokolovsky, Jay. In press. The cultural context of aging, world-wide

perspectives, 3rd edition. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Stone, Edie. 2000. Community gardening in New York City becomes a

political movement. Presentation at Perspectives of Small-Scale Farming
in Urban and Rural Areas-about the Social and Ecological Necessity
of Gardens and Informal Agriculture; 2000 July 22; Berlin, Germany.

Svendsen, E; Stone, E. 2003. New York City Parks & Recreation

GreenThumb Garden Assessment Report. City of New York Department
of Recreation & Parks.

Thoits, Peggy. 1991. On merging identity theory and stress research.

Social Psychology Quarterly. 54(2): 101–112.

Von Hassel, M. 2002. The struggle for Eden: community gardens in

New York City. Westport, CT: Bergin and Garvey.

Zeiderman, Austin. 2006. Ruralizing the city: The great migration

and environmental rehabilitation in Baltimore, Maryland. Identities:
Global Studies in Culture and Power. 13: 209–235.
 138 Restorative Commons

Fresh Kills site; an aerial

view, looking north.
IMAGE used with permission
by City of New York
 139

Environmental and
Community Health:
A Reciprocal Relationship
Jeffery Sugarman
New York City Department of City Planning

Fresh Kills Park, Staten Island, NY

The rehabilitation of brownfield sites to productive landscapes — 

whether for development, pubic open space, or mixed uses — is by
its very nature an environmental health undertaking. Contaminant
remediation and the creation of cleaner, productive environments
on these marginal sites have potential to dramatically enhance the
quality of life for some of the neediest, most vulnerable communities.
The notion of “Restorative Commons”, as articulated by Meristem’s
Executive Director Anne Wiesen, is one of public landscapes conducive
to individual and community health, as well as to lifestyle practices
and civic relationships that engage, renew, and sustain such spaces.
They are also places and resources to which the public has free and
open access. If redeveloped in this way, brownfield projects can
strengthen our understanding and respect for the natural environment,
heightening our sense of connection to and eventually making us more
aware of the interdependence of the human and nonhuman worlds.
Many contributors to the Restorative Commons Forum
demonstrated the importance of nature on human well-being and
described ways in which this is manifested in people’s lives. Ecological
and social systems should reflect an active reciprocity between the
state of the natural environment and human communities. In brownfield
reclamation, I suggest that these benefits come not just from the
renewed environment but also from the renewing process itself: there is
140 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

a profound and reciprocal relationship between the healing of a natural

environment and those enacting it. This is likely on most brownfield
projects, but the benefits are most salient where a community is the
catalyst for — or has substantive involvement in — the redevelopment.
A project such as the making of Fresh Kills Park presents an opportunity
to consider how this might happen in complex ways and at a great scale.

From Landfill to Park

Fresh Kills was, until March 2001, the world’s largest active municipal
waste disposal site, known derisively as “The Dump” by Staten Islanders
who, over its four decades of existence, became stigmatized by its
presence and revolted by its sight and smell. Eventually, Staten Islanders
organized to force the retrofitting of the site with technologically
advanced environmental control systems, and finally, the landfill’s
closure. The former left a “clean” but manufactured landscape of
monumental engineering complexity. The impending closure led the City
eventually to develop a master plan and conceptual designs for the site’s
end use after land-filling. At the start of planning it was by no means a
certainty that Fresh Kills would become a park, although environmental
as well as technical factors made this likely. Its awesome scale and
rolling topography, stunning wetlands and creeks, and the sight and
sounds of abundant birdlife, made the possibility of a park almost
indisputable. Even in its incipient state, the power of resurgent nature
expressed in floral recolonization, coupled with a surprising quietude,
created a sense of refuge within the city. Further, public testimonial of
the sanitation workers over many years, and consultations with policy-
makers, designers, and residents during initial reconnaissance visits,
revealed longstanding visions of this site as Fresh Kills “Park”. Encounter
with these was among the most compelling factors in the decision taken
to create in this uniquely “urban-pastoral” landscape a public park,
despite the challenges, and commensurate with the opportunities of the
site’s constructed and natural history.
The proposed new park will be almost three times the size of
Central Park, comprising four vast waste mounds set within an
estuarine landscape of creeks, tidal wetlands, low-lying meadows, and
upland forested areas. If successful, Fresh Kills Park promises to be as
significant to New York City and the practice of landscape design — and
Environmental and Community HealtH 141

public health — in the 21st century as Central Park was in the 19th and see MARTENSEN page 26
p 

20th centuries. The Park master plan began in 2001 with the selection
of a consultant team, led by James Corner/Field Operations, through
an international design competition that included, even in this early
phase, substantive community input to the design brief. Field Operations’
winning proposal, lifescape, envisioned Fresh Kills Park as “a new form of
public ecological landscape; a new paradigm of creativity and adaptive
reuse. lifescape was to be informed by the voice of an engaged public
and shaped by time and process.” The Field Operations team imagined
an ecologically robust landscape, not as a pastoral refuge from the city,
but as an active agent within it. Fresh Kills would provide richly diverse
settings for wildlife, contribute to urban air quality and efficient water
management, and function as a vibrant locus for social life: for active
recreation and for physical and cultural experiences. Because the site is
vast and complex, the idea of a landscape that would develop in stages,
unfolding over time — as all life does — was central to the competition
proposal and remains at the core of both the draft master plan and early
designs for Fresh Kills Park. Thus, from the very beginning, the Fresh
Kills Park conception embraced design ambitions and strategies that are
clearly, and broadly, health-promoting with exceptional opportunities for
Restorative Commons, for accommodating the functions — social and
biological — that we at the Forum worked to define and understand.
Judith Heerwagen, another participant in this Forum, described see HEERWAGEN page 38
p 

specific qualities of nature, and our interactions with nature, that

promote a sense of well-being. Some qualities, like those of sunlight and
shade or the proximity of water, are elements in the landscape itself.
Other benefits are generated by our actions in the landscape, a product
of landscape’s “transformability” through interactions such as gardening
and plant propagation; the potential for play; or the reordering of the
landscape and elements within it. Many of these attributes are vital to
Fresh Kills Park and its evolution into a refuge not from the city, but within
the city. Quoting from one of the master plan documents, “This lifescape
would be created through human agency — through design and adaptive
engineering, through planning and government investment, and through
the participation of its future users. Sports, learning, performance, and
cultural events, neighborhood revitalization, and art would all take their
place alongside the micro- and macroscopic ecological processes.”
 142 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

Hilltop view, looking north

across William T. Davis
Wildlife Refuge toward
Lower Manhattan.
Photo used with permission
by City of New York
Environmental and Community HealtH 143

…not as a pastoral refuge from the city,

but as an active agent within it.
 144 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

Aerial montage of
the proposed Fresh Kills
Park by the designers,
Field Operations.
IMAGE used with permission
by City of New York
Environmental and Community HealtH 145

Extensive community input

was solicited over 18 months.
The plan reflects many of
the stated needs and desires
of the community:
• Keep the site passive and natural

• Retain the large scale open spaces

• Paths and trails for long walks,

cycle rides, and horses

• Access to the water is important

• Limit commercial activities to the core

of the site

• Sports and recreation facilities are desirable

• Demonstrate renewable energy

• Demonstrate ecological techniques

of land reclamation
 146 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

The Fresh Kills Park Mission:

• Transform 2,200 acres of landfill to park

• Create a new public park

of unprecedented size

• Restore the health of 2,200 acres

of public land

• Establish living laboratory for sustainable

land practices and infrastructure

• Embody the principles of PlaNYC

[Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s long-term
sustainability plan for New York City]
on one site

• Keep a promise to the people

of Staten Island
Environmental and Community HealtH 147

The Master Plan

Several goals and strategies of the Fresh Kills Park draft master plan are
especially representative of what Restorative Commons should be and
warrant close observation over time: the techniques used to revitalize
and diversify its wondrous estuarine landscape over many years;
revegetation of the landfill mounds to create diverse, native habitats;
recreational programming, passive and active, geared to evolving
community needs; the degree of, and inventive strategies employed
to engage and empower the local and regional community in the site’s
development; the site’s integration into the surrounding natural, human,
civic, and infrastructural ecology; and the engineering innovations that
will facilitate end use that could have widespread application.
Among the more notable of these efforts, because it will establish
the Park’s ecological foundation while also presenting remarkable
opportunities to make the site’s transformation visible, is the mammoth
task of soil amendment and manufacture. The draft habitat plan
called for a combination of soil strategies: amendment of existing
soils, purchase or manufacture of new soils, adjustment of the soil
specifications for new cover on the landfill mounds still under-going
final closure, even “industrial scale” crop rotation. The latter proposal,
successful in Midwest prairie reclamations, turned out to be ill-suited
for creation of soils needed by our native plant population; nonetheless
it illustrates how keenly the design and planning team understood
the fundamental importance of public engagement and how natural
processes can uniquely facilitate that engagement: the alternating rows
of diverse and colorful crops would have been vividly apparent when
seen from adjoining communities and roadways. Quoting again from
plan documents:

“…design as choreography of stages in time… rather than the making

of space or place in the traditional sense, is particularly appropriate
at Fresh Kills… Especially in a landfill, understanding the stages
and processes of transformation is an important public value… The
landscape will be ‘legible’ if the processes of its making are visible,
if its appearance carries information about its substance, and if each
stage in its transformation is inhabited, understood and enjoyed.”
148 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

Another example of involving, inhabiting, and reading this changing

landscape is the expansion of the city’s Native Plant Center at a location
adjoining the site and within the adjoining Travis neighborhood. Here
many seeds of local origin are being propagated for planting the site,
while additional propagation is taking place on site in what is called
the “Founder Seed Program.” The inclusion of local residents and
others from around New York, in this essential act of nature, from seed
propagation to sowing of seeds or planting of saplings, also is planned.
The use of local seed stock and native plant communities builds on and
integrates the site into the surrounding natural ecology.
Fresh Kills Park, in fact, adjoins the existing William T. Davis Wildlife
Refuge and will provide the vital, last link in the 3000-acre Staten
Island Greenbelt. Given the scale of this effort the project’s strategies
and outcomes could have global influence on land reclamation,
and given its particular location, at the center of the northeastern
megalopolis and along the Atlantic migratory flyway, Fresh Kills should
provide far-reaching ecological benefits. The plan also calls for — and
the Department of Parks and Recreation is now designing into the
first projects — sustainable practices for water management, energy
production, and energy use. In fact, methane gas at Fresh Kills, a
byproduct of landfill refuse decomposition, has long been cleaned and
converted to pipeline quality gas for domestzic use. This and other
onsite environmental quality control systems will figure in an extensive
educational program proposed for the Park.
The central focus on nature and environmental education, passive
recreation, and wildlife interpretation at Fresh Kills came directly from
the surrounding community and was somewhat surprising given the
emphasis on active and competitive sports among Staten Islanders.
It was apparent very early in the planning outreach that the local
community also felt the unique nature of the site and a need to respond
to and learn from it. Fresh Kills Park programming will, nonetheless,
be quite diverse, addressing the community’s broader needs and
taking advantage of the site’s particular opportunities. This will
include extensive active recreation — such as mountain biking, cultural
programming, and public art. The landfill has long had a resident public
artist, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who was on the planning team and
championed the need for art and architecture. The Park also will offer
Environmental and Community HealtH 149

Rendering of proposed
recreational use:
bird observation tower.
Image used with permission
by tHE City of New York
150 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman
Environmental and Community HealtH 151

Renderings of proposed
recreational uses:
mountain biking, canoeing
and kayaking, soccer fields,
and riding trail.
IMAGES used with permission
by City of New York
152 Restorative Commons Jeffery Sugarman

programming to foster an understanding of waste management as

integral to our urban ecology. A park drive, important to site circulation,
also was proposed to provide a new east-west link between major
arterial roadways, a need long viewed by the community as essential.
Eloise Hirsh, the Fresh Kills Park Administrator for the NYC
Department of Parks and Recreation, has said Fresh Kills must be
“a model of 21st century infrastructure as well as park development
and creation, at the cutting edge of sustainable design; a beautiful
park evolving though a very public process.” At the same time, she has
asked a question that I believe is critical to the making of Restorative
Commons, to the building of public parks that optimize community and
ecological health: “How do we manage public expectations and inform
people of the challenges as well as the opportunities?” I’ve tried to
show through the example of Fresh Kills Park how these opportunities
and challenges might be met: for it is integral to the conception, and
ultimately, I believe, to the success of Fresh Kills that the human-made
environment and natural systems, human and nonhuman habitats, be
understood as a single living, experiential continuum. In the words of
David Abram, environmental philosopher:

There is an intimate reciprocity to the senses; as we touch the bark of a

tree, we feel the tree touching us; as we lend our ears to the local sounds
and ally our nose to the seasonal scents, the terrain gradually tunes us
in turn. The senses, that is, are the primary way that the earth has of
informing our thoughts and of guiding our actions. Huge centralized
programs, global initiatives, and other “top down” solutions will never
suffice to restore and protect the health of the earth. For it is only at the
scale of our direct, sensory interactions with the land around us that
we can appropriately notice and respond to the immediate needs of the
living world.
From The Spell of the Sensuous (Abram 1997)

The transformation of Fresh Kills will be a literal ground of reciprocity,

embodying in its plan and design processes the direct action and
interactions of this hopeful vision. In how many ways might we and
the environment converse at Fresh Kills and, in so doing, come to a
greater understanding of the “encompassing earth” and the impact of
our actions within it? At Fresh Kills we have senselessly and severely
Environmental and Community HealtH 153

damaged a previously vital and beautiful ecosystem. But we also have

returned, largely through the volition of local communities, to heal
that land. This very human impulse to heal seems to me at the core
of Restorative Commons, both as a means and end, particularly when
the means involve active collaboration of community, policy-makers,
planning, and design professionals with, most reassuringly, the land and
the air themselves. In so doing we reveal nature’s power, our power, to
restore health and to take greatest pleasure in our public open spaces.

Literature Cited

Abram, David. 1997. The Spell of the sensuous: perception and language
in a more-than-human world. New York: Vintage Books. 352 p.
 154 Restorative Commons

From Front Yards

to Street Corners:
Revitalizing Neighborhoods
through Community-
Based Land Stewardship
Colleen Murphy-Dunning
Urban Resources Initiative, New Haven, CT
 155

New Haven Urban Resources Initiative (URI), a nonprofit organization

partner of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
founded in 1989, works in collaboration with community groups to
reclaim our city’s environment. Our dual mission is to foster community-
based land stewardship, promote environmental education, and
advance the practice of urban forestry, as well as provide Yale students
with clinical learning opportunities. Our approach through URI’s
Community Greenspace program combines resident-envisioned urban
natural resource rehabilitation, stewardship, and community organizing.
Since 1995, URI’S Community Greenspace program has provided
material supplies, technical advice, and classroom-based and hands-on
training, delivered by URI staff and Yale graduate student interns,
to support inner city New Haven residents who wish to reclaim and then
maintain their urban neighborhoods. The interns’ learning experiences
start months before they ever meet the community. Building upon their
course work at Yale, the URI staff augments the interns’ knowledge with
weekly trainings in local flora, planting techniques, and facilitation skills.
In the Greenspace program, URI has paired 97 interns with community
see svendsen page 58
p 
groups in the past 13 years. URI interns have gone on to work in see jiler page 178
p 

both the public and nonprofit sector, creating a generation of urban

forestry leaders.
Each year URI works with approximately 50 citizen groups to restore
their physical environment, build community, and become stewards of
their urban ecosystem. When the program began, URI undertook broad-
based community outreach to identify potential stewardship groups,
taking out advertisements in local and neighborhood newspapers,
Greening the streetscape
conducting mailings to churches and area organizations, and doing of Cedar Hill, New Haven.
Photo used with permission
presentations at monthly Empowerment Zone meetings. Now that by Urban Resources Initiative
156 Restorative Commons Colleen Murphy-Dunning

the program has been running for more than a decade, recruitment is
less of a challenge and our active outreach efforts have declined. All of
the Greenspace sites that URI serves have signage with URI’s phone
number. We also work through local city Aldermen’s offices, performing
seasonal outreach. When applications are received, we vet the group to
ensure that they are not just single households, but do represent at least
an informal group of neighbors, which helps to ensure that groups are
committed to site maintenance beyond their own property.
Once groups are identified, community volunteers identify where
they wish to work, initiate the greening activity, and undertake all the
physical work to implement the planting efforts. Site selection is entirely
resident driven and includes historically neglected areas of the city, such
as vacant lots, derelict streetscapes, public housing, park land, and even
front yards in federally designated Empowerment Zone neighborhoods.
The only role that URI plays in site assessment is to ensure that we are
serving our priority areas. URI resources are used to support greening
efforts on public lands citywide, but are only dedicated to private
properties in low income areas.
We support the restoration of this open-ended range of parcels
because we are dedicated to community participation in urban
ecosystem management, and because all of these parcels make
up the urban ecosystem. Furthermore, we are dedicated to broadly
engaging citizens across the full spectrum of our populace. Far too
often, environmental professionals have set the agenda defining
priority areas for restoration and conservation. Doing so has been
to the detriment of both the environmental movement, as well as
impoverished communities in our society. Creating an opportunity for
citizens to define for themselves their environmental priorities is crucial
to supporting environmental stewardship as part of citizens’ daily life.
Yale Forestry and Environmental Studies Professor William R. Burch, the
founder of URI, said, “URI takes populations not typically thought of as
part of environmental decision-making and shows them that they are.”
Reflecting on how participants develop their environmental
aesthetic and preferences, I believe it comes from multiple sources.
Although community volunteers may not have formal design skills or
sensibilities, they universally have a sense of wanting beauty, of wanting
a safe place for their kids to play. The housing stock in New Haven is
FROM FRONT YARDS TO STREET CORNERS 157

very dense, and often residents do not have substantial private yards
on which their children can play, which motivates them to invest in
and care for nearby public spaces. Others draw upon their heritage
and cultural traditions. For example, many African Americans in the
Newhalville neighborhood have extended families in the Carolinas,
and some reference the agricultural tradition of the South in their
current gardening works. Other residents are immigrants who bring the
traditions of their places of origin to their current greening efforts, such
as Puerto Ricans in New Haven who select certain colors and plants that
remind them of the island. To expand our participants’ understanding
of what is possible on their sites, we set up tours of other Greenspace
sites. In this way, volunteers learn from each other as peers, share
information, get ideas, and engage in social networking. We have also
taken Greenspace participants to visit local parks, and have used print
media — like gardening magazines — just to offer inspiration and starting
points for dialogue.
New Haven is home to six Enterprise Zone communities, a federal
designation of poverty. Just as there is an economic disparity between
these low-income neighborhoods and wealthier neighborhoods,
there are also stark differences in educational attainment. Low-income
urban communities, in particular, face many challenges and are
often characterized by drug dealing, high rates of incarceration, high
school truancy and high drop-out rates, type 2 diabetes, asthma,
unemployment, and prostitution. These same communities are often
physically described by blight, graffiti, and derelict structures. While
a causal relationship between many physical and social attributes
are difficult to establish, anecdotal evidence exists on improving
human health and well-being by improving the physical condition of
neighborhoods.
The small New Haven neighborhood known as Cedar Hill by those
who live there is not well known by those who don’t. In 1960, the
construction of Interstate 91 suddenly isolated the community. In 2004,
a small group of neighbors from the Cedar Hill blockwatch mobilized to
plant street trees. Illicit activities occur at some of the nearby business
establishments, and prostitution occurs in cars parked in Cedar Hill
that come off of State Street. Despite these challenges, the group takes
great pride in both their work and in their neighborhood. While they
158 Restorative Commons Colleen Murphy-Dunning

are very serious about combating the illegal activities that diminish the
quality of life in their neighborhood, they carry out their planting work
in a playful way. Perhaps it is the laughter and joy that is always present
when they work together that seems to heal the social ills as well as
the personal health struggles some of their members’ face. There is a
growing body of evidence that the experience of being in nature, even
urban ‘nearby nature’, is healing on many levels. Feelings of safety and
interconnectedness allow the flow of laugher and personal joy that so
often spontaneously occur when working on nature projects. Sociologist
Eric Klinenberg’s (2003) research on the 1995 Chicago heat wave
found that the most socially isolated individuals — particularly shuts-
ins and seniors — had the highest morbidity and mortality rates. These
processes that were magnified and made clear through an extreme
weather event may indeed be at work on a day-to-day basis. Klinenberg
discovered what we know intuitively to be true in neighborhoods where
URI works: social bonds, social capital, and social cohesion affect
individual and community health.
Or, perhaps it is the tangible, visible changes they have accomp-
lished that are at the root of their healing. Their accomplishments
include creating a median planting as the gateway from the park into
their neighborhood; planting street trees where prostitutes formerly
worked; and planting a garden area at a former dumping ground near
the highway (they refer to this area as 219 — because there is a sign
posting a $219 fine for dumping at the site). Compost piles are strat-
egically placed where previously cars parked to allow for quick sex acts
to be carried out. Likely these physical transformations have helped the
neighbors feel better about their community. This is clear to any visitor
to their website, which one of their blockwatch members developed.
Indeed, it is hard to miss the “I Love Cedar Hill” mugs and t-shirts for
sale in local businesses.
In general, many groups talk about how much better they feel
about their communities because they are able to make positive
change — even if it is only aesthetic. They say that they feel more
in control — a word that can be taken in many contexts. First, it is
important to recognize that many stewards do engage in community
greening work out of basic concern for the safety and security of
themselves, their family, and their property. A large proportion of the
FROM FRONT YARDS TO STREET CORNERS 159

Greening the streetscape

of Cedar Hill, New Haven.
Photos used with permission
by Urban Resources Initiative
160 Restorative Commons Colleen Murphy-Dunning

neighborhood groups with which we work are blockwatch groups,

which are essentially community networks that were created to control
crime. These block groups see controlling the visual landscape as one
more effort to reduce crime. Secondly, and perhaps more universally
applicable to the question of health, we are talking about the need to have
control in the social environment, using the physical environment as a
means to gain that control. I have observed that when people feel victims
of their surroundings, or their medical diagnosis, they may feel they have
lost some control over their life. Moreover, broad social and environmental
trends, such as the economic downturn and the energy crisis, will affect
these places the most, causing more people to live in situations without
control, essentially as ‘victims of their environment.’ Even if neighborhood
greening is only a symbolic gesture, they feel better because they can
see they have affected change. As Burch has said, “One of URI’s major
outputs is human dignity and empowerment.”
In the summer of 2007, I conducted an interview with two members
of the Cedar Hill Blockwatch Association to discuss why there were
involved in the Community Greenspace program and what impact it
had on their lives. Both women are senior citizens, African American,
and both are cancer survivors. It is clear that they find comfort in the
physical labor of gardening as well in the social interactions of working
to improve their own neighborhood. Despite both women having lifting
restrictions placed on them by their doctors due to their cancerous
lymph nodes, they engage in vigorous planting activities weekly.
Throughout the phase of diagnoses, treatments, and recovery, these
women looked after each other and their neighborhood streets in
reciprocal acts of caring.
Sue2 is a lifelong gardener and community volunteer who has been
involved with a variety of church and school groups. Her environmental
stewardship work is embedded in and linked to other acts of community
organizing and civic engagement; she regularly attends city hall
meetings to advocate for a number of neighborhood concerns. She
became aware of the URI program through her work pushing the city
to install new sidewalks in the neighborhood. Since URI’s Community
Greenspace application requires a minimum of four neighbors as

2. Name has been changed.

FROM FRONT YARDS TO STREET CORNERS 161

sponsors, Sue engaged her neighbor, Karen, in the group.

Karen2 said that Fridays, planting days, always brighten up her
week. Planting keeps her going, happy, and inspired, at a time when
her illness could do just the opposite. She felt that seeing the look
of surprise and appreciation on her neighbors’ faces had a positive
impact on her health. She said “gardening, to me, is wellness.” Karen
wrote the following narrative — with the help of her daughter — about
her experience in battling cancer. She believes that gardening, battling
cancer, and life in general are all acts that require strength and faith:
“I was asked to remember about a period in my life when I was in a full-
fledged battle against an invasion inside my body. A body that I worked
hard to keep safe from certain attacks (or so I thought). I never smoked,
drank or practiced certain behaviors that society has taught us may harm
this precious temple we call the body. But, it was always hidden way, way
back in that place in our minds where we place the scary items. The fears,
the things we never hope to face and definitely not have to fight. Then,
I embraced a walk with two old friends I had known all my life, Grace and
Faith. Grace to get through and Faith to believe I would. And then healing
began. I walked out on Faith, led by Grace. I’m still here, and it must show.
God picked me out of his garden, tore away the weeds and started afresh.
It began with my own gardens. At first it was hard to discern what weeds
were, what needed to be plucked away, what could be saved?

And just as gardens grow, others in my neighborhood with like minds

joined together and we have started to beautify with great stewardship,
areas that were neglected. My favorite quote is ‘gardeners are people
who believe in tomorrow.’”

Karen is helping to bring that future-oriented outlook to the develop-

ment of the URI program, by serving on the board of directors. Her input
and insights will grow the Community Greenspace program for many
other neighborhoods and groups like her own.

Future/Frontier
The complex and multifaceted relationship between individual health
(both physical and mental), community cohesion, and urban design is
still being explored — both in academia and in field projects like ours.
162 Restorative Commons Colleen Murphy-Dunning

However, even in the case of environmental health issues with known

causal relationships, the implementation of new programs to address
those issues is far from finished. For example, URI recently tested
soils for contaminants at 50 community project sites. We found 90
percent of sites have both lead and arsenic present beyond acceptable
federal standards (for lead, the Environmental Protection Agency
[EPA] standards are 400 ppm for play areas, and 1200 ppm yard
wide). Contaminated soil is commonly found in barren urban locations
and easily transforms into dust, which can be tracked into houses or
suspended in the air. The dust can be inhaled or ingested by hand-to-
mouth contact, contributing to heavy metal and/or pesticide poisonings,
asthma, and even diseases such as ringworm, roundworm, and E. coli
from pet fecal matter in the soil. There is a known relationship between
lead exposure and negative affects on human brain development,
particularly among children.
New Haven has the highest number of reported cases of children
with elevated blood lead levels in Connecticut, which is due to both
the age of the housing stock in the community combined with the
prevalence of poverty. The city has over 400 current cases of lead
poisoning 10 micrograms per deciliter or higher. New Haven’s Health
Department tracks these children, documenting their blood lead levels
by census tract and age. Unsurprisingly, the census tracts with highest
numbers of cases of children with lead poisoning coincide with the
neighborhoods where URI actively partners with community groups to
recover their degraded landscape. Currently we are conducting outreach
to renters and homeowners to raise awareness of the problems
associated with polluted soils, sampling and testing soil in 50 front
yards, and conducting remediation where needed. Following this testing
program, we developed an effort to remediate sites and educate
residents about exposure reduction techniques. We’ve nearly completed
the remediation phase, and have learned alongside the neighbors
how difficult this task is.
There are limitations, however, as to what can be accomplished
through actions led by URI and our community partners. Operating
in a city of scarce resources, our program does not have the capacity
to test, let alone remediate, all of the yards and play spaces in New
Haven that are exceeding federal standards for lead. While we intend
FROM FRONT YARDS TO STREET CORNERS 163

to raise awareness, provide testing, and develop broadly applicable

field protocols for remediation, there is a need for public resources to
address these environmental conditions at a larger scale. Contamination
on private, currently occupied residential lands may be the next frontier
in the already complicated realm of brownfield sites, Superfund sites,
and other toxic sites.
*  *  *
The Oscar-winning film “An Inconvenient Truth” was a brilliant tool
to increase the public’s understanding of global warming. Yet, changing
behaviors and lifestyles is a more difficult step that must be taken.
The now-old adage of “think globally, act locally” continues to resonate.
Again, environmental professionals will not solve such ecological crises
with only policy tools. Finding ways to engage individuals to be stewards
of their community — or “building a cadre of nature stewards” in
the words of William Burch — is our means. If we can connect people
to their landscape, and support their healthy relationship to the land,
we can hope to solve both global concerns as well as support the
human community.
 164 Restorative Commons

An overlay of the former

coastline reveals that
Hoboken was once an
island in the Hudson River.
IMAGE used with permission
by VICTORIA Marshall, TILL DESIGN
 165

Creative Uncertainty
Victoria Marshall
TILL Design

Dil Hoda
Monroe Center for the Arts

Monroe Center for the Arts, Hoboken, NJ

Monroe Center for the Arts is a mixed-use, market-driven real estate

development project in Hoboken, New Jersey. It offers an urban design
model for neighborhood change that actively cultivates ecosystem
stewards through design with water and a measure of success called
creative uncertainty. Water, which is not currently a positive presence
in the neighborhood, is repositioned as an attractor. The meaning
of this new water is intentionally immediate, multiple, ephemeral,
and ambiguous.
Creative uncertainty as introduced by Felix Guattari is a mode
of activism that aims to engage “How interrelations between living
systems, social structures, and psychical processes are conceived”
(Gensko 2003). This is not a goal toward fixity and control but
rather toward the production of difference and heterogeneity. What
is foregrounded at Monroe Center for the Arts therefore is not
conservation of environment, but rather conservation of the view that
environment is a living and changing system continually influenced
by living and changing ideas. This is our commons and we wish for it
to be continuously produced and recreated.
A 5-acre development, Monroe Center for the Arts currently hosts
70 artists and 50 businesses. Starting in 2008 the population density
and level of use will increase by the addition of three new buildings,
a public space with two fountains, and roof gardens. To communicate
the design intent of Monroe Center, this text introduces the project as
fully built, although it is still currently in construction.
166 Restorative Commons Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

The structure of this essay mimics the pathway of rainwater

through the project; by describing water-human networkings in
everyday scenarios starting from far above the ground, to on-the-ground
surface, and finally into the ground’s subsurface. In addition the legal,
financial, and environmental mechanisms of this project are shared to
make legible the way in which this hydrology design process was started
by the developers 14 years ago, has been taken up by the landscape
architect, and will be handed over to the new residents. The intent of
this essay is to communicate our belief that new natural resources can
be produced by humans. The traditional understanding of a natural
resource is therefore being expanded to include human and societal
mechanisms for caretaking.

Design: Tilling
Water in the west edge of Hoboken is the substance that lingers in
the street after a storm. Close observation reveals that this water is
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 167

sometimes a rainwater pond and other times a brackish pool. This is

because the composition of the water depends on the confluence of a
local rain event and the Atlantic Ocean-Hudson River high tide. In these
coincidental events, water forms a discontinuous surface, temporarily
marking the ancient wetland river edge. It is an enigmatic urban actor
and it is the inspiration for a flexible and adaptive public space network
at Monroe Center for the Arts.
The existing and new neighborhood artists, residents, and users
act in multiple ways to generate and share knowledge about their
watershed. In a crisis scenario, excess water is considered a liability,
such as a harmful flood. Conversely, in the context of this new
development, excess water creates new opportunities for recreation, Looking toward the
Palisades, the Hudson
relaxation and exchange. People here appropriate their various public River estuary high tide
surfaces in innovative and playful ways. is periodically visible
in the Monroe Center
Starting from the highest elevation, the new residents in the parking lot.
IMAGE used with permission
condominium towers are the high-rise caretakers of the watershed. by VICTORIA Marshall, TILL DESIGN
 168 Restorative Commons Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

The Monroe Center

100 ft

site plan shows the

transformation of
a former factory to a
mixed-use, vegetated and
inhabited development.
The productive nature
of the industrial land
is updated with design,
small businesses,
and arts practices.
IMAGE used with permission
by VICTORIA Marshall, TILL DESIGN
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 169

They protect the headwaters of the condominium tower catchment

with their balcony rainwater filtration gardens and management of
patio surfaces with nontoxic cleaning products. This water is stored
in a basement tank and is used to irrigate the roof garden. In addition,
balcony gardens provide extended habitats for birds and bugs migrating
across the street from the Palisades cliff. Given their broad horizon,
the high-rise tenants also serve as benefic surveyors, monitoring the
neighborhood roof garden terrain.
The Palisades cliff, an ancient geologic fault, marks the boundary
between Hoboken and Jersey City. Extending from Jersey City to far
upstream on the Hudson River, the Palisades is a linear forest inhabited
by plants, animals, and people. Due to its topography, it is difficult
to navigate, however a carefully constructed trail has begun, which
will eventually offer an urban hike to Bear Mountain, 50 miles north.
Physically traversing this slope provides a performed measure of the
river and its watershed. The trailhead is located at Monroe Center and is
being created by an overlapping network of stewardship organizations.
The next watershed caretakers are the high-rise rooftop garden
users. Encouraged to appropriate the roof as their own yard, they
continuously invent practices and adapt their lifestyle on top of its thin
absorptive section and in its gentle microclimate. Paved, grassy, sand,
and gravel surfaces afford typical programs such as reading, walking,
or play, however, as an extension of the Monroe Center for the Arts the
same surface can function as a yoga studio, art class, ballroom, gallery,
or whatever the creative users imagine. Two mobile barbeque carts and
a cabana provide a cooking and washing surface for a roof top brunch,
wedding, or even a mini-restaurant.
Accessed from the fifth floor via a public elevator and the fourth
floor via the resident corridors, the roof garden has three distinct levels.
The fourth floor terraces are like outdoor rooms, one with grass and the
second with sand and toy boxes for play. Ramps and a stair allow access
to the four-and-a-half floor wet garden and the fifth floor dry garden.
Like an elongated zigzag, the circulation system is designed for both
evening neighborhood strolls as well as a place to be still.
The roof garden functions to mitigate ground-level flooding as well
as to offer a higher ground refuge during surge events. Located over
a parking garage and residential apartments, it is on average 1-foot
 170 RESTORATIVE COMMONS Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

The water systems in

Hoboken have changed
over time, from meandering
tributaries to a piped
and sewered system.
The former coastline of
the estuary can still be
read in the city’s long
shallow puddles.
IMAGES used with permission
by VICTORIA Marshall, TILL DESIGN
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 171
172 Restorative Commons Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

thick with multiple waterproofing membranes. An extensive green roof

system acts as a sponge absorbing water and releasing it slowly. Hot
water, created via a heat exchange with the warmer temperature in the
earth is released into a fountain. This geothermal fountain also functions
as an informal bathing pool. Adjacent are two hot tubs and a shower
nook. Hot and cool water are therefore used to entice extended fall and
spring season use, and a mobile fire pit is available for year-round use.
The street level stewards are the commuters, shoppers, tenants,
restaurant patrons, retail owners, and workers. The rhythm of joining
the breakfast crowd, lunchtime crowd, dinner crowd or the after-
hours crowd affords opportunities for long-term, everyday, peripheral
watershed observation. Two plaza fountains hold and circulate
stored rainwater. Like large clocks, they evaporate slowly, measuring
the moisture changes through subtle shifts in the splash of a mini-
waterfall and the bubbles in a pool. The plaza consists of two levels; the
boundary between them is the ancient Hoboken Island shoreline. Like
an amphitheatre, the upper level is designed to offer a place to observe
people and natural processes on the lower level. When the tide comes
in, the water becomes the performer, filling the lower plaza. In another
scenario, stored rainwater used for irrigation allows the plaza vegetation
to sustain periods of drought. The Monroe Center for the Arts, therefore,
manages heat and water stress that would otherwise negatively affect
vulnerable populations, such as the elderly, and natural resources, such
as street trees and gardens.
Below the plaza level, under the built-up and sealed surfaces and
into the groundwater, there is another natural process occurring and
being followed by the residents. Monitoring wells on top of the clay
layer at 20 feet below grade and at bedrock (around 100 feet below
grade) are regularly checked for the presence and absence of water
and contaminants. Given the industrial legacy of the area, there is a
slowly migrating flow of contaminants across property boundaries.
On a regular basis, environmental consultants sample the wells and
report their findings to the residents and public agencies. This aquatic
uncertainty is therefore made transparent and allows for precaution
and feedback.
An example of ecosystem feedback has already occurred. During
the construction of one of the residential towers, elevated levels of
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 173

trichloroethylene (TCE) were detected in the subsurface water. TCE,

a degreaser component, is unhealthy for human contact. After multiple
attempts to neutralize the TCE and its derivative products, a cut-off
wall was built below one of the buildings. Most of the water that was
perched on top of the impervious clay layer within the cut-off wall was
pumped out.

Development: Method
The Monroe Center for the Arts site was formerly the Levelor Blinds
factory. With its two mill buildings and the surrounding 4 acres of land, it
was blighted and slated by the local municipality for eventual demolition
and construction of luxury housing. The owners of the site, with the
support of the existing artist community in the buildings, proposed
a mixed-use development that would be anchored by artists and the
arts. This entailed preserving the arts community and constructing
affordable work/ live spaces for artists, as well as taking the arts out
into a public plaza and roof garden.
Environmental remediation was funded primarily through a
combination of the Brownfield Reimbursement Program (BRP) and the
New Jersey Environmental Infrastructure Trust Financing Program (EIT).
The BRP (a state of New Jersey program) permits the reimbursement of
75 percent of the sales taxes generated on the site for 75 percent of the
remediation costs. The EIT is largely funded by the EPA’s Clean Water
State Revolving Fund, which provides “seed money” for the state agency.
New Jersey has used these funds to provide low-interest loans for 20
years. Until recently, the EIT funds were used primarily for municipal
utility projects; since 2004 the program has been expanded to include
brownfields and non-municipal water-cleansing projects.
To compensate for the development of the affordable units and
the public space, the owners requested and received Payment in Lieu
of Taxes (PILOT). Under the PILOT, the property tax burden (consisting
of municipal, county, and school taxes) is reduced by eliminating the
school tax and substantially reducing the county tax. Overall this new
development generated substantially higher tax revenues for the city
in absolute numbers. The public space and the rooftop gardens, in turn,
created the opportunity for the fountains, the design of which would
cleanse the water and therefore qualified for funding under the EIT.
 174 Restorative Commons Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

The Monroe Center roof

garden harvests rainwater
(blue), municipal water
(pink) and geothermal
heat and cool (orange.)
IMAGE used with permission
by VICTORIA Marshall, TILL DESIGN
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 175

The fountains and the arts, both in the public plaza and roof gardens
and within the buildings, are attractive to the retailers and the market-
rate home buyers and renters. The retailers started generating the
sales taxes for reimbursement under the BRP. The market-rate housing
generated the property taxes for the PILOT, which can be used for an
up-front bond issuance for infrastructure as well as payment of the EIT
loan. Thanks to municipal, state, and federal funding programs, support
of the local neighborhood, and nesting of the various funding programs
and programming of the overall development, local artists, market
rate homeowners and renters, over 2,000 residents of a nearby public
housing complex and visitors enjoy water and its myriad manifestations.

Conclusion
This project is designed with an understanding of health that is informed
by contemporary ecosystem science where urban ecosystems are
viewed in a non-equilibrium paradigm (Walker and Salt 2006). That is,
they are resilient, complex, socio-natural, adaptive systems rather see sVENDESEN page 58
p 

than one self-regulating system. In contrast to a conservation strategy

of protecting remnant or restoring degraded water or plant systems,
this is a mode of working that is more projective toward yet-to-be
imagined futures and inclusive of social and economic forces. We ask of
our work, can healthy urban ecosystems be designed with monitoring,
knowledge, and feedback, as well as continuous planning, invention,
adaptation, and wonder? The role of design is therefore shared and does
not lie in the hands of one professional at one point in time. However we
do believe that a compelling urban design made at one moment in time
can function as a long-term ecosystem management tool by actors in
everyday life.
Water is a material that triggers creative uncertainty and therefore
it offers the critical ecosystem process of multiplicity. By this we mean:

“[N]ot the H20 produced by burning gases nor the liquid that is metered
and distributed by the authorities. The water we seek is the fluid that
drenches the inner and outer spaces of the imagination. More tangible
than space, it is even more elusive for two reasons: first, because this
water has a nearly unlimited ability to carry metaphors and second,
because water, even more subtly than space, always possesses two
176 Restorative Commons Victoria Marshall AND Dil Hoda

sides... water remains a chaos until a creative story interprets its

seeming equivocation as being the quivering ambiguity of life. Most
myths of creation have as one of their main tasks the conjuring of
water. This conjuring always seems to be a division”
Illich 1985

Ecologists Steward Pickett and Mary Cadenasso (2007) write about

the role of meaning, model, and metaphor to communicate science
concepts to “the public, to specialists in other disciplines, and
even to schools of ecology beyond those which generally use it.” At
Monroe Center, our notion of the commons references this three-
part thinking: the meaning we seek is to design public spaces that
keep open the ‘window’ of creative uncertainty for the users; circuits
and feedback loops of everyday life offer an urban design model for
adaptive ecosystem management; and finally, water is the material
that brings forth competing and collective metaphors toward building
communication, trust, and cooperation.
In the future it is planned that this multi-dimensional model of
development will be translated to other sites. While every landscape
has water, this does not necessarily mean that it should always be
the organizing element. Other attractors could include, for example,
nitrogen or carbon. While not as charismatic as water, the role of
design in these landscapes would need to work harder, requiring more
fantastic and spontaneous scenarios of our possible urban lives. In
addition, the integration of science models into design — and therefore
seeing designs as working models of a small part of an urban ecological
system — offers approaches to complex ecosystem processes in
spatially based and meaningful ways.
CREATIVE UNCERTAINTY 177

Literature Cited

Gensko, G. 2003. Felix Guattari 

— toward a transdiscsiplinary
metamethodology. Angelaki, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.
8(1): 129–140.

Illich, I. 1985. H20 and the waters of forgetfulness 

— reflections
on the historicity of stuff. Dallas: Dallas Institute of Humanities
and Culture.

Pickett, S.T.A; Cadenasso, M.L. 2007. Meaning, model, and metaphor

of patch dynamics. In: McGrath, B.; Marshall, V.; Cadenasso, M.L.;
Grove, J.M.; Pickett, S.T.A.; Plunz, R.; Towers, J., eds. Designing
patch dynamics. New York, NY: Columbia University Press: 24–25.

Walker, B.; Salt, D. 2006. Resilience thinking—sustaining ecosystems

and people in a changing world. Washington, DC: Island Press.
178 Restorative Commons
 179

Restoring Lives,
Transforming Landscapes:
The GreenHouse Program
at Rikers Island Jail
James Jiler
Horticultural Society of New York

Rikers Island, New York, NY

Kamelita M. stood by a planter box of yellow mums, boxwood, and ivy

on a residential street in Greenwich Village. In a dark blue shirt, khaki
pants, and carrying a black canvas gardening bag, Kamelita snipped
ivy and pruned out errant branches in a meticulous manner. It was a
striking fall day, warm with a cloudless blue sky. As a plant technician for
a private landscape firm, Kamelita would earn $17 an hour for her work.
Ten blocks north, Manual R. planted several hundred bulbs in one of New
York City’s premier public spaces, the newly restored Madison Square
Park. Employed by the Madison Square Park Conservancy, Manual was
an integral part of a process to build high quality gardens in public parks
through public/private partnerships across the city. What makes these
individuals notable, however, is not so much the work they were doing,
but the path they took to arrive at work; for only 1 year before, both
Kamelita and Manual were inmates at The New York City jail complex
on Rikers Island, serving a year for stolen goods and drug possession.
During their incarceration, Kamelita and Manual joined the
GreenHouse Program, a jail-to-street horticulture project run and
administered by the Horticultural Society of New York (HSNY). Rikers Island garden,
circa 1998 (top) and
Unlike most prison farms, often evocative of men toiling in endless 2007 (bottom).
Photo used with permission
rows of leafy crops with guards on horseback, GreenHouse operates by James Jiler, HSNY
 180 Restorative Commons JAMES JILER

under a different premise. Here, at a 2-acre facility and greenhouse

on Rikers Island, men and women inmates learn the art and science
of horticulture. The programmatic approach provides education,
vocational skills, and ongoing garden therapy as a way to help inmates
redirect their lives in a positive and productive manner. The physical
result is nothing less than remarkable: in 10 years, a weedy, barren
lawn has been transformed by 550 inmates into bird and butterfly
gardens, a native forest, herb and vegetable gardens, a peace pagoda
see CAMPBELL page 188
p  for Sept. 11, 2001, a pond, waterfall and gazebo complex, all traversed
and tied together by a series of elegant pathways. The concept of
“transformation” is inherent in everything that takes place in the garden,
for in the process of transforming landscapes, the students begin the
process of transforming themselves.
Equally important is the objective to change the concept of jail,
which — in the parlance of ecologists — is seen typically as a resource
sink, or as one correction official liked to comment — “a graveyard of lost
opportunity.” GreenHouse operates under the premise that jail can serve
as a sustainable resource — one that generates benefits to constituents
in jail as well as to entire communities across the city and region.
Doing their “time” in the garden, inmates will not only rehabilitate
themselves but rehabilitate damaged plants given to HSNY by nurseries
or landscapers all over the New York region; grow plants (annuals,
perennials, herbs and vegetables) for community groups in New York
City; from salvaged wood, construct nesting boxes and bat houses for
city parks and open space to improve habitat for native wildlife; build
rooftop gardens in jail that will later be reassembled for city schools or
community groups; and after their release, bring their gardening skills
back to their families and neighborhoods.
By connecting people who have had little contact or understanding
of nature to the natural world, the GreenHouse Program hopes to
combat the 65 percent recidivism rate that has plagued the country’s
criminal justice system (Elsner 2004). And while the connection is
profound, the hard skills of horticulture need to be employed when
the inmate leaves jail and is faced with the myriad of poor choices
available in inner-city neighborhoods. It is well documented, for
An inmate maintains
the garden. example, that people leaving jail or prison tend to move to core areas of
Photo used with permission
by James Jiler, HSNY impoverishment where housing and services are affordable. In New York
Restoring Lives, Transforming Landscapes 181

GreenHouse operates under the premise

that jail can serve as a sustainable
resource — one that generates benefits
to constituents in jail as well as to entire
communities across the city and region.
 182 Restorative Commons JAMES JILER

Manhattan rooftop garden

built and installed by
GreenTeam members.
Photo used with permission
by James Jiler, HSNY
Restoring Lives, Transforming Landscapes 183

City, 70 percent of the 16,000 inmates on Rikers come from five core
neighborhoods — East New York, Crown Heights, Bushwick, South Bronx
and East Harlem (Wynn 2001). The opportunities and influences found
in this setting will statistically determine whether an ex-offender will
return to jail within 1 year of release (Petersilia 2003).
HSNY’s GreenTeam is the “street” arm of our jail-to-street program
and provides an avenue of support for inmates leaving jail.Inmates
with an interest in horticulture can begin working with the GreenTeam
as paid interns the day they arrive home, earning $7.50 to $10 per
hour while honing their skills for a future career in the “greening” field.
The program’s salary and skill-building is comparable to that of an
income-generating landscape/gardening firm. As long as there are
contracts, HSNY can afford to retain and pay interns to carry out the
work. Some of our contracts take place in luxury buildings, penthouses,
or private homes. But the focus of HSNY’s income-generating projects
is on partnerships with community-based organizations and service
providers. These may be schools, psychiatric institutions, facilities
that provide residential services to the mentally ill, people with HIV,
at-risk youth, family shelters, seniors, and the disabled. The work may
consist of planting street trees, building rooftop gardens, installing
specialty gardens for food, herbs, or gardens strictly for therapeutic
activities. Not only does the process involve former inmates, but clients
of the community based organizations are also active participants,
becoming — as their skills and knowledge develop — stewards of the
resident garden. As both ex-offenders and clients assume control of
resources they had no prior connection to, they begin to assume a
measure of control over their lives. It is a realization that success is see murphy-dunning
p 

page 154
dependent on the role they take in managing the sites, and how that
role is played out on a daily basis of work and dialogue.
Over time, the number of gardens and projects and people involved
add up to a green continuum among neighborhoods and communities.
It begins at Rikers, where the individual learns the simple connection
between work, responsibility, care and the benefits associated with
cultivating not just the garden, but themselves. It continues as ex-
offenders who, for the most part are marginalized from mainstream
society, leave Rikers with the ability to immerse themselves in
professional gardening work. This not only gives them vital skills to find
184 Restorative Commons JAMES JILER

and hold a job, but extends their influence to developing meaningful

spaces in areas ranging from wealthy neighborhoods to low-income,
under-served communities. It may be a neighborhood branch library
garden, or a strip of park land on the Hudson River, or a street tree in
a hot zone of Hunts Point, Bronx. And the beginning has no end; we’ve
found that garden-work sensibilities extend to families and children,
neighbors, and parents. I think of Martin C., one of my first students
on Rikers in 1997, who planted his first garden during his incarceration.
During 10 years he held jobs ranging from seasonal work as a zoo
horticulturist at the Prospect Park Zoo, to a full-time zone gardener in
Central Park, to the establishment of his own small lawn-care business
in Long Island. In 2007, Martin’s son, Martin Jr., joined the GreenTeam,
not as an ex-offender, but as part of the program’s expansion and
outreach to “at-risk” youth.
Over the past year and now planning into the future, the
GreenHouse and GreenTeam are reaching out to adolescents in jail and
upon return to their neighborhoods, under the assumption that work
skills and meaningful work are preventative measures that can break
the rate of incarceration among at-risk youth. In the mid-1980s, The
HSNY established a vocational horticulture program for adolescent
boys that was supported through a city-based Youth Service Grant.
In 1994, the grant was terminated and the program — then called
GreenWorks — folded. When HSNY returned to Rikers in 1997, the focus
was on men and women adults, primarily because adolescents were
mandated to attend school during the day. Now, however, with re-entry
and rehabilitation taking a strong role in the ever-shifting criminal justice
paradigm, jails such as Rikers are revisiting the importance of vocational
skill development for youth offenders. A unique aspect of the program
that GreenHouse provides is the “street” component — the opportunity
for men, women, and youth to continue a vocation that they started
in jail.
While the program has shown measured success in reducing
recidivism among its participants (25 percent as compared to 65
percent of the Rikers population) the stark reality is GreenHouse,
and programs like GreenHouse are under-utilized as an alternative to
modern incarceration practices. The potential of this program — at
Rikers and in facilities across the country — could be more fully realized
Restoring Lives, Transforming Landscapes 185

by increasing the resources devoted to alternative programs rather

than solely focusing on inmate control. In her book, “When Prisoners
Come Home,” Joan Petersilia states that just “one-third of all prisoners
released will have received vocational or educational training.” In
California alone, of 132,000 inmates released in 2002, just 8,000
received some kind of aftercare support to help them successfully
reenter and remain in their community (Jiler 2006). At Rikers,
GreenHouse provides services to less than 25 inmates daily; and only
1 to 2 percent of the Rikers Island total population of approximately
15,000 inmates are eligible to participate in the program. Overall,
GreenHouse could accommodate far more inmates, and provide
more opportunities to rehabilitate inmates with meaningful work
skills in gardening, horticulture, and environmental restoration and
management. With the cost of constructing new prisons averaging well
over $70,000 per cell, and the yearly cost of incarcerating an inmate
averaging $50,000, horticulture programs are a low-cost alternative to
punitive measures of imprisonment.
One year out of jail, William R. takes his son to water his plot in a
community garden on 9th Street in Manhattan. Since his release, he see STONE page 122
p 


has worked steadily with the GreenTeam, has become a certified tree
climber and readily dispenses gardening advice to an inquiring public
on 9th Street. Is William a success story? Occasionally he relapses into
alcohol and drug use, which prevents him from holding a steady job in
the profession. But unlike before, a relapse is less likely to end in jail than
in the garden. For William, horticulture is a lifeline that keeps him on a
forward path, despite a history of jail and substance abuse.
“You may not see changes,” he tells me. “But I know I’m changing.
I’m doing things differently.”
When he’s not working as a gardener, William is on 9th street, gardening
for the fun of it.
On its own, horticulture is not a panacea for the huge challenges
facing the criminal justice system either in New York City, the state, or
country. With almost 2 million men and women serving time behind
bars nationally, up to 600,000 are released each year returning to their
communities with weak prospects for the future. Up to 80 percent are in
for drug related crimes and a high percentage have serious addictions
or mental illness. Many former inmates are simply not healthy enough
 186 Restorative Commons JAMES JILER

to work a 40-hour week in horticulture, nor can they cope with the
serious issues confronting them after their release from jail.
Programs such as GreenHouse must work hand in hand with other
nonprofits that target substance abuse, housing, trauma, physical health
and mental health issues as well as job training in fields unrelated to
gardening. It must partner with community groups such as Sustainable
see marvy page 202
p  South Bronx or Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn that have their
own “green” job training component for neighborhood youth. It must
act as a model for other jurisdictions that hope to replicate similar
programs for their criminal justice system. And to generate success, it
most focus on its students, one individual, and one garden at a time.
Prior to her arrest and incarceration at Rikers, Kamelita, now 28
years old, moved from job to job with little ambition or idea of developing
a professional career. With two small children and no high school
diploma she was mostly concerned with paying rent, putting food on the
table, and her children’s education. She spent 6 months with GreenTeam
and was an intern at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden before landing her job
with a private firm as a plant technician. Today, she will quickly tell you
that horticulture is her life with opportunities branching out like a fast
growing tree. “I have private clients, and plenty of overtime and the trust
from my boss that I’ll always leave a site in perfect condition,” she said.
More important, Kamelita is part of the greater collective of gardeners
greening New York.
“Everyday I’m doing this,” she said, “I feel that I’m getting paid to give
something back to the community.”

The feeling is not limited to Kamelita: it is something that germinates

in many of the men and women we work with in jail and with some care,
develops into positive behavior that leaves in its wake a healthy, more
livable city for themselves, and for everyone else.
Restoring Lives, Transforming Landscapes 187

Dialogue With Author:

Are there any precedents

that informed your work?
Or similar projects like yours?
Or is it wholly unique?
There are many horticulture programs influential. GreenHouse is simply a second-
in jails and prisons throughout the generation version of GreenWork that was
country, but none that offer a jail-to-street expanded to include men and women adults.
continuum. I personally was inspired by We then privatized GreenTeam (under
Catherine Sneed’s work in San Francisco. Arthur the GreenTeam was supported by
Not only did she start a large-scale foundation grants) by seeking contracts
organic farm on jail grounds but found a to generate income. This created a large
vacant lot in the city for released inmates measure of financial sustainability and
to gather, garden, and stay positive. support for the program
Later, she established a contract with the John Cannizzo, the current Director
Department of Public Works that provided of GreenTeam also deserves much credit for
work for ex-offenders to plant and maintain his work expanding the program, building
street trees in San Francisco. While her partnerships with different groups across
gardening program in jail and her work for the city, and reaching out to include at-risk
ex-offenders planting trees no longer has youth through Federation Employment and
the funding to support itself, as a model it Guidance Service, Inc. (FEGS) and Graham-
continues to inform and inspire (see Jiler Windham, (an organization that works with
2006). youth graduating from foster care). This
My predecessor at HSNY, Arthur job-training component adds a whole new
Sheppard who started GreenWorks – a dimension to our mission of establishing
program that worked with adolescent males a generation of professional stewards
on Rikers – and later established an early dedicated to improving environmental and
incarnation of GreenTeam, was equally human health in their communities.

Literature Cited
Elsner, A. 2004. Gates of injustice. Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.

Jiler, J. 2006. Doing time in the garden. Oakland, CA:

New Village Press.

Petersilia, J. 2003. When prisoners come home. New York, NY:

Oxford University Press.

Wynn, J. 2001. Inside Rikers. New York, NY: St. Martins Press.
 188 Restorative Commons

Memoryscape
Lindsay Campbell
U.S. Forest Service, Northern Research Station

The Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial Preservation Land, Westfield, MA

Site Description
Shade tobacco fields, an abandoned train overpass, dense trees, dirt
roads, hawks, deer, and even the occasional moose. These are features
in the one-time “romping grounds” of Brian Joseph Murphy, Harold
Murphy, and many other children of Westfield, MA — the place known
as “100 acres” that is now permanently preserved under the Winding
Rivers Land Trust. Harold Murphy worked with three local businessmen
to preserve over 30 acres of open space in memory of his brother
Brian, who was killed at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001
(9-11). Harold is a real estate developer with experience in open space
conservation and a deep commitment to the historic preservation of
his rural, western Massachusetts community. Both he and his brother
had a prior interest in preserving this piece of property that was owned
by longtime Westfield resident and personal friend, Dick Fowler. After
Brian’s death, when an opportunity emerged to purchase the property,
several friends and associates of Harold and Brian insisted that they do
so in Brian’s name.
For both aesthetic and sentimental reasons, this land is sacred to
Harold and other Westfield residents. The stream, trestle, and patch
of woodland are surrounded almost entirely by functioning farms and
it takes a four wheel drive or a pair of boots to access this beautiful,
hidden landscape. It is a place where kids come for parties, romance,
isolation, and other excitement, immersed in densely vegetated
nature. As Harold and Brian did in their youth, the current teenagers of
Westfield continue to use the land as a wild refuge, a place of privacy
out of the watchful eye of parents and a world apart from the everyday
expectations of school, home, and community. The site was also the
place where Harold and Brian, as adults, would go to catch up when
 189

Brian would visit from New York City. Harold discussed his history with
the site:
“I do consider it sacred, but I guess I always have. As a kid, you come upon
times when you really need to be by yourself because nobody loves you or
whatever. This is where I would come and sit on the edge of the bridge and
think about life and [ask] ‘should you fall or not?’ You come to your own grips
with things. But I know if I come down here and walk around, I’m recharged
and I know that the world is good and life is going to go on. I can hear my
friends’ voices and see the playing around we did down here as little kids.
I feel it, very strongly.”

The natural beauty of the site and the personal memories he holds from
growing up in that landscape are what make it sacred. He continues to
use the site as a place for quiet walks and family visits, both with his
8-year-old daughter, as well as Brian’s widow and two children. Harold
has struggled with depression since Brian’s death. Brian’s children, Harold Murphy
Photo used with permission
in response to the loss of their father on 9-11, have been coping with by PHOTOGRAPHER Ian Cheney
190 Restorative Commons LINDSAY CAMPBELL

delayed onset stress reactions, which makes having a place to go

to “center their emotions” that much more important, according to
Harold. The family refers to the site as “Brian’s land” and takes comfort
simply in knowing that it exists, in “knowing that their dad had a place.”
Right now, there is no signage or marker to indicate that the land is a
memorial. No one but the family and a few neighbors know the intent of
this preservation land; in some ways it is really a private memorial space
in the public domain. The site is not used for formal remembrance or
ceremony. Instead, it is a space to create positive new memories, while
being enveloped by fond older memories that are imbued in that place.
In terms of future use of the forest, the land will remain in a
state very similar to its current condition. A landscape architect was
consulted on this project, and he advised Harold and the land trust to
simply “leave it alone” because of the natural beauty of the site. It will
not likely be farmed again, though wild asparagus may continue to grow.
The adjacent tobacco farm is still active. The only notable difference in
the landscape is a set of housing developments on the bluff overlooking
the back portion of the lands, allowing the residents a prized, wooded
viewshed. A planned rail-trail will eventually bring active recreation
through the site in the form of walkers, runners, and bicyclers. The only
aspect of the site that may be developed as more of a built memorial
will be three granite benches with the names of Westfield’s deceased
on 9-11, and stone monuments to “justice, peace, mercy, and love”,
which — according to a Hebrew creation tale — are the attributes that
brought the world out of chaos. These built monuments will be adjacent
to a planned peace and teaching garden to be created and maintained
by area schoolchildren, to help teach values of stewardship and nature.

Landscape as Memorial
Landscape can support human health not only through direct
biophysical services and benefits, but also through social functions
that — while sometimes subtle and not easy to detect — remain vital
to the health of individuals and communities. Open space and natural
resources are often used in acts of memorialization, acts of marking or
designating land in memory of individuals or events. These accessible
materials of the natural world become vehicles for expression, or ways
of “gaining authorship”, in Harold Murphy’s words. Furthermore, across
MEMORYSCAPE 191

many cultures and eras, sacred trees and groves have been used in
rituals connected to the lifecycle (Rival 1999). In the context of the
contemporary United States, trees and gardens have been planted
and parks and forests have been dedicated as memorials in honor of a
number of events of national significance, such as World War I, World
War II, and more recently 9-11. The Living Memorials Project was created
by the Forest Service at the direction of U.S. Congress immediately
following 9-11. The Living Memorials Project consisted of a grants
program aimed at supporting communities and stewardship groups in
the creation of landscape-based living memorials, as well as a multi-year
research project to understand changes in the use of natural resources
in response to 9-11. Through that research, which was directed by
Erika Svendsen and me, I came to recognize some of the deeply sacred
ways in which landscape is used as memorial space and healing space.
The Brian Joseph Murphy Memorial Preservation Land is just one
of the 700 memorials that we documented and the 150 groups that
we interviewed.
When thinking of 9-11 memorials, much attention is given to New
York City, the Pentagon, and Shanksville, PA, where the physical crash
sites are located and where memorials aimed at national audiences will
eventually be created. However, the living memorials research revealed
a powerful, dispersed network of community-based memorials that
spans the country and occurs in all sorts of site types, embedded in
the everyday landscape. The Westfield, Massachusetts site of Brian
Joseph Murphy’s memorial does not have any immediate or significant
geographic connection to New York City, but Westfield was Brian’s
hometown, and he was living in New York City and working at the World
Trade Center at the time of 9-11. These sorts of invisible social networks
became more apparent and readable through the landscape following
the tragedy of that day. Families, friends, and communities, marked their
lawns, schoolyards, parks, and town greens with memorials. Clusters of
9-11 memorials are apparent in the Boston area — from which two of the
planes departed — and in the Los Angeles area — where two of the planes
were originally destined. Other clusters exist along commuter corridors
in New Jersey and Long Island, as well as in retirement communities in
southern Florida, and the Virginia and Maryland suburbs of Washington,
D.C. (Svendsen and Campbell 2006).
 192 Restorative Commons LINDSAY CAMPBELL

Adjacent land uses:

shade tobacco farms
and a bicycle plant.
PhotoS by Lindsay Campbell,
U.S. Forest Service, Northern
Research Station
MEMORYSCAPE 193

A small river winds

through the site.
Photo by Lindsay Campbell,
U.S. Forest Service, Northern
Research Station

The abandoned train

trestle will be converted
into a hike-bike trail.
Photo by Lindsay Campbell,
U.S. Forest Service, Northern
Research Station
 194 Restorative Commons LINDSAY CAMPBELL

This forest is not the only memorial to Brian in Westfield. Harold

showed the Living Memorials Project researchers two other sites in
town: a picnic pavilion at the Sons of Erin (an Irish American social club)
dedicated to the three residents of Westfield that were lost; and a prayer
garden at the Genesis House church. Harold said,
“It’s very bittersweet to come down and see the memorials. To be quite honest,
a lot of times you don’t want to come and see them. But, it’s good. It is good.
You need to remember.”

Though he is both touched by and proud of these memorials, Harold

noted that he is not able to visit these memorials very often, they are
simply too painful as reminders of his loss. The same is true to an even
greater degree with the Ground Zero site. Although Harold goes back
every year on Sept. 11 and some other occasions, it is a deeply emotional
and painful trip to make. “It’s a good thing and a bad thing to go,” Harold
said. Not only did Harold suffer the trauma of losing his brother on that
day, but also he was a direct witness to the event; he was at Ground
Zero when Building 7 collapsed, surrounded by military, paramilitary,
and police forces — memories that flood back and return to him in layers
any time he visits the city. Harold does not even have to visit the site
to be reminded of his loss; images of the New York City skyline, or the
Twin Towers, are replayed in the media and repeated throughout the
quotidian human terrain of diners, gas stations, and bumper stickers.
His personal loss is part of the shared grief of the nation.
The subsequent design debates and real estate deals that have
unfolded at the World Trade Center site have left Harold frustrated and
alienated. Along with many other 9-11 family members, Harold believes
that the site is sacred, hallowed ground that should never be developed
and should be left as passive, open space. He noted that we would never
think to build office space and skyscrapers atop Civil War battlefields;
but there are no American precedents for a terrorist act of this scale
in such an urban center. Furthermore, he finds the claims of “balance”
between development and memorial uncompelling. In this case, there
is no middle ground for him — “you either do the right thing or you
don’t.”  The competing interests and desires for the site set up an almost
intractable planning problem. It is no wonder, then, that family members
and friends of victims, even in the immediate New York City area, turned
MEMORYSCAPE 195

to their own backyards and communities to create sacred places to

honor the memory of the deceased. In this way, family members are
able to have a meaningful voice in where and how their loved ones are
remembered. Thus, memorials are sites for those who live on, though
they are created in the name of the deceased. This is — perhaps counter-
intuitively — as much Harold’s memorial as it is Brian’s.

The Stewardship of Memory

Just like thousands of other family members, Harold Murphy devoted
much of his life immediately following the tragedy of 9-11 to the
public and private remembrance of his deceased loved one. Many
families, including Brian’s family, were deprived of the traditional rites
of burial due to the fact that bodies were not recovered for many of
the victims. These same family members were simultaneously thrust
into contentious decisions about public funding, land use changes,
and memorial design at the national memorial sites. Therefore, it
is important to study the memorials that family members chose to
take part in creating, maintaining, or using — sites that they embrace
as “their own” — to try and understand at least some aspects of the
memorial, healing, and recovery processes. The physical sites that
family members establish and transform into living memorials will
remain as legacies for the future, from unmarked open space, to
parkland, to formal sites of remembrance. The ways in which they
choose to remember their loved ones are often clear reflections of the
ways they live their lives. The memorials are shaped by the physical
places, social networks, and value systems of family members, other
stewards, and their communities.
As a steward of the land trust and a resident of Westfield, Harold
himself is personally invested and deeply committed. Even in its current,
overgrown state, Harold enjoys walking the railroad right-of-way from
the center of Westfield out to Brian’s land. He observes the section as
it progresses from commercial center, to residential areas, to former
industrial sites, to agricultural land, to woods, providing a tangible,
physical connection between his everyday landscape, the history of the
community, and the forest. He described his personal history with the
site in a narrative interwoven with the history of the town. His family
moved to Westfield directly from Ireland in the mid-1800s. In 1904, his
196 Restorative Commons LINDSAY CAMPBELL
MEMORYSCAPE 197

grandmother bought the family homestead that is still in use today.

With deep family roots in this small town, he refers to immigration
waves, industrial shifts, past residents, infamous tales, and changes
in land ownership in rich detail. For Harold, the memorial land takes
its meaning not only from its beauty or ecosystem function, but from
the way in which people interact with it — in this case from the Irish
immigrant families, to the Jamaican and Mexican farm workers on
the shade tobacco fields, to the current children of Westfield. Beyond
Westfield, Harold is embedded in the entire western Massachusetts
landscape. He can describe back roads in vivid visual detail; the act
of giving directions becomes both an opportunity for storytelling
and a history lesson. He relished the opportunity to describe beautiful
vistas, winding roads, and to take this researcher to a local maple
sugar shack.
Harold has also come to appreciate one of the greatest functions
that environmental stewardship can serve through his local volunteer
work with Parent Leadership Training Institute (PLTI). He serves on the
board of this social service organization that supports underserved
populations by offering leadership training and organizational support
for participant-led community building projects. As Erika Svendsen see svendsen page 58
p 

argues in this volume, the need to create or control at least some

aspect of one’s life (particularly given that much of it is beyond our
control) can often come to be articulated through the landscape.
Harold shared an anecdote of a severely abused woman (who came to
PLTI) who compulsively cleaned and rearranged her home throughout
the time of the abuse, as it was the only means through which she
could assert that control. Others express this same need in the
landscape, through acts such as tree planting, mural making, memorial
creation, and community gardening. Indeed, half of the projects that
are proposed and enacted by PLTI participants during the 20-week
leadership program are efforts that involve community stewardship
of natural resources, including tree planting, community gardens,
and neighborhood beautification projects. Harold believes that the
parent participants are motivated to improve the physical environment Lindsay Campbell
in which they raise their children. Natural resources are accessible, interviewing Harold
Murphy, walking on
all around us, and are vehicles for self-expression as individuals and the train right-of-way.
Photo used with permission
a collective. by PHOTOGRAPHER Ian Cheney
 198 Restorative Commons LINDSAY CAMPBELL

Reflection
There is something special in this wooded landscape. For all of my
appreciation of urbanity, community gardens, urban forests, and
neighborhood greening, each time I visit this rather rural site I am forced
to reckon with its beauty, its visceral emotional presence. Perhaps this
see HEERWAGEN page 38
p  is simply my experience of biophilia; the treed slopes surrounding
the railroad right-of-way create protected, linear sightlines; the running
water creates a pleasant white noise; the vivid red blossoms of the
sumac draw my attention and the fuzzy branches invite human touch.
And the rusting railway trestle reminds of “the necessity of ruins,”
as J.B. Jackson (1980) said. Not only the individual features, but the
orientation of the site — off a dirt road, sandwiched between the back
sides of properties — gives it a protected and isolated feel, despite its
small size. As such, the site encourages Westfield youth to engage in
the unstructured, naturalistic play that Richard Louv (2006) so prizes
in his book “Last Child in the Woods.” It seems that what creates a
“Restorative Commons” from a physical, landscape design perspective
is site specific; it is difficult to analyze, package, or export to other sites.
But what captivates my attention and stirs such emotion in me is my
ability to see the site through Harold’s eyes, as a place of both respite
and adventure. To hear of his passionate love for his community and
the deep, shared memories embedded in a site is to understand “place
attachment” in a nonconceptual way. Indeed, in the words of Stephen
J. Gould, “We cannot win this battle to save species and environments
without forging an emotional bond between ourselves and nature as
well — for we will not fight to save what we do not love”
(Gould 1991).
While unique sites cannot be replicated or transposed, sound
stewardship can be cultivated. Harold’s passionate care for the
landscape stems from positive and interactive experiences with it,
suggesting a role for environmental educators, community groups, and
natural resource managers. The story of experiences in nature can be
told and retold — both passed down to children and shared with peers,
with the implied call to go out and create our own experiences in the
landscape. Harold’s act of storytelling, his invitation to see the land
through his eyes, is truly a “living memorial” to his brother and one
with more humanity and emotion than any plaque fixed to the ground.
MEMORYSCAPE 199

Furthermore, as issues such as climate change continue to increase in

urgency and in the public awareness, it is important to think of natural
resources holistically. Trees are not simply carbon sinks; gardens are not
simply opportunities to retain urban storm water. Certainly they provide
these important biophysical services, but they also shape our lived
experience of a place. Landscape shapes our memories, our preferences,
and aspects of our culture. And Harold’s valuation and memories of his
childhood and lifelong home motivated him to help preserve that legacy
for future generations.
This environmental stewardship ethic is rooted in a deeply personal
experience of place, rather than an abstract value of “nature.” Though he
is a real estate developer or perhaps because he is a developer, Harold
understands the importance of public open space and wants the land to
remain whole and accessible to people rather than carved into lots for
private and exclusive use. All of his current development projects now
have strong conservation requirements in which common lands are set
aside as open space to be managed by a private nonprofit made up of
landowners. Another legacy that this site is leaving is through the way
in which it may inspire other future residents to join in the preservation
effort. “It really galvanized people to think about what we could put
together and what we could save,” said Harold. “We got a lot of good
local press and people are coming forward and saying ‘I have land we’d
like to preserve.’”

Literature Cited

Gould, Stephen Jay. 1991. Unenchanted evening. Natural History. 100(9).

Jackson, J.B. 1980. The necessity for ruins. Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Press. 129 p.

Louv, R. 2006. Last child in the woods: saving our children from nature
deficit disorder. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.
323 p.

Rival, L., ed. 1999. The social life of trees: anthropological perspec-
tives on tree symbolism. Oxford, UK: Berg. 315 p.

Svendsen, E; Campbell, L. 2006. Land-markings: 12 journeys through 9/11

Living Memorials. NRS-INF-1-06. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of
Agriculture, Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 49 p.
Interviews
Interviews were conducted with practitioners building
Restorative Commons in diverse landscapes — from Brooklyn
to Sarajevo. We hear practitioners’ voices, learn their views,
and investigate their commonly shared and worked spaces
that catalyze social ties, healthful habitats, and human
potential. Views expressed by interviewees are their own
and do not necessarily reflect views of the other authors,
of Meristem, or of the U.S. Forest Service. We hope that
their perspectives and insights inspire response, debate,
and new Restorative Commons.
202 Restorative Commons
 203

Youth Empowerment
through Urban Agriculture:
Red Hook Community Farm
Interview with Ian Marvy
Added Value, Brooklyn, NY

Lindsay Campbell: What is the main goal of Added Value and the
Red Hook Community Farm?
What we’re trying to do here is create a more sustainable world; the
way we want to do that is through youth empowerment and urban
agriculture. We are taking public space that was programmed for one
use, one economy, and one social structure, and transforming it into
something else. What we believe we’re doing as an organization and
a learning community is transforming what was a 20th century park
into a 21st century park — literally a public commons.
What a 21st century park means to us is that we can use a public
space to educate people about a truly democratic process: how to
care about social issues. We can provide them with skills development
and training to help build that world, while simultaneously building
an economic process that nurtures the community and nurtures
the environment. It doesn’t just lessen the ills that we’ve done. This
is a project that harvests waste from the surroundings to generate
nutrients, to generate ideas and energy. Often when we think about our
work, we talk about words like: catalytic, inspirational, transformative,
community. Previous Page:
Youth working at Red Hook
I’m not really interested in any of my teens becoming farmers. What Farm, Brooklyn, NY.
Photo used with permission
I care about is that they grow up caring. They know they’re cared for. by Added Value

They know that caring matters. They have skills to help them articulate Left:

that and actualize that in terms of building a more caring world. Ian Marvy teaches
composting with youth
Hopefully they can share that with other people. That’s what this kind visitors to the farm.
Photo used with permission
of space and this kind of program can do. by Added Value
 204 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

Anne Wiesen: I think I understand your vision of a 21st century park,

but what do you mean by a 20th century park?
The public playground movement in the United States began out of
Clark College and was focused on child development and related to the
new immigration at the turn of the last century. The first head of the
American Playground Association was involved with the development
of most of the public parks here in New York City — the playgrounds,
see MARTENSEN page 26
p  not the large-scale parks like Van Courtland, Central Park, Prospect
Park — we’re talking about the parks that the vast majority of working
class people use. Those parks were designed as places to get the
poor out of their tenements, get them physically active, and get them
healthy. They were also talked about as citizenship projects and
civilizing projects. Sandboxes were a place where children returned to
primordial soup. Then they progressed to small ball games and little
climbing structures so that children could develop their own relationship
with the built environment. That then moved onto shared games and
play — sports activities. Those sports activities were primarily written
about as citizenship cultivation, and in particular citizens in a 20th
century economic order. So, you needed to learn how to play the left
fullback or the third baseman or whatever it was because you needed to
know where to pop a rivet. You needed to know where you would be in
the economic order. You needed to know how to follow rules, team play,
and how your play contributed to the overall good as defined by those
in charge. What we’re sitting on here was a baseball field and a football
field that was flooded in the winter to become an ice skating rink.

LC: Why the name Added Value?

Added Value took its name from the system of energy transfer that
begins with the sun and creates energy that go into plants that are then
harvested by animals of all different varieties and then reharvested by
decomposers, and that whole cycle. Unfortunately, what’s very unique
about human beings is that we have to choose to “add value” to that
cycle. We have created ourselves as extractive people that pull away
from that system. We’ve built a society and an economy that drag
resources out of that cycle. What Michael Hurwitz and I want to suggest
is that we could inspire people to make the choice to add value by
working with teens and working with food.
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 205

LC: So, why focus on urban agriculture?

Food is something every person has a connection to and young people
are something that everybody has a connection to. And often both
of them are things that people have strong opinions about, they care
about them.
Prior to running Added Value I was doing a restorative justice see JILER page 178
p 

project with Michael Hurwitz, working with first time youth offenders
in a community garden. One day I pulled a dandelion green out of the
ground and got into a long discussion with a teenager about culturally
appropriate food — he wasn’t interested. Healthy eating — he wasn’t
interested. Good cooking — he wasn’t interested. He wasn’t interested
in any of the typical models of education and inspiration that we might
deal with. What he was interested in was growing dandelion greens
in a 10 foot x 10 foot space and selling his produce at a $1.75/pound.
I told him — hypothetically — he could make $75 on this space of land
for very little investment. Then I talked to him about what would it mean
to grow dandelion roots instead of dandelion greens. Dandelion root is
a medicinal plant that supports kidney and liver function. So, we grow
roots for a year, clean them off, chop them up, soak them in alcohol, and
let them cure for a year. And at the same time we do some education in
Teen participants work
the community about our own health and wellness. And then we turn the farmers market.
Photo used with permission
around and in the same plot of land we have $1,200 worth of dandelion by Phil Shipman, added value
 206 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

What a 21st century park means to us is

that we can use a public space to educate
people about a truly democratic process:
how to care about social issues. We can…
build an economic process that nutures the
community and nurtures the environment.
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 207

Red Hook Farm

Photo used with permission
by Phil Shipman, added value
 208 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

root tincture that we can sell below market value to our neighbors.
Now, this kid’s no dummy, his family sells heroin and he knows what
economic systems look like. He knows what supply and demand look
like. And he knows what health and lack of health look like. He asked me
for a job doing exactly what we had just discussed, but I didn’t have a job
to give him. At that point, Added Value did not exist.

LC: How did you identify your site?

see bennaton page 232
p  We were working in a New York City Housing Authority community
garden, and we knew that that wasn’t going to be enough space. And we
were running a farmers’ market in a park not far from here. I was walking
out to lunch with, Ben Balcolm, one of the farmers from our market and
we walked past this site. I lived in the neighborhood, but I had never
been here. It was a dilapidated, unused park. Ben said, “That’s a great
urban farm. You’ve got nice wind here, a nice wind break, you’ve got
great southern exposure, a 12-foot fence, 2.5 to 3 acres, and it doesn’t
look like anything’s going on there.” Then we went off to lunch. I came
back here and crawled through the fence and totally cried in the middle
of the field. It was so much fun. I was like, “This is sweet!”

AW: Was the decision to build raised beds of soil on top of the
asphalt out of concern for health or liability?
It was an economic decision at the time. This is formerly a railroad
change yard for the docking station, which — relatively speaking — is a
nontoxic use as far as industry goes. It’s just to change cars. It wasn’t a
loading and unloading facility. So, relatively speaking, it was a clean site
compared to the brownfields that are all around us. We’ve got 5 inches
of cement and at that time Added Value had a budget of about $5,000.
Tearing up the cement would have cost $140,000 and I can get compost
for free.

LC: Who do you target with your programs?

The core of our work has always been teenagers. That’s in large part
because that’s what Michael and I did for 10 years before we started
Added Value, both of us were youth workers. The staff that we have
hired are also all primarily youth workers. Typically 17 to 20 teens are
somehow involved in the project.
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 209

How does the history of Red

Hook shape your current work?
This park was built in an immigrant, Irish white community began to leave Red Hook
and Italian, neighborhood. Those Irish to go off to Long Island to places where they
and Italian families worked out here on could build homes and go off to college. So
the docks when there were 50,000 families within a matter of 16 years, from 1947 to
living in this neighborhood and probably 1963, this community was gutted and left to
more working in it. The docks did two suffer through urban blight.
things: they either brought food from the In 1962 you started to see real urban
other world, primarily bulk products; or decay coupled with urban renewal projects
they built and rebuilt the boats that were almost immediately. Essentially what you
doing that work or supporting the colonial had in Red Hook in the late 1980s and early
endeavors of the 20th century. ‘90s is a community of 10,000 people, 8,400
With a few major public policy decisions of whom are living in public housing, with
in this neighborhood, city, and state, this an average income of $12,000 for a family
community was killed. The city decided not of four, which is half of the poverty line
to have maritime industry be part of its in New York City. So, amid that context,
economic future, and obviously that was the Added Value was formed out of concern
economy that was here. Simultaneously, about the way people were approaching
Robert Moses was involved with his design Red Hook — defining its opportunities
projects, which included the Brooklyn- externally. There were all sorts of other
Queens Expressway and the Brooklyn people’s dreams for this neighborhood. But
Battery Tunnel. These were constructed at without access to capital or education and
the same time and cut the neighborhood off a pro-social agenda that would allow people
from the rest of the community leading to to make changes in their lives, all of those
the destruction of the economic engine and plans failed. They failed for a number of
the physical isolation of the neighborhood. reasons, but primarily because they didn’t
Then you had the GI Bill — essentially help people here get educated, get involved,
a Marshall Plan for the United States. and improve their lives.
You send all these people off to war and
they come back traumatized. The economy
had been entirely oriented toward the
manufacturing of weapons and the food to
feed people, and that economy was going
to collapse. So we gave all these people
housing loans, which meant they were
going to build houses and we gave them free
college — so those who couldn’t get involved
in the manufacturing industry building
houses could go off to college and become
teachers. It was an incredible asset to the
country. But the military was segregated.
So what we remember as the GI Bill was
a massive transfer of wealth to white,
working class people. It was a great thing;
it was also disproportionate and created a
large wealth gap. So the vast majority of the
 210 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

An adaptive strategy:
building raised beds on top
of the asphalt ballfield.
Photo used with permission
by Added Value
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 211

Seed-to-Salad participant
in the 2nd grade,
harvesting the lettuce she
planted. Each spring, first-
and second-grade students
participate in this 10-week
program, sowing seeds
in April, harvesting and
eating a salad in June,
and learning about plants,
food, and farm life cycles.
Photo used with permission
by Jennie Allen
212 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

LC: What is your involvement with schools?

We work very intensively with three elementary schools. In the spring
we work with 120 elementary school students for an hour and a half per
week for 10 weeks on the farm. We work with Food Change with another
80 elementary school students on a 22-week, 3 hour/week curricula.
We do an hour and a half in the classroom and an hour and a half on
the farm.
PS 15 is the school we do the intensive program with, and we got
a call from Trust for Public Land (TPL) this spring that said, “We have a
problem.” TPL has their commons project where they get large grants
to develop NYC Department of Education playgrounds into more
community-friendly places through a participatory design process with
the kids in the schools and input from the community. I ask, “What’s
the problem?” They said, “Well, the first-, second-, and third-graders are
voting in a bloc for greenspace on the playground. They’re voting for
greenhouses, butterfly bushes, edible food gardens. More than a stage
to perform on, more than a badminton court, more than a tennis court,
more than a running track.” So, given a choice, given the opportunity
to participate actively in the design of their environment, children who
were exposed to an inquiry-based farm and food learning experience
were choosing the 21st century experience. They were choosing to have
a garden where they could continue the inquiry, learning about seasons
and cycles. So TPL had to change the design and we had to come to
some compromises and say that we would help support it. A lot of the
barriers are familiar: staffing, maintenance. It’s harder to keep up a
garden than it is to keep up a cement football field. It takes different
resources.

AW: What is the relationship between your urban farm, other farms
in the region, and global food sources?
Currently I don’t think a fully local system works. I think an ethic of
localizing might work. So, for example, we run a farmers’ market. We
don’t just sell our own urban stuff because that wouldn’t feed the needs
of the community. And in some sense, it would not be able to have the
impact that it does. But with four other farmers in the region dropping
off their products, we get to build an urban-rural linkage. We get to
recognize that an apple from Red Hook, New York — which is 60 miles
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 213

from here — is better than an apple from Washington state, which is

better than apple juice from China — which is ridiculous.

AW: Would you tell us about the systemic impact of the farm at the
neighborhood scale?
We’ve done a waste audit; we can handle a lot of compost here, a lot
more than we have now. We take about 100 five-gallon buckets a
week from one restaurant. We’ve just started what will hopefully be
an all-urban Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). The CSA gets
picked up in a 5-gallon bucket, you bring it home, the food scraps
get brought back in the bucket, and then you get a new bucket. Also,
we work with three local restaurants, and all three of restaurants in
this neighborhood are owned by people in this neighborhood. They
purchase food from a not-for-profit in this neighborhood that hires teens
through an internship program and pays those teens to grow food in the
neighborhood. So a dollar spent at one of these restaurants stays in the
neighborhood four times — or some portion of that dollar.
Economic and environmental systems like that used to exist
everywhere and, by and large, they still exist in a lot of the world. But
they exist less and less. Globalized economies hurt the purpose of the
commons. They pull away from the commons. But having an economy
where my children know the restaurateurs who buy their stuff, they
can say hello to them on the street — that’s a truly local economy.
So that’s the macro-vision, we do that right now. That’s common-ality,
that’s common-unity, that’s community, that’s where it goes.

LC: You’re clearly deeply committed to Red Hook as a

neighborhood. Do you ever see yourself trying to replicate
this model in other places?
We are replicating by example. There are 12,000 people here and I
would rather personally know each one of them and have each one of
them know the farm. That’s just my personal bent. Institutionally, we’re
growing so fast and that growth is really about meeting the need right
here. It wouldn’t make any sense to try and replicate in other places.
Across the country, I think we’re seeing groups like Added Value
more and more. There was a reason that Added Value was a very unique
organization 7 years ago, but we’re a very un-unique organization now.
 214 Restorative Commons INTERVIEW WITH IAN MARVY

AW: What would your ideal vision be if you had the funds and had
the choice about how to grow the farm?
We had a design charrette for the farm to think about what the farm
would look like and, we’re also going through a participatory strategic
planning process. Heifer is leading it in large part because of, 1) their
long-term understanding of the organizations successes and challenges;
and 2) their holistic approach, which could be likened to whole-farm
planning or whole-planning. It’s very integrated. And the hope is that
that will help us develop a 3 to 5 year plan.
Currently, the conceptual plan is to have a 4,000-square-foot
building in the northwest corner, bermed under soil in the back
and open facing due south, with classroom space, food processing
space, and office space there. About 4,000 feet of greenhouse space
with an integrated aquaponic system and growing environment. A
2,000-square-foot barn for small ruminants — chickens and rabbits.
And then, a large-scale community composting facility in about 100,000
see la 
p  certe page 216 feet and another outdoor classroom kind of space. Bioswales, all the
see marshall and hoda
p 
 groundwater and graywater gets treated on site. A windmill on site.
page 164
Its easy for that kind of building, we only need 47kw/h. We’ve done
this whole survey, I can operate off of wind and sun here. But we’ll put
in a biofuel processor and a diesel boiler on site so we can be triple
redundant. We should be totally off the grid. And, again, it’s a citizenship
project. It’s not a farm or a classroom. All that has to be interpretable
and interactive. You’ve got to be able to touch it, see it, feel it. As a first-
grader — we have to have lessons to help them “get” power. You can’t
just have a windmill, that’s boring.
Beyond the farm site, the Red Hook Houses is one of the greenest
public housing developments in the city. Greenspace per person is quite
high over there. I would love to build a farm there. I would love at some
point for somebody to say, “Hey, instead of coming over here and buying
my greens, why don’t we take the center mall, which is four blocks long
and 20 feet or maybe even 40 feet wide, and turn that into a community
garden?” Our mission is to promote the sustainable development of Red
Hook, not to develop the farm. The farm is the catalytic, inspirational,
physical location for broader neighborhood change.
Youth Empowerment through Urban Agriculture 215

Is there a thinker, practitioner,

movement, or body or work
that personally inspires you
or drives you?
Personally, I take my inspiration from Madre — their biannual international
a couple places. One is the kids in the gathering with 5,000 farmers from all over
community I live in. Currently, I have the world, with the vast majority of them
little kids knocking on my door at night from developing nations. I was touched,
asking if I can get them lemon sorrel. Most profoundly impacted by the insistence
people don’t know what lemon sorrel is, let on human dignity and the dignity of the
alone Dominicans in a poor neighborhood planet, and developing social and economic
in a public housing project. That, to me, is structures that preserve that.
totally inspiring.
I draw inspiration from the space and
the excitement that it gives other people.
When people get onto this space, you can
see them go “ah!” and they start making
their own connections. Everybody’s always
got another idea for the space, which is
awesome. We can’t always respond to that,
but to me that says that the potential is
here on the planet and it is within people
and they want to do it. That’s great.
I draw a lot of inspiration from my staff
and my colleagues, they teach me a lot.
Institutionally, Heifer International
as an organization has a model that is
respectful of people and the environment. At
its best, it is very progressive and they tend
to take account of issues of gender, equity,
and environmental justice. In language and
in impact — I know people who have been
profoundly touched by Heifer International.
As a thinker, Vandana Shiva’s writing see INTRODUCTION page 11
p 
and personhood is inspirational. For me,
the reason I say that is she writes in a
way that my teens can read  — and we’re
talking about kids that are 3 and 4 years
under their reading level. As a thinker, as
an activist, and as a person, I think she’s an
eloquent and lovely human being.
As a movement, I was really skeptical
of Slow Food, to be honest, having come
from the U.S. and experiencing it as a
really elite institution. But I went to Tierra
216 Restorative Commons
 217

Adapting the Botanical

Garden into a Sustainable,
Multicultural Resource
Interview with Susan Lacerte
Queens Botanical Garden, Flushing, NY

Anne Wiesen: How did Queens Botanical Garden become the garden
that celebrates water?
We identified water as the unifying element at Queens Botanical Garden
(QBG) because of its importance here on this site and because it is
essential for all people in all parts of the world for our daily lives. We are
located in one of the most ethnically diverse counties in the country,
with over 130 languages spoken. In fact, 75 percent of Garden visitors
speak a language other than English at home. Water functions as a
metaphor for our common humanity.
With respect to the site, Mill Creek, a tributary of the Flushing
River runs though this landscape and we thought at first that we would
uncover it. But it’s 13 feet underground, and it didn’t make any sense.
The water feature where you come in the main gate is an artistic and
architectural reference to the tributary, and it functions as part of the
water management system as well. There are a lot of flooding issues,
and our goal is to manage 100 percent of water that falls from storms
on site. The water in the channel will rise and fall with the weather
conditions — if there is a drought the channel might be completely
dry, but it would still be beautiful. So you may simultaneously relate
see marshall and hoda
p 

to nature and enjoy a beautiful architectural feature. page 164

I think the flooding issues are getting worse. Possibly global climate
Watercourse traversing
changes are causing these fast and furious storms that are flooding the site.
Photo used with permission by
our arboretum. I’ve been here 13 years, and I’ve never seen flooding like Jeff Goldberg/Esto
218 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte

we’ve had this last year. Our designers always have said that when there
is less open space, flooding is worse and water runs faster off of hard
surfaces likes streets and typical parking lots. The soil acts as a great big
sponge. The idea is to slow down the water so that it doesn’t overload
the filtration systems. So in our parking garden that will be built next
year, we’re using permeable pavers so the water will percolate down into
the soil and stay right here, on our site where it is needed and cherished.
We want people to see these sustainable design innovations. So our
[LEED platinum administration building and visitors’ center] has a green
roof that the public can get up to. And we’d like to start using rain barrels
to catch water, something simpler that people can do at home.

Most large institutional gardens have not been in the forefront of

sustainable design. How did Queens become engaged in sustainable
building and operational systems design?
How QBG became engaged in sustainable design relates to how New
York developed, and I see how we are a product of our times. The New
York Botanical Garden (NYBG) was founded in the mid-1800s when
we looked to England and more widely to Europe for knowledge of
botany. And at the time of NYBG’s founding, the emphasis in Europe
was on plant exploration and research. So the need to have a space, a
conservatory and a herbarium, to keep plants in order to study them
was primary. So that’s their legacy. Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) was
founded in 1911 and what they did was to take the model of rectilinear
beds for plant families — the Legume family, the Compositae family,
etc. — that were popular in European botanical gardens and they
blended in horticulture. So BBG brought plant systematics together with
aesthetics and combined both as a teaching tool.
Then you come to our garden, which was opened in 1948 and was
developed from the Gardens on Parade exhibit of the 1939 World’s Fair,
which was all about innovation. It was here that Jackson & Perkins mail
order roses were introduced is my understanding, and hydroponics.
This “first” Queens Botanical Garden was in Flushing Meadows Corona
Park. And then we were moved here in 1963 to make way for the World’s
Fair in 1964, during a time when ecology, conservation, and such ideas
were becoming popular. So at this new place a bird garden, bee garden,
woodland garden, and other ecologically based gardens were added.
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 219

Sloped green roof allows

visitors easy access.
Photo used with permission
by PHOTOGRAPHER John Seitz
220 Restorative Commons
221
 222 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte

In the 1990s Ashok Bhavnani, an architect, joined the board and

he said to me: “Susan, you have an opportunity to be a leader among
mid-sized botanic gardens in environmental design.” And he articulated
to some degree this sustainable, environmental idea, which wasn’t
common at the time. These ideas built upon what we already were.
We picked [the architect and landscape architects] because of their
interest in the environment and water and in trying to bring our cultural
vision that we adopted in 1997, into the design. Our vision shows that
we think of ourselves as “the place where people, plants, and cultures
meet.” When we started getting into design for this project, we expanded
the idea of sustainability and we really tried to marry those two
ideas — culture and sustainability.

Would you say your focus on supporting cultural diversity comes

from your location here in Flushing?
Oh, absolutely, and in Queens at large. Our vision to celebrate diversity
and the significance of the cultures in the communities around us
evolved as we became integrated in the communities. We developed
our board to be very diverse over time and we started working with
whomever we knew locally. Queensborough Hall was very helpful
in pointing us in the right direction — to the leaders in the Hispanic,
Chinese, and the Korean communities. And with the help of these
leaders we put several cultural advisory committees together.
We created a position called “Cultural Specialist,” and offered an
honorarium to three young people who had either been born in this
country or had been born overseas but came here as a young child.
They needed to understand both cultures. Each community wants to
blend in and be part of America, but they also want to retain some of
their own. We gave the cultural specialists an assignment to identify the
10 plants and the 10 holidays that are most important in the culture;
the most important leaders in the community; and people from their
community who are important in the press. And with their responses
we published a book, “Harvesting Our History: A Botanical and Cultural
Guide to Queens’ Chinese, Korean and Latin American Communities”
Previous Page:
that captured some of these ideas. The Cultural Specialists were also
Roof Garden native flowers
details in composite. responsible for successfully engaging leaders to invite guests to plant-
Photo used with permission
by photographer John Seitz related cultural events for each community.
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 223

What were some of those cultural events?

Working with the Hispanic community, we learned that color is very
important so we set up a flower arranging event. The event was very
formal with a professional florist addressing an auditorium of formally
dressed participants. The florist created some very showy pieces,
for example, he took white carnations, sprayed them blue and made
a poodle out of them. Everyone in the audience loved it and clapped
enthusiastically.
Then we had a Korean-born plant specialist from a botanical garden
come in to give a talk in Korean and English about the plants that are
important in the landscape from that part of the world. The Koreans
have such a reverence for elders and for learning. Later, we helped the
Korean community establish a Circle Garden of these important plants
on the grounds here. The community raised $5,000 through an event
called “Cosmos Night” over 3 consecutive years and that helped sponsor
the Circle Garden. The cosmos is important in Korean celebrations.
In the Chinese community, years ago, we had Mark Lii, founder
of Ten Ren Tea and Ginseng Company, hold a press conference at
the Garden in Chinese in advance of our Four Seasons Chinese Tea
Ceremony. The ambassador to Taiwan attended and said that Mark Lii is
going to revolutionize tea drinking in America. Mark’s got a teashop here
in Flushing, in Chinatown, and in all the different Chinese sections of the
city. I was introduced to Mark, he became a QBG Board Member, and
that’s how you build bridges.
We have relationships with certain cultural communities and we
keep those and work with them. At this point we’re doing a multilingual
visitor brochure. I would like to see these cultural connections have a
more physical presence in the garden.
We did some research where we took people to the market on Main
Street because we had learned that people didn’t always feel welcome
walking into a store of another culture. Often times the shop owners
don’t speak English and because of this many of the signs are not in
English either. But just by having tours with small groups of people
that go into the market — to the Chinese Herb Shop, to the Indian Sari
store, the Korean Specialty Shop — we made friends and the merchants
loved it. And our members who might have been curious and passed by
everyday, but never went in, made a connection. These are some of the
224 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte

ways we reach out to our communities, ways we value their culture and
work, their ways of being a family and making home. In a sense, we bring
the Garden to them!

In what ways does QBG support the health of the surrounding

community?
Quite literally, we partner with the New York Hospital Medical Center,
Queens, up the street. They also cater to largely Asian populations,
and their approach to cross-cultural relations is very similar to ours.
For instance, they respect language differences and so they’ll send a
Chinese-speaking doctor to come to the Garden and run health days
where the doctor runs free cholesterol and blood pressure tests and
talks to people about healthy lifestyles. We then sponsor Tai Chi here;
every morning there are somewhere around 100 people practicing
in the garden. It’s so beautiful, and is a great traditional use of a garden.
And you see diversity in the faces of the people who visit this garden
every single day.
We’ve also done a project where we’ve put more Asian plants into
the herb garden to educate people further about the Chinese herbs they
may be taking. Having one’s culture reflected publicly and powerfully
can be a great stimulus to feelings of pride, acceptance, and positive
integration. These are more about the social components that relate to
health. Finally, the Medical Center has adopted a tree on their grounds.
So there’s cross-fertilization happening where the Center is using our
method by planting and respecting trees, and we’re hosting healthy
days. We have a very good relationship.

How does your plant selection relate to your dual goals of

sustainability and cultural diversity?
Native plants were selected for most areas because they are better
adapted to the local conditions and so they need less care. Although
they are beautiful, not everybody wants native plants. The brides and
grooms who hold their ceremonies at the Garden want color. And
concert planners want an outdoor venue. While the QBG arboretum,
which is now managed as a meadow, has been the site of 5,000 person
gatherings in the past, we can no longer do this because the plants in
the meadow don’t leave a place where that many people can gather.
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 225

Visitors practicing tai chi.

Photo used with permission
by photographer Jason Green

And there are some people who say we have gone backwards because
they see a lot of ‘weeds’ out there. There’s some education that needs
to happen on both sides. This year I said I want an edge on that meadow
so that people have the idea that it is deliberate. And we need to make
it more beautiful. I’m not making a judgment that native plants aren’t
beautiful. But the public taste is for more for showy, colorful plants.
An impression that I’ve developed over the years working with
people of different cultures is that a lot of people who come here to
Flushing come from countries that are agricultural. Farming is a hard life.
And they left the farm. They left those 12-14 hour days of hard labor and
they don’t want that kind of life anymore. They want to see something
in the landscape that reminds them not of work, but of the celebrations,
or peaceful moments they’ve known and can be inspired to continue.

What elements do you think are important in a 21st century park,

botanical garden, or open space?
Well I wrote an article for “Public Garden” a year ago. I had some Cornell
students to my house for dinner, and asked them what their idea of a
 226 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte

Watercourse (above)
continues through the
built landscape (next page)
and resolves in a
remediating bioswale.
Photos used with permission
by phoTOgrapher John Seitz
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 227
228 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 229
230 Restorative Commons Interview with Susan Lacerte

garden was. And what I came away with was that American gardens
started off in this venerable European model where people would go to a
garden to enjoy beauty and maybe to study plants. But technology has
changed everything. People now expect information at their fingertips
because they can go online, research, and learn so many things
instantly. People are using gardens in so many different ways. I’ve read
articles about putting a chip in a tree, and then with a handheld device,
in whatever language they want, people can find out about that tree.
I think that for gardens to be players in the world we’ve got to figure
out: how can we continue to be relevant to people in this time of great
technology? Does it make sense to emphasize gardens as a completely
different experience from what’s available to us electronically? Gardens
are very local, as you know. And gardens move at a different tempo.
Plants take time to grow. It could be the Garden’s salvation because,
I would think, the pendulum swings.

Would the components that make Queens Botanical Garden

successful scale up to open space across the city?
Yes, what we are doing here would definitely scale up for larger areas
of the city. Just think if more places had green roofs what a different
city this would be! Just think if we did not treat all water to potable or
drinkable standards but treated just what we needed and used water
more efficiently. Just think if every building captured the sun’s light and
made it into energy for the building, just like plants turn the sun’s light
into energy for the plant. We’d have a cooler, more beautiful city, less
flooding, fuller reservoirs and lakes, and less land used for all sorts of
support facilities leaving more for open space, something I’ve found
so important for my sense of spirit and beauty. We’d have a greener
city and a healthier city. Not that I think what we have now is bad, it’s
just that it could be better, and doing so is within our grasp. It takes
consciousness, determination and persistence, and all of us working
together. We can lead in so many ways and I’m so proud that the Queens
Botanical Garden is on the leading edge of this green phenomenon that
is sweeping the nation. I hope everyone will join in!
Adapting the Botanical Garden into a Sustainable, Multicultural Resource 231

Dialogue With Colleague:

How wonderful that QBG is connecting the personal experience of
health and well-being with the wider health of our city and planet.
These connections allow us to see ourselves as living creatures that
are members of an interconnected web of life. Demonstrating the
practical steps that help us locate our dwelling and work places
within a living ecosystem is a powerful tool for restoring our sense of
connection, responsibility, and spiritual heritage. Karl Linn once said
“From time immemorial, people of indigenous or land-based cultures
have celebrated their connectedness with nature as an integral part
of their daily lives. Free and enduring access to air, water, and land
assured their sustenance and survival.” Linn felt places such as
community gardens and urban green spaces were the last remnants
of this experience in modern life. I think the botanical gardens serve
this function for many people in our city.

We are overstimulated and oversuggested as to what is beautiful.

It’s hard to experience the subtle, awesome beauty of natural
landscapes. On one hand we want people to feel connected to a
garden experience, to be pleased by scent, color, shape. On the other
hand, so many people need the soothing experience of a meadow
or leaf strewn forest floor. I find urban residents are craving, are
starving for peaceful experiences in nature. Botanical garden visitors
often seek respite, quiet, and gravitate to the less designed areas,
or perhaps areas intentionally “less designed”. How significant is the
preservation of a natural environment — one that looks and feels and
enacts the rhythms of our seasons — to a sustainable society? What
is the role of a botanical garden in providing this experience, through
design, landscape, and/or educational experience?

Susan Fields
GreenBridge Manager, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
232 Restorative Commons
 233

The Re-Greening
of Public Housing
Interview with Rob Bennaton
New York City Housing Authority Garden and Greening Program
New York, NY

Lindsay Campbell: How did the New York City Housing Authority
Garden and Greening Program come about?
The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) was established in 1934
to provide affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families.
The Garden and Greening Program was conceptualized as the Tenant
Garden Program by Ira D. Robbins, a 1960s NYCHA board member, as
a means to beautify housing grounds in an aesthetically pleasing and
economically efficient way. Robbins learned from his visit to the Chicago
Housing Authority that garden competitions were used to inspire
beautification, except that the garden cultivators there were the grounds
staff. He applied this basic concept in New York, emphasizing resident
stewardship over staff maintenance. This vision of resident engagement
NYCHA Garden and
as garden stewards has developed over the decades into more complex Greening outreach
coordinator Howard
sets of issues and relationships linking to ownership, access, and control Hemmings (left) with
of one’s immediate environment. Today, there are about 650 active Mr. Miller, a gardener
at Mariner’s Harbor
gardens on NYCHA grounds and 3,000 gardeners, approximately 2,700 houses in Staten Island.
Photo used with permission by
of whom are youth. PHOTOGRAPHER Lloyd Carter, NYCHA
 234 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton

What kind of support does the program provide gardeners?

The five things that the Garden and Greening Program provides are:
•  Free seeds in the spring and summer
•  Free bulbs in the fall
•  Technical assistance from Garden & Greening Program staff
• Reimbursement from the property management office in each
development for up to $40/registered garden
• Some level of support from property management, which varies
by development and can include: helping turn the soil, supporting
the gardeners with watering hoses, lending of a shovel or two, etc.
In addition to that, when management is willing and able to go
retrieve it, they can get free leaf compost for those gardens to
improve the soil quality from the Department of Sanitation.

There are a lot of different garden programs in the city, but

NYCHA’s centers around a garden competition whereas others do
not. Can you talk a little bit about the strengths and weaknesses
of having the competition as a key feature?
Our program is very different from the New York City Department
see stone page 122
p  of Parks and Recreation GreenThumb Program and many other
community gardening programs. Although NYCHA is moving toward
a community gardening-like program, it’s always been management’s
policy that these gardens do not belong permanently to a particular
resident gardener or group of residents. The lands being cultivated
revert back to the responsibility of a development’s grounds staff
when residents can no longer care for it because the condition of the
grounds is ultimately the housing development management staff’s
responsibility. This presents some challenges for cultivating true long-
term stewardship and a sense of ownership of the grounds.
Of the 650 gardens on NYCHA lands, approximately 500 gardens
are officially registered with the garden competition and the remainder,
often, are not registered but continue to be cultivated. Through NYCHA’s
citywide garden competition, the gardens are assessed for their
horticultural cultivation practices, aesthetic value and/or alignment
with a theme if a ‘theme’ garden. Judges look for signs of active garden
maintenance, such as weeding, deadheading, mulching, amending soil,
or using beneficial insects, and so, horticultural skills are encouraged
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 235

NYCHA Properties

FPO

Citywide map of the 343

NYCHA development sites.
There are approximately
2,600 acres of open space
on NYCHA grounds.
Data source: NYC Dept
of Planning; Map created
by Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne,
University of Vermont
236 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton

and rewarded. The competition as a starting point for a gardening

program is something of a double-edged sword, both a strength and
a weakness. It does promote healthy competition between residents,
housing developments, and boroughs. But it also breeds the inevitable
disappointment for those who don’t win, and sometimes causes them
to drop out of future competitions.

And has the program changed over time?

In 2002, after 40-plus years of running the garden competition, the
rules were revised to reflect a changing understanding of the social
function and value of these sites, as well as to improve them in terms of
environmental sustainability. Howard Hemmings and I, both Community
Coordinators, have sought to make it possible for gardeners to build
and nurture social connections and environmental values through the
gardens, not just within the housing developments, but by helping to
support gardens as connectors with neighborhood residents as well. For
example, an obsolete rule stipulated that perennials were not allowed
in the gardens for reasons that are not clear. Well, perennials are now
permitted in housing gardens because they are not only the sustainable
foundations of a flower garden, but a resident’s sense of connection
to place that perennials can inspire is now understood as a positive.
Perennials are also sustainable in the biological sense of returning
annually from their roots with even greater growth, and providing
needed resources and cover for native pollinators and birds. In the long
run, we’re hoping to develop these gardens as open spaces that will
continue to be cultivated by resident membership groups through the
generations. Over time, a resident membership base may develop that
will seek to preserve some land for open space stewardship.

Focusing in on the theme of Restorative Commons, what do

you see as the relationship between your gardening program
and human health?
Gardening is a multifaceted activity that has social, environmental,
aesthetic, and health impacts. Here are just a few examples of some of
the benefits of gardening and open space that I have observed through
this program:
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 237

St. Nicholas Houses, Harlem

At the St. Nicholas Houses in Harlem, of the drug activities because people
they are developing a project to provide congregate.” Mack believes that for the
opportunities for physical activity within stewards themselves, gardening provides
the landscape. The project involves exercise, activity, and a source of relaxation
developing a 1-mile walking path and pride. For those who simply see the
throughout the grounds, surrounded gardens or walk by them, they provide
by plants and trees selected for easy visual interest, and reduce the amount of
maintenance, year-round interest, and garbage dumped: even less mobile residents
pollinator value in partnership with the can benefit from looking out their windows
District Public Health Office of Harlem, at gardens. At St. Nicholas Houses, Mack
the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, hopes that eventually all 14 buildings
NYCHA’s Garden & Greening Program and plus the management office will have a
the Department of Parks and Recreation. garden; currently there are six gardens on
The Department of Health and “Take A the grounds. She believes that the 1-mile
Walk, New York!” program organize walking walking path can be a connector for those
groups out of the senior centers to help gardens.
address the dual concerns of diabetes and
obesity. The New York City Department of
Parks and Recreation aided the project by
fully planting the perimeter trees on the
street surrounding the development.
St. Nicholas Houses’ current Manager
Doreen Mack has many years of experience
in the field, having worked with the
citywide capacity-building nonprofit,
Citizens Committee for New York City, Seniors using the
and is an entrepreneurial advocate for “walking trail” at
her 15.3-acre grounds. Mack has stated, St. Nicholas Houses
in Manhattan.
“Personally, I love flowers, I think they’re
Photo used with permission
calming. Gardening puts away some by Dave Lutz, NOSC
 238 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton

• Horticulture can be used to help with anything from drug

rehabilitation to relief from stress. In a city with 8 to 10 million
residents, where people are always rushing, crowded on the subway,
and generally stressed out, gardening can be an outlet to deal
with that stress.

• Gardening is a form of recreation that is not too physically

demanding and provides slow and steady exercise. John Reddick
is a program consultant with the Trust for Public Land, a many-time
judge of the Garden and Greening Program, and a consultant in the
NYCHA community centers. Reddick noted, “Gardening is the only
exercise some of these seniors get. It gets their day started in the
early morning.”

• Many of the active senior citizen stewards claim that they garden
because it makes them feel good psychologically. Stewards are
Gardens can thrive
even in the “found space” also motivated to garden because of the impact it makes on their
alongside parking lots and communities. To quote Dr. Roy McGowan, former consultant of
sidewalks; Saratoga Square
in Brooklyn. NYCHA, “Gardening is a nonconfrontational way to reclaim the
Photo used with permission by
PHOTOGRAPHER Lloyd Carter, NYCHA land for productive and positive use.”
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 239

• Vegetable gardens cultivate fresh, local food that offers an

alternative to fast food and bodega snacks. They also serve an
educational function in teaching children where vegetables
come from — the soil in the ground rather than the supermarket.
One of the challenges that our program faces is that some of the
community centers grow food but do not harvest it. There is still
a lot of technical assistance that needs to be provided to develop
the gardens as viable urban agriculture sites.

• Plant cultivation offers an opportunity to connect with cultural roots.

Many of the older gardeners grew up in the south, the Caribbean, or
in other agrarian cultures, and value that way of life. Often, they want
to plant collard greens and okra, or habanero chile peppers to have
a taste of their cultural heritage, and recall their own roots. However,
in the last 30 years there has been little turnover in residents and
many of the people now living in NYCHA housing have grown up there.
This connection with agriculture may be on the wane. Thus, we need
to continue to develop interest in agriculture and land stewardship in
light of the new populations we are serving.

Looking to the specifics of the Garden & Greening Program, how do

the NYCHA gardens promote environmental sustainability?
One of the other main objectives of the garden program is to improve
environmental quality as a whole, including: air quality, soil quality, and
water quality. First, we now allow residents to plant perennials, including
woody materials like trees and shrubs in addition to gardens, so that
we’re not only beautifying the open spaces and greening them up, but
we’re also fixing carbon.
Similarly, soil quality can be significantly improved with compost.
We have reinstated what was in the original garden competition rules:
soils, particularly those in first-year vegetable gardens, should be tested.
With water quality, we’re improving water bodies and waterways by
retaining water so that it doesn’t get onto the ground and become storm
water runoff that carries nitrates and phosphates. Rainwater harvesting,
a best management practice recently approved on a small scale by
NYCHA’s administration, is one step to doing that. Many of these issues
are discussed in the book “Gardening for the Future of the Earth” by
240 Restorative Commons AUTHOR NAME
essay title 241
 242 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton

Shapiro and Harrison (2000), which describes how gardening can truly
help to restore the healthy functioning of the earth.

What are some of the biggest challenges your program is

facing now?
Historically, our programs were based out of the operations budget,
which ultimately comes from rent and subsidies from the U.S.
Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Under the
current Federal administration, funding for those subsidies has
significantly decreased and NYCHA faces a very significant deficit.
This and other factors have resulted in a vast reduction of the number
of grounds maintenance staff in recent years.
Agency budget and staff reductions within the developments
diminish capacity to assist gardeners with support such as turning
soil and providing access to water sources. Grounds supervisors and
staff must focus a great deal of attention simply on removing trash
and debris with less person power then ever before. Ideally, the Garden
and Greening Program could be expanded to include an outreach
coordinator, as well as additional program coordinators serving each
of the five boroughs of New York City. In the face of these significant
funding cuts, NYCHA has rightfully focused its core resources on
housing building upkeep rather than grounds maintenance and
stewardship. Understandably so, as those upkeep needs are substantial.
It is critical that the above-named fiscal crisis not become an
obstacle to resident garden stewardship because their voluntary
garden maintenance can help NYCHA focus even more on its core
mission of providing affordable housing services. By reducing the land
maintenance burden on the shoulders of grounds staff, gardens in
public housing can add value to existing open spaces, protecting
public housing for both the affordable housing and ecological services
it provides.

So, what next?

Previous Page:
To better cultivate long-term stewardship of the NYCHA sites, the
Rodriguez and McKay’s program is trying to build relationships between resident garden
flower garden at Patterson
Houses in the Bronx. groups and local community resources. This presents one mechanism
Photo used with permission by
PHOTOGRAPHER Lloyd Carter, NYCHA for overcoming physical and social barriers between public housing
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 243

From MillionTreesNYC press

release, April 2008:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and David than average rates of asthma among young
Rockefeller announced their joint pledge people. These neighborhoods include Hunts
of $10 million to the MillionTreesNYC Point, Morrisania, East New York, East
initiative to plant trees in public spaces Harlem, Stapleton, and the Rockaways.
including NYCHA developments and at Funding will also be allocated for education
City schools. This donation of private funds and outreach efforts in these neighborhoods.
made to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance In addition this gift will be used to
New York City by Mr. Rockefeller and help fund a new job training effort, the
Bloomberg Philanthropies will allow over MillionTreesNYC Apprenticeship program,
18,000 trees to be planted throughout the which will connect City youth to the
five boroughs. Thanks to this donation, all numerous “green collar” jobs that PlaNYC
nine of NYCHA’s housing developments in is creating. Jobs related to tree planting
East Harlem will be fully planted ahead and care are currently in high demand
of schedule and by the close of this year’s as a result of MillionTreesNYC, and the
tree planting season….As a result of this Apprenticeship Program aims to provide
generous donation, more than 10,700 the skills that youth need to capitalize on
trees are slated to be planted on NYCHA well-paying career opportunities….The
property….Plantings will focus initially program will include NYCHA residents
on sites in specially designated “Trees for within the target population for training in
Public Health” neighborhoods that have jobs that involve the planting, pruning and
fewer than average street trees and higher stewardship of the trees.
 244 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton

Vegetable gardens and tree

canopy at the Pink Houses
in Brooklyn.
Photo used with permission by
PHOTOGRAPHER Lloyd Carter, NYCHA
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 245
246 Restorative Commons Interview with Rob Bennaton
The Re-Greening of Public Housing 247

residents and their surrounding neighborhoods. Tenant associations are

also an under-utilized, yet potential ally. These organizations serve as
advocates for tenant rights on a wide range of issues, but relatively few
of them are actively involved in the program. Corporate partnerships
present new areas of opportunity as well. For example, Home Depot has
supported resident gardening efforts with in-kind materials at the Polo
Ground Houses Senior Center.
More good things are in the works, but all of them involve a need
for the agency to broaden the programmatic scope of the Garden
& Greening Program, as well as infrastructural support in terms of
increased numbers of staff, vehicle access, and materials storage.
Recent developments, including PlaNYC 2030, as well as the support of
a strong environmental quality proponent in NYCHA’s newly appointed
agency Environmental Coordinator are positive signs of what is to come.
There is enormous opportunity to re-envision NYCHA landscapes
as dynamic, productive, ecosystems serving the health and well- see sEITZ page 96
p 

being of residents and the wider city. NYCHA oversees approximately

2,600 acres of open space with an estimated 46,000 trees and provides
housing for a half-million tenants in 343 complexes across the five
boroughs. NYCHA’s existing social services infrastructure organizes
residents and the surrounding neighborhoods around their 40 senior
centers and 110 community centers that provide after school, summer
day camp, and mature adult programs. Beyond these, NYCHA leases
community facility spaces to a large variety of nonprofit agencies that
operate in New York City public housing developments, including the
noted “I Have a Dream” Program, the Institute for the Puerto Rican and
Hispanic Elderly, and STRIVE, to name a few. There is great potential for
improvement of environmental quality through the vast social capital
that the New York City Housing Authority resident populations represent
and the community facilities through which they serve.

Amending the soil to

Literature Cited create a new garden bed
at Astoria Senior Center,
Astoria Houses in Queens.
Shapiro, Howard; Harrison, John. 2000. Gardening for the future of the Photo used with permission by
Earth. New York: Bantam Books. PHOTOGRAPHER Lloyd Carter, NYCHA
 248 Restorative Commons

The gardening program

is designed to serve entire
families.
Photo used with permission
by Davorin Brdanovic, AFSC
 249

Gardens for Peace

and Reconciliation
Interview with Davorin Brdanovic
American Friends Service Committee
Bosnia and Herzegovina

The Program
Lindsay Campbell: What are the goals of the American Friends
Service Committee (AFSC) gardening program in Bosnia and
Herzegovina?
AFSC has been registered in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2000 and
has focused on implementing an organic community gardening project.
The basic goals of this project are to:
1. Support trust-building and reconciliation between different ethnic
groups that were in conflict during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina
from 1992-1995 through multiethnic gardens.
2. P
 rovide year-round material support for low income families through
vegetable production.
3. P
 rovide work/horticulture therapy for people with post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD), disabled people, and people with mental
health conditions.
4. Educate participants in conventional and organic agricultural
production and environmental protection.

Since the 2005 season, the project added an additional goal:

5. S
 upport the development of independent community gardens
through a national community gardening association.

When the project started, the idea was — if you want to do some
reconciliation, you can’t approach the person and say, “I have a
wonderful project. Do you want to be reconciled?” It’s true. First of
all, to engage people in the gardens we address their most significant
needs. It can be money, which is very often the case in Sarajevo. Aid
250 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

organizations come often to hold roundtable discussions and they pay

local people for their involvement. Here, there is a basic, urgent need for
food security. Local people are coming to the gardens because it offers
them a way to survive. Their benefit is the food harvest. What WE are
harvesting is reconciliation. Of course, we don’t tell them, “You are here
for reconciliation.”
Secondly, work therapy is extremely important. We have desperate
people, destitute from the war — unemployed, at home, listening to
politics, watching television — who need work therapy to feel they can
work productively again.
Thirdly, we educate. We teach the gardeners agronomy. Most of
these people have never raised crops or gardened before. They gain
knowledge, they feel they can do something tangible and useful, they
can produce something. Plus, they build friendships. Again, through
our harvest, they develop friendships, they learn, and they will feel
useful and part of a larger family.

LC: I understand that you don’t say “get reconciled”, but do you
have programming or facilitation? Or is what’s most effective really
as simple as people working side by side?
This is why this program is unique. Everyone asks me, “Do you have a
social worker? Do you have a therapist?” Really, you don’t need it. They
are sick of people who are paid to sit in front of them and tell them
something that may or may not help them. There are simply so many
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), so many different international
organizations with their own agenda in the rebuilding process.
You can solve the problem if you look and use your brain. Just watch
what the people need. The perfect reconciliation for them is coffee time.
We never have an official meeting. Me and my staff have a time and sit
with them while they have a coffee. We speak with them. They always
ask something, “Davorin, my house where I live is completely destroyed,
do you know anyone who can make a donation?” So, I go to the Internet
and look for an organization, check it for him and see if he is eligible for
assistance.
Already the best thing is happening. We have two soldiers from
opposite sides sitting in the garden and playing chess together. That’s
the best reconciliation, because, very soon, after a couple of chess
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 251

From AFSC website, www.afsc.org:

Established in 1917 in response to the human crisis of World War I, the
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) uses the Quaker values
of nonviolence and justice to rebuild human lives and relationships.
AFSC won the Nobel Peace Prize for 1947 on behalf of all Quakers
worldwide in honor of their 300 years of work toward peace. Now
headquartered in Philadelphia, AFSC has more than 40 office
programs in the United States and in other parts of the world. This
AFSC community “works to transform conditions and relationships
both in the world and in ourselves, which threaten to overwhelm what
is precious in human beings. We nurture the faith that conflicts can be
resolved nonviolently, that enmity can be transformed into friendship,
strife into cooperation, poverty into well-being, and injustice into
dignity and participation. We believe that ultimately goodness can
prevail over evil, and oppression in all its many forms can give way.”
 252 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

parties and drinking coffee, they realize that even though they are on
opposite sides politically, they are in the same position as people. They
were both just told lies, lies, lies, and that’s why they picked up the guns
and started to fight. Now they are sitting together.
We never come and officially say, “Today we will have a meeting
about reconciliation at 10:00 or 11:00.” We only have meetings when
there is something to discuss about agriculture, we post a notice saying,
“today will be about composting or rainwater harvesting.” Then they will
know that everyone should come and participate. But, never meetings
solely for reconciliation.

LC: In some ways it sounds like it’s not just the work that
Tuzla Lotosice garden you’re doing, but it’s also the common space that is important
is located in the center
of the town. in this process.
Photo used with permission
by Davorin Brdanovic, AFSC It’s a safe area. Because, inside, gardeners feel without weight.
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 253

They leave everything behind them when they come in the garden.
The garden becomes an area that gives them absolutely a peaceful time.
There’s no stress inside. No one is forcing them to do anything. They’re
absolutely free to do whatever they want. They even bring their whole
families sometimes. That’s why we built the children’s playground.

Erika Svendsen: What exactly are the therapeutic gardens?

They [AFSC and the German government] decided that the project
is going to create new, well equipped demonstration gardens like the
horticulture education gardens, but with each focusing on different
mental and physical health issues in large part resulting from the war.
We already have three therapeutic gardens inside our projects. There
is 57 percent unemployment. And who’s unemployed? The disabled.
Let’s be real. So there’s a real need for gardens that can accommodate
the disabled.
We plan to develop the therapeutic gardens and community gardens
hand-in-hand, with a strong emphasis on establishing new gardens. This
is the idea: We will partner with the health and disability organizations
who already have land. I’ll help them to organize a therapeutic garden see KAMP page 110
p 

and will teach them how to become horticultural therapists. I’ll also bring
people without disability to the gardens at the disability organizations.
We’ll use the additional space that was not slated specifically for
therapeutic uses to create a garden for the broader community. I’ll
demonstrate to the AFSC that I’m promoting reconciliation between
mentally disabled people and healthy people! Now I have the perfect
plan for how to get long-term community gardens to make reconciliation
between members and disabled people.
Where did this idea come from? The Kula [prison] yard. We have
a garden that is now temporarily closed. We were working with a
maximum security jail. They gave us the land and I ran the program. see jiler page 178
p 

I asked the director if he would open the gates and find prisoners who
wanted to work in the garden. We started working with prisoners and
after 1 year you could come in the garden and see a magnificent story.
There were eight prisoners sitting in the garden and having coffee with
the gardeners, because they have an interest, finally, to speak with
someone. They bring them coffee, juice, cigarettes, but they help with
weeding. It was Kula last year.
254 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

The Gardeners
LC: Does your program have a waiting list?
Yes, unfortunately, at this moment our waiting list is around 4,000
people.

LC: Do people consider working in the gardens a job? How do they

think about it?
You need to know that all the gardeners are unemployed. And we also
have a number of refugees, returnees, and retired people.

LC: Returnees are?

When you are a refugee you go somewhere and then when you come
back you are a returnee. The reason that category is very important is
that ethnic cleansing happened in Bosnia and Herzegovina. You know
that. The leaders wanted to have “ethnically clean areas”, with only one
ethnicity in one area. Before the war, it was completely mixed. We are
trying to help people come back because they still have property, land,
apartments, flats, houses. Local politicians don’t want them to return.
When they return, it’s impossible for them to find jobs and it’s very
difficult for them to get papers. That’s our priority, to help them so that
they at least have food before they begin working.

ES: What is the composition of the garden population? Do you have

the same gardeners or do people change year to year?
All our gardens are multi-ethnic with the same percentage of the
ethnicity as there was in the area before the war. That’s what we are
trying to do. By the way, just to explain, speaking of ethnicity, we have
three major ethnicities: Serb, Croat, and Bosniak. By religion, Croats are
99.9 percent Catholic, Serbs are 99.9 percent Christian Orthodox, and
Bosniaks are 99.9 percent Muslim. About 20 percent of our gardeners
change each year. Normally, the refugees move away from the location
of the garden and are therefore a difficult population to work with
in the long term. We are trying to help refugees. All our gardens are
multi-ethnic except for the garden in Srebrenica, because of the mass
killing that happened there. The refugees of Srebrenica will never return
because that place has such bad memories for them.
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 255

Parceling the Vogosca

garden into family units.
Photo used with permission
by Davorin Brdanovic, AFSC
 256 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

“The perfect reconciliation

for them is coffee time.”
Participants at the Stup
garden in Sarajevo.
Photo used with permission
by Davorin Brdanovic, AFSC
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 257

LC: So how do you identify good applicants?

We work with local organizations: Caritas, a Catholic organization;
Merhamet, which is for Muslims; Dobrotvor for Orthodox; Red Cross; and
the Center for Social Work. We tell them about our program and what we
want to do. We ask them who wants to work and they help to find people
who are actually able to work. Unfortunately there are people who are
almost 90 years old who desperately want to apply, but are not fit for
the work. You want to ideally find at least a larger family. After we receive
the recommendations from the organization, we make a selection, and
then sometimes we have a short interview — sometimes through the
telephone. We check if all the data is correct that they give us. In the
beginning, some people applied and looked fine on paper, but when you
give them the seeds, they just took them and sold them on the market
and never showed up again. Now we try to find families who really want
to work and accept that the work is important. With our new therapeutic
garden program, we will adjust the garden application form to ask:
“Do you have the mind to work with the mentally disabled? Can you
accept it?”

The Gardens
LC: Can you give more of a physical description of the gardens and
farms? Talk about what they look like, what is grown there, that sort
of thing.
First I’ll tell you that we have 14 gardens this year; generally we have 20.
We have two main gardens: one is in Stup and one in East Sarajevo, in
Kula. We call these the main gardens because these gardens have all the
equipment. In Stup, we have a greenhouse, a place where they can keep
their tools, a place where they can dress and wash themselves. They
have a kitchen where they can cook and prepare. They have tables for
rest, they have a children’s playground. A complete irrigation system was
made. These two gardens are also gardens for education. We bring the
gardeners from the other gardens for 1 or 2 days just to show them the
things that they don’t have in their gardens. It’s around 10,000 square
meters and has a 400-square-meter greenhouse. That garden
is our first garden.
The difference from the other gardens is that all the others are
“satellite” gardens. These gardens are just pieces of land and only one
258 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

garden has a shelter. Mostly gardeners bring the tools with them, dig, do
their work, and bring their tools back home with them. These gardens
are not protected because the land is not given to us for the long
term. It’s not worth it to invest in something like making a fence or an
irrigation system.
I need to describe the plots. We have 17 families inside and each
member of the family has 50 square meters of land. After doing some
research, we found that 50 square meters with 25 different types of
vegetables, if it’s well managed, fertilized, prepared, and taken care
of, can give you exactly what one person needs for 1 year in terms of
vegetables. They are small plots, and we’re always mixing the plots so
that people do not have the same plot of land every year. If member
numbers of a family change — if a son marries and leaves there will be
one less family member, so the plot size will change, and we move the
borders using a small, thin rope.

LC: You can’t be at all these gardens at once, do you have volunteers
or staff who help you?
We have two women, two agronomists. I have an office manager
and a maintenance worker at the two main gardens. That’s all the
employees we have: me plus four. And one more, an assistant to work on
development. We tried with the volunteers, but the problem is this: when
you have 57 percent unemployment, who will be a volunteer? People are
starving! Now they will volunteer?

LC: Are any of the gardens permanently protected as parkland?

No. They have existed for longer than 5 years, and probably will exist
another 3 years at least. But I don’t have anything that is signed that
says these gardens can remain for the long term, so it’s risky to invest
in such types of gardens.
All the gardens, which are working already, will be registered as
independent NGOs. We will finish this year with nine registered gardens
with garden leaders who have completed education on how to run a
small NGO. We will partner them with brother and sister organizations.
After this step, my idea is to create a community garden association
of Bosnia and Herzegovina, an umbrella organization that serves all
registered NGOs.
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 259

How did you get involved in this

sort of work? And how has this
work, in turn, affected you?
I don’t have a background in agronomy. Then I started to work for AFSC, started
I studied economics, which actually helped this gardening project, and got my brain
me only for a few years before the war. functioning again, full of ideas and new
During the war, there was no economy. things. I know I’m doing something good
I stayed in Sarajevo, which was under that helps people and it makes me happy.
siege for 4 years. Under siege means: no
food, no water, no electricity, no nothing.
To survive there I had to do something to
not be taken into the army. I knew how
to use the computer and I had a small
computer at home. The people who knew
much more about computers left Sarajevo
already….Bosnia was without a brain,
without knowledge. Everybody left. I taught
myself a bit about computers and started
to repair them. I had to somehow find
money because everything was gone. Money
disappeared and wasn’t worth anything,
except for German marks. Fifty German
marks, which is like $35-40 was
1L of oil or 1 kilo of sugar. One golden ring,
was worth one box of cigarettes.
Then I started to work for different
organizations, asking them to pay me. I
know English, so I started working for
different international organizations.
Sitting at home, I began to think. “I have
$1 in my pocket. How wonderful would it
be to have another zero: $10 in my pocket?”
I could have cigarettes or coffee. So I work,
work, work, and I have that $10. “It would
be absolutely wonderful to have one more
zero: $100. I could have better food and
even something to drink.” Work, work,
work, the zero comes. After 6 years finally
I have enough money to buy a space and
open offices, but I am working 24 hours a
day with no time to meet, I don’t have time
for myself. I don’t have anything.” I called
my wife and said, “Tomorrow we are going
to sell the company. I want to do something
that makes me happy. I’m unhappy for
6 years.
260 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

LC: And are the gardens in urban areas or in more rural,

farm-like areas?
It depends. In Tuzla, we have a garden in the center of the town. In Doboj,
we have a garden in the center of town. In Bosnia and Herzegovina,
the towns are not so big. Sarajevo is around 600,000 people and
the nearest town is around 10,000 people. So, its not big towns with
suburban areas like in the US. Most gardens are in town, not in the
center, but in town.

The Future
LC: What are some of the biggest challenges that you face?
The biggest challenge is to deal with the politicians and the post-war
situation, which is still impossible. When they are on camera, politicians
promise support to my program. But in reality, multi-ethnic gardens
have the potential to negatively affect their political support base.

ES: We are all clear on how important your program is at this point
in time after the war, but do you see it as something that will
continue after the war for 20 or 30 years?
Generally, I’m an optimist. I think I can teach these garden leaders not
to lose faith in finding the resources for this project, because it doesn’t
cost a lot of money to grow vegetables. Also, I think that gardens will
increase in Bosnia and Herzegovina because there’s so much land
without ownership, or owners are missing or disappeared. Even in the
town where our gardens are, near Stup and Kula, I see that people who
didn’t have the opportunity to be involved in the program are using the
land near the airport to garden. I don’t know if the idea came to them
from these gardens or somewhere else. I have 2,000 people in the
project who return back to their homes and talk about what they did in
the garden with their friends and give a very positive picture. Consider
that these 2,000 people have at least five friends or relatives who will
then have a very positive opinion of the gardens — the idea is spreading.
Maybe in invisible ways, I don’t know. That’s why, if you come to Sarajevo
you can see areas that are starting to be gardens and I have no idea
whose they are. They just come totally unorganized, have their plots,
and garden on their own.
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 261

Dialogue With Colleague:

I have seen the same problem in countries all over the world and
right here in New York City, people who don’t have work they feel
is important to ground and focus them, who feel depressed or
disenfranchised, are easily manipulated by the media into blaming
others for their problems. In Bosnia and with similar projects in
Europe designed to provide work for refugee migrants we can see
how community gardening can really provide an antidote to the
feeling of powerlessness that makes people easy to manipulate. We
like to think that situations like in Bosnia won’t happen here in New
York, but it hasn’t been so many years since we have had riots based
on race and social injustice. Perhaps our gardens, too, can provide an
outlet for these feelings and a place for safe dialogue that will help
prevent this type of problem from occurring in the future.

Both Davorin and I have been promoting the idea of a European

Community Gardening Association, perhaps even a Worldwide
Community Gardening Association. The more we travel for our
jobs the more we meet people with similar problems of garden
preservation, organizing and getting financial and governmental
support. A global network is one way that we see community
gardening projects being able to help each other to be more
sustainable. In that light, some important questions I offer to
Davorin are:
• Do gardeners have the skills and desire to
manage their own projects?

• Will the association create a better political constituency

for gardens?

• Will the association be sustainable in the long

run without Davorin?

• What are the key benefits of the gardens

being independent?

Edie Stone
NYC Parks GreenThumb
 262 Restorative Commons Interview with Davorin Brdanovic

Working in the Kula prison

orchard.
Photo used with permission
by Davorin Brdanovic, AFSC
Gardens for Peace and Reconciliation 263

LC: Do you have someone or something who inspires you personally?

My grandfather was born in Sarajevo, my father was born in Sarajevo,
and I was born in Sarajevo. And actually I’m living in the same apartment
where I was born, still. This means that what inspires me in this work
is recovering and rebuilding after the war. I live in a wonderful country,
which is really the best country to live in — the former Yugoslavia.
I think that war is impossible. I don’t care who is who. I don’t ask,
“Are my friends Muslim? Are they Orthodox? Are they Catholic? Are they
Jewish?” I don’t care. That was the last thing that would be mentioned.
Who cares what religion or ethnicity you are? Somehow, after Yugoslavia
broke up, it became the most important thing. “Who you are. Are you
Muslim, Catholic, Serb, Croat, Bosnian, whatever?” When the war began,
first in Croatia and then spread to Bosnia, I denied that it could possibly
come to Sarajevo. When the first grenade fell in Sarajevo, I was leaning
on the window. My wife said, “Do you see? When will you stop believing
that the war is impossible?” I said, “Don’t worry, the grenade is far away.”
I still wanted to believe that the life that I had, the friendships that I had,
would continue. Now I think 80 percent of my friends live elsewhere.
Why did I stay? Why do I do this? For me, my mission is that
someday I will see all my friends return. I KNOW that they will return
one day, sooner or later. Somehow, it’s destiny. I look at all these former
Yugoslavian people all over the world: Canada, the States, Australia,
Europe. They are creating a seed for a new generation of people. My
generation will return and perhaps their children will stay. My mission
is to provide a way to make this possible.
Appendices
Appendices
 266 Restorative Commons appendices

About the Editors Meristem, Inc., a 501(c)3 non-profit

organization based in New York City, promotes
This volume was researched, nature’s role in the improvement of human
health and well-being by providing resources
organized, and edited by
for understanding and developing Restorative
Anne Wiesen, Executive Gardens and Commons.

Director of Meristem and

Meristem hosts three program areas:
Lindsay Campbell, Research Restorative Gardens in healthcare settings
are designed to link human wellness to
Urban Planner at the U.S.
the vitality of nature. Meristem’s online
Forest Service Northern library provides a literature review and
case studies of gardens that exemplify
Research Station.
restorative theory and design principles.

The Restorative Commons program

launches the Restorative Garden model
into public space — integrating design
with a broad spectrum of emerging
best practices in creating public places
of health and renewal.

The Meristem Forum Series offers

frameworks and venues for multi-
disciplinary professionals and practitioners
to exchange ideas and collaborate in
shaping the Restorative Commons
concept, practices and principles.

Meristem the botanical term, refers to

specialized plant cells that both rebuild and
initiate new structures at critical junctures of
the organism. Meristem the organization, uses
this model to catalyze nature’s revitalizing
Previous Page:
potential in the landscape of public health.
Green Apple Market,
Grand Army Plaza,
Brooklyn.
Photo used with permission
by photographer John Seitz
ABOUT THE EDITORS 267

The U.S. Forest Service Northern The Urban Field Station partners with
Research Station’s New York City municipal managers to create innovative
Urban Field Station conducts research to “research in action” programs to support
answer the broad question, “How can urban urban ecosystem management. Forest Service
greening be managed and understood as a scientists and partners conduct comparative
tool for improving quality of life?” It does this research and disseminate knowledge
in the country’s largest metropolitan area, throughout other metropolitan regions in the
New York City. The Urban Field Station United States and globally. The Field Station
currently has three primary research areas: links to a growing network of U.S. Forest
Stewardship Mapping: Fills the gap in Service scientists, facilities, and university
understanding about how citizens serve cooperators focused on urban research.
as stewards by conserving, managing,
monitoring, advocating for, and educating
the public about their local environments
(including water, land, air, waste, toxics,
and energy issues); currently studying
the organizational characteristics, social
networks, and spatial distribution of
thousands of civic environmental groups
in New York City

Urban Tree Canopy: Analyzing urban tree

canopy and urban tree mortality issues to
support the New York City’s 30 percent
canopy cover goal by 2030 and the efforts
to plant 1 million new trees citywide on
public and private lands

Environmental Literacy: Research

projects and partnerships aim to cultivate
environmental awareness, knowledge, and
skills of urban residents — with a particular
emphasis on youth and students
 268 Restorative Commons appendices

Meristem Forum:
Restorative Commons
for Community Health
March 30, 2007
The New York Academy of Medicine

Agenda
8:00 Arrival and Continental Breakfast
D
8:30 Welcome and Opening Remarks
Anne Wiesen, Executive Director, Meristem
David Kamp, Principal, Dirtworks, PC Landscape Architecture

8:45 Keynote Address: “Biophilia: A Neurologist’s Perspective”

Oliver Sacks, MD, New York University and Albert Einstein College of Medicine

9:15 Landscape Architects, Physicians,

and the Health of American Cities E
Robert Martensen, MD, Ph.D, Chair, Medical Humanities, Brody School of Medicine

9:50 Nature and Psychological Well-Being

Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D, Principal, Heerwagen and Associates, Seattle, WA

10:30 Break

10:45 Discussion Session I

Facilitator: Geri Weinstein-Breunig, Principal Cultural Waters, Madison, WI

11:45 Lunch

 FORUM AGENDA 269

12:30 Creating Restorative Settings

David Kamp, Principal, Dirtworks, PC Landscape Architecture

12:45 Sustainability — Where the Rubber Meets the Road

Hillary Brown, Principal, New Civic Works

1:00 Urban Gardens: Details of the Restorative Infrastructure

John Seitz, Senior Associate, Cook + Fox Architects

1:15 Open Space & Well-Being: Cultivating Resilience

Erika Svendsen, Social Science Researcher, Urban Planner, USDA Forest Service
James Jiler, Director, GreenHouse on Riker’s Island, New York Horticultural Society

1:40 Fresh Kills Landfill to Landscape:

Environmental and Human Health, A Reciprocal Relationship

Jeffery Sugarman, Associate Urban Designer, NYC Department of City Planning

2:00 Break

2:15 Discussion Session II

Facilitator: Geri Weinstein-Breunig, Principal Cultural Waters, Madison, WI

3:30 Summary of the Forum and Closing Comments

4:00 Adjourn
 270 Restorative Commons appendices

Meristem Forum:
Restorative Commons
for Community Health
March 30, 2007
The New York Academy of Medicine

Forum Participants
Affiliations current as of 2008
Noga Arikha, Ph.D Candace Damon
Scholar and Author, “Passions and Tempers: Partner, Hamilton, Rabinovitch & Alschuler
A History of the Humors.”
Judith H. Heerwagen, Ph.D.
Rob Bennaton J.H. Heerwagen & Associates, Inc.
Garden & Greening Program Seattle, WA
New York City Housing Authority
Jane Jackson
Erika Blacksher, Ph.D. Director of Programming
RWJ Health & Society Scholar New York Restoration Project
Columbia University
Kevin Jeffries
Mailman School of Public Health
Deputy Commissioner for Public Programs
Hillary Brown, AIA NYC Parks and Recreation
Principal, New Civic Works
James Jiler
Josephine Bush Director of the GreenHouse Program
Chair, Board of Directors The Horticultural Society of New York
Urban Resources Initiative
David Kamp, ASLA, LF
New Haven, CT
President, Dirtworks, PC
Lindsay Campbell
Research Urban Planner
U.S. Forest Service
Northern Research Station
FORUM PARTICIPANTS 271

Victoria Marshall, CLA Edie Stone

Principal, Till Design Director, GreenThumb
Hoboken, NJ NYC City Parks and Recreation

Jeffery C. Sugarman
Robert Martensen MD, Ph.D
Associate Urban Designer
Director, Medical History & Museum
New York City Department of City Planning
National Institute of Health
Washington, D.C. Erika S. Svendsen
Research Social Scientist
Charles McKinney
NYC Urban Field Station
Chief of Design, Capital Projects
U.S. Forest Service
NYC Parks and Recreation
Annette Terry
Nicole W. Moorehead
Assistant Director
Chief of Staff to the Deputy Commissioner
Department of Resident Support Services
for Public Programs
New York City Housing Authority
NYC Parks and Recreation

Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Geri Weinstein-Breunig

President Principal, Cultural Waters
Foundation for Landscape Studies
Anne Wiesen
Oliver Sacks, MD
Executive Director, Meristem
Albert Einstein College of Medicine
New York University Medical Center
Elizabeth Wiesen
Brian Sahd, Ph.D. Columbia University, Ph.D. Candidate
VP, Capital Construction and Real Estate Dissertation: “Humoral Medicine and Ecology”
New York Restoration Project

John Seitz, AIA

Director of Sustainable Design
HOK

Robin Simmen
Manager, Brooklyn Greenbridge
Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Alex Stark
Architect and Feng Shui Master
 272 Restorative Commons appendices

Davorin Brdanovic
Contributor Biographies Director, American Friends Service Committee
Community Gardening Program, Sarajevo, Bosnia
Rob Bennaton
and Herzegovina.
Community Coordinator, Garden & Greening
Davorin Brdanovic is the Director of the
Program, New York City Housing Authority,
American Friends Service Committee
New York, NY
community gardening program in Bosnia
Rob Bennaton is a Community Coordinator
and Herzegovina. The project focuses on
with the New York City Housing Authority’s
reintegration of ethnic groups in Bosnia and
(NYCHA) Garden & Greening Program within
Herzegovina by providing common space,
the Department of Community Operations.
productive work, and access to healthy food
The objective of the Garden & Greening
through gardening. Previously, Brdanovic
Program is to support public housing
studied economics and was self-employed
residents who beautify the grounds of housing
in a computer repair business during and
developments in which they live by cultivating
immediately following the Balkan War.
flower, vegetable or theme gardens. Bennaton
is one of only two Community Coordinators
Hillary Brown, AIA
working within the Housing Authority’s Garden
Principal, New Civic Works, New York, NY
& Greening Program, which provides garden
Hillary Brown is principal of New Civic
material resources and technical assistance
Works, which assists government agencies,
to 600-plus New York City Housing Authority’s
institutional, and nonprofit clients, as well as
residents’ gardens. He has an extensive
private developers, in adopting sustainable
background in urban horticulture and habitat
design practices for their capital projects and
restoration and prior to NYCHA, has worked
programs. As former founder of NYC’s Office
with the New York Botanical Gardens, the
of Sustainable Design, she oversaw its 1999
Natural Resources Group of the City of New
“High Performance Building Guidelines,” and
York’s Department of Parks & Recreation,
more recently envisioned and coauthored its
Bronx River Restoration, and Bissel Gardens.
“High Performance Infrastructure Guidelines.”
Bennaton earned his undergraduate degree
Brown has served on the national board and
in biology and economics from Fordham
currently the New York chapter board of the
University (2000), a commercial horticulture
U.S. Green Building Council. She teaches
certificate in landscape management from
sustainable design at Princeton and Columbia
the New York Botanical Gardens (2003) and a
University Schools of Architecture. Brown was
master’s degree in urban planning with a focus
a 2000 Loeb Fellow at Harvard University’s
on environmental planning from the Pratt
Graduate School of Design, and a Bosch Public
Institute Center for Graduate Planning & the
Policy Fellow in 2001 at the American Academy
Environment (2007).
in Berlin.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES 273

Lindsay Campbell places and elements, such as flowers, water,

Research Urban Planner, U.S. Forest Service trees, and animals. Her work with Orians has
Northern Research Station, New York, NY appeared in “The Adapted Mind” (Oxford
Lindsay Campbell is an urban planning University Press 1992) and “The Biophilia
researcher with the U.S. Forest Service, Hypothesis” (Island Press 1993). Her recent
Northern Research Station assigned to the work, with Bert Gregory, President of Mithun
New York City Urban Field Station. She is architects in Seattle, has begun to explore
co-researcher with Erika Svendsen on the how features and attributes of nature can be
Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project used to design buildings and spaces that are
(STEW-MAP), a study of 3,000 environmental healthy and appealing. She has lectured widely
groups in New York City. Svendsen and on sustainability and biocentric design and
Campbell were awarded the 2008 EDRA/Places coedited a book “Biophilic Design: Theory,
Award for Research for their work on the Living Research and Practice” (John Wiley 2007).
Memorials Project, a project to understand In 2005 the American Society of Interior
changes in the use of the landscape and natural Designers selected her as an “environmental
resources in response to September 11, 2001. champion.”
She began working for the Forest Service on a
one year fellowship, funded by the Princeton Dil Hoda
Class of 1956. She has a bachelor’s degree C.E.O, Tern Group, Hoboken, NJ
from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Dil Hoda is the founder and C.E.O. of Tern Group,
School of Public Policy and International Affairs. a real estate development company focused
Campbell has a master’s of city planning from on creating sustainable communities. Currently
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he is developing a 7-million-square-foot mixed-
where she was a MIT-USGS Science Impact use project on a closed landfill in Elizabeth,
Collaborative Graduate Fellow. NJ. His projects focus on blending financial,
environmental, transportation, and arts-related
Judith Heerwagen, Ph.D. elements into cohesive, sustain-able systems.
Principal, J.H. Heerwagen & Associates, He has also developed the Monroe Center
Seattle, WA for the Arts, a culturally anchored mixed-use
Judith Heerwagen is an environmental and development in Hoboken, NJ. Prior to his
evolutionary psychologist. Her research and development activities, Hoda worked as a
writing have explored the relationship between banker in New York and as a civil engineer in
nature and people from an evolutionary India and Saudi Arabia. Hoda teaches real
perspective. With ecologist Gordon Orians estate development at New York University’s
she has used habitat selection theory as a Real Estate Institute. He has a master’s of
basis for understanding the strong emotional business administration degree from University
bonds that connect humans to natural of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School.
 274 Restorative Commons appendices

James Jiler David Kamp, ASLA, LF

Former Director, GreenHouse on Rikers Island, President, Dirtworks, PC Landscape Architecture;
New York, NY Meristem Co-founder and Board Member,
James Jiler is former Director of The New York, NY
Horticultural Society of New York’s GreenHouse In his 30 years of practice, David Kamp’s
Program, a jail-to-street horticulture program contributions to landscape architecture have
at New York City’s jail complex on Rikers Island. encompassed planning, large-and small-scale
GreenHouse provides men and women inmates design, research, writing, teaching, and public
with vocational skills, science learning and service. Kamp has collaborated with many of
horticultural therapy through landscape design, the country’s leading architects on projects
garden installation and greenhouse and garden throughout the United States and abroad,
maintenance. Once released ex-offenders have including his leadership as Associate in Charge
the opportunity to continue developing their of Australia’s New Parliament House. Kamp
horticulture skills as paid interns with HSNY’s has engaged in continuing research from
GreenTeam. Graduates of GreenTeam are self-directed studies in healthcare and the
encouraged and helped to find full-time human condition as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard
employment with private businesses, nonprofit University. As the first landscape architect
organizations or city and state agencies as invited as an artist-in-residence at the
professionals in the field. His work has been MacDowell Colony, America’s oldest and most
featured in a recent documentary called the prestigious artist colony, Kamp developed
“Healing Gardens” and has also been featured a series of prototypical gardens serving a
in “The New York Times”, “The Daily News”, range of individuals with special needs. An
“Newsday”, “The Source”, and “National advocate and practitioner of ecologically
Audubon Magazine” among others. Jiler is sound design, Kamp contributed to the
author of the book “Doing Time in the Garden” “Green Guide for Healthcare Construction.”
(New Village Press 2006), which details the Several American and international television
GreenHouse approach to rehabilitation and documentaries have featured Kamp and
explores the role of gardening in jails and the projects of Dirtworks. In 2006, he was
prisons around the country. James Jiler is featured in “Recreating Eden,” a Canadian
currently residing in Miami, FL, helping to produced documentary series exploring the
establish similar environmental programs for role of gardens in the lives of people. Kamp
the Florida State Prison system through was featured in “GardenStory” on PBS in
Artspring — a nonprofit that provides an arts spring 2008 showing how restorative gardens
curriculum to incarcerated women and youth. support health and enrich the lives of patients,
Jiler holds a master’s degree in forestry from visitors, and staff in healthcare facilities.
Yale University.
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES 275

Susan Lacerte landscape architecture practice that offers

Executive Director, Queens Botanical Garden professional design services for contemporary
Susan Lacerte has served as Executive landscapes such as brownfields, waterfronts,
Director of the Queens Botanical Garden rooftops, and landfills. TILL’s design approach
since 1994. She has a unique combination is based in disturbance ecology which is best
of extensive horticultural and financial described as a practice that engages different
experience. Lacerte was Director of Adult stakeholders’ input and preferences over
Education and Public Programs at the multiple time cycles and results in designs
Brooklyn Botanic Garden from 1985–1990 and that are spatially heterogeneous, distributed,
worked for the New York City Council Finance and responsive with socio-natural systems.
Division as a budget analyst from 1991–1994.
Lacerte has written botany, horticulture and Robert Martensen, M.D., Ph.D.
geographic entries for The Concise Columbia Director, Office of NIH History and Museum,
Encyclopedia, the Macmillan children’s National Institute of Health, Washington, D.C.
dictionaries, and The Cambridge Gazetteer With perspectives drawn from his training in
of the United States and Canada. She holds medicine and history, Robert Martensen’s
a master’s in Public Administration from recent work examines mind-body relationships
NYU Wagner School of Public Service and a in Western thought in different contexts.
B.S. in Environmental Horticulture, University For general readers, he has just completed
of Connecticut. writing “The American Way of Illness: Eight
Tales from the Front Lines” (Farrar, Straus &
Victoria Marshall, CLA Giroux in press). His 2004 book, “The Brain
Founder and Principal, TILL, Hoboken, NJ Takes Shape: an Early History” (Oxford)
Victoria Marshall is both a landscape architect explores cultural debates that took place
and urban designer. She studied at the during the Scientific Revolution concerning
University of Pennsylvania PennDesign (1997) the physiological basis of reason, emotion,
and has taught at that school as well as and personhood. In collaboration with artists
Parsons The New School for Design, Columbia including Robert Irwin and landscape architect
GSAPP, Pratt Institute School of Architecture, David Kamp, Martensen also has explored
The University of Toronto ALD, and Harvard Western perceptions of nature and the role
GSD. Her current research aims to translate of gardens in healing. His previous work has
urban ecology frameworks as urban design been supported by the National Institutes of
models in the U.S. East Coast Megalopolis. Health, the Wellcome Trust, and a Guggenheim
This work is manifest in the recently published fellowship.
book in collaboration titled “Designing Patch
Dynamics: Baltimore.” Marshall is also the
founder of TILL (2002) a mainland-based
 276 Restorative Commons appendices

Ian Marvy Colleen Murphy-Dunning

Executive Director, Added Value and Herban Director, Urban Resources Initiative at the
Solutions, Inc., Brooklyn, NY Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies,
Ian Marvy is a co-founder and the current New Haven, CT
Executive Director of Added Value and Herban Colleen Murphy-Dunning is the Director of
Solutions, Inc. Added Value’s mission is to the Urban Resources Initiative (URI) at the
promote the sustainable development of Red Yale School of Forestry & Environmental
Hook (Brooklyn) by nurturing a new generation Studies. Through the URI program, Yale
of youth leaders. Prior to founding Added graduate students learn community
Value, Marvy spent 15 years organizing youths forestry methods while contributing to the
to become a positive force for social change neighborhoods of New Haven. URI supports
in post-industrial cities and towns such as members of the New Haven community to
Holyoke, MA, Camden, NJ, and Philadelphia, become active stewards of their environment
PA. Marvy is a graduate of Hampshire College through two interconnected programs:
where he majored in political theory and Community Greenspace, a community-based
American history, receiving the Peace and neighborhood greening program; and Open
World Security Scholars Fellowship and the Spaces as Learning Places, an urban-based
Social Justice Scholarship. Marvy arrived in environmental science program. Murphy-
New York City in 1998 and worked for 2 years Dunning also partners with faculty to instruct
designing service-learning programs for youth courses in environmental justice, monitoring
caught in the juvenile justice system. In the and evaluation methods, and urban ecology.
winter of 2000, he began working with three Prior to coming to Yale University in 1995, she
teenagers and Michael Hurwitz (Added Value’s taught agroforestry extension courses at the
cofounder and now the Director of New York Kenya Forestry College. Murphy-Dunning holds
City GreenMarkets) to create Added Value. a master’s degree in forestry from Humboldt
Marvy was a 2002 Echoing Green Fellow. State University.
In 2004, Marvy and Hurwitz were honored
as Petra Foundation Social Justice Fellows. Oliver Sacks, M.D.
In 2007, the duo were recognized as Union Columbia University Medical Center, Professor
Square Awardees and were recipients of of Neurology and Psychiatry; Columbia University
the 2007 Glenwood Harvest Awards in honor Artist; Albert Einstein College of Medicine
of their efforts to grow a new generation and New York University School of Medicine,
of leaders. Professor of Neurology, New York, NY
Oliver Sacks is a physician and author known
for his elegantly written neurological case
studies. Both as a physician and as a writer,
Sacks is concerned with the ways in which
CONTRIBUTOR BIOGRAPHIES 277

individuals survive and adapt to different buildings including the University of Florida,
neurological diseases and conditions, and Rinker School of Building Construction and
what these experiences can tell us about the Chattanooga Development Resource Center.
human brain and mind. His books include Seitz is a member of the AIA, the USGBC, is
“The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat”, on the Meristem Board of Directors and has
“Awakenings” (which inspired the acclaimed taught at New York University and Harvard
1990 film as well as a play by Harold Pinter), University. Early in his career John spent
and more recently “Uncle Tungsten and 2 years in Papua New Guinea aiding villagers
Oaxaca Journal.” Sacks is a professor of in the construction of rainwater catchment
neurology at the Albert Einstein College of systems. An avid urban gardener, Seitz helped
Medicine and at the NYU School of Medicine, build community gardens throughout NYC
and a member of the American Academy of after his architectural studies at MIT and
Arts and Letters. His work has been supported Carnegie Mellon.
by the Solomon R. Guggenheim and the Alfred
P. Sloan Foundations. He is currently at work Edie Stone
on a book about music and the brain. “The Director, New York City Department of Parks and
New York Times” has referred to Sacks as Recreation GreenThumb Program, New York, NY
“the poet laureate of medicine,” and in 2002 Edie Stone has been the Director of the
he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize by New York City Department of Parks and
Rockefeller University, which recognizes the Recreation GreenThumb Program since
scientist as poet. 2001. GreenThumb supports community
efforts to create and maintain over 500
John Seitz, AIA community gardens throughout the city.
Director of Sustainable Design, HOK, New York, NY Prior to joining GreenThumb, Stone worked
At HOK Seitz is responsible for integrating for the Council on the Environment of New
sustainable design through the New York York City where she was active in helping
office’s projects and operations and leads community gardeners organize politically to
the office’s sustainable masterplanning work toward preservation of their garden sites.
initiatives. His 20 years of experience in the Stone is a former editor of the Council on
design, project management and delivery Economic Priorities “Corporate Environmental
of sustainably-designed high-performance Data Clearinghouse” and a contributor to
buildings has included positions with Cook the organization’s publication “Shopping
+ Fox Architects, Croxton Collaborative for a Better World.” Stone is a graduate of
Architects and William McDonough. He Barnard College of Columbia University and
managed the compilation of the World Trade the University of Michigan School of Natural
Center Sustainable Design Guidelines and the Resources.
design of numerous award-winning sustainable
 278 Restorative Commons appendices

Jeffery C. Sugarman, RA LEAD International. She serves on the advisory

Associate Urban Designer, City of New York Dept. boards of Meristem, Inc. and Groundwork
of City Planning, New York, NY USA. Svendsen is a graduate of Yale University
Jeffrey Sugarman is an Associate Urban School of Forestry and Environmental Studies
Designer at the New York City Department of and is currently a doctoral candidate at
City Planning. Most recently he was Project Columbia University’s Graduate School of
Director for the Fresh Kills End Use Master Architecture, Planning and Preservation.
Plan for the transformation of a 2200-acre
closed landfill on Staten Island, NY into a Anne Wiesen
new park and nature preserve. His work on Executive Director, Meristem
numerous large-scale development plans Anne Wiesen co-founded Meristem in 2001
and zoning initiatives has emphasized to create new possibilities for her interests in
the integration of architecture and open nature’s role in human health and well-being.
space. These include Arverne, a mixed-use Through Meristem, she has been able create
community plan for 7000 apartments with innovative partnerships with leading medical,
neighborhood and regional parks in Far design and land management practitioners
Rockaway, Queens; the NYC Comprehensive to join community health concerns with
Waterfront Plan; and Zoning and Urban the revitalization of local landscapes. The
Design Regulations for mandated publicly Restorative Commons initiative extended
accessible, waterfront open space. He studied these considerations to the design and
environmental design with Laurie Olin and programming of urban public spaces. Wiesen’s
Carol Franklin at the University of Pennsylvania studies in medical ethnobotany (MS, New
before receiving his M.Arch. from the York University), human development (M.Ed.,
University of Virginia in 1980. Harvard University) and landscape design
(New York Botanical Garden), helped shape
Erika Svendsen Meristem and continue to influence her
Research Social Scientist, U.S. Forest Service, cross-cultural medical theory research and
Northern Research Station, New York, NY its applications to plant medicine practices,
Erika Svendsen is a social science researcher restorative garden design, and urban planning.
with the U.S. Forest Service, Northern
Research Station assigned to the New York
City Urban Field Station. Svendsen is the
former director of the NYC Parks Department’s
citywide community gardening program,
GreenThumb. Prior to her work in New
York City, she worked for The Rockefeller
Foundation’s Global Environment Program and
Campbell, Lindsay; Wiesen, Anne. 2009. Restorative commons:
creating health and well-being through urban landscapes. Gen. Tech.
Rep. NRS-P-39. Newtown Square, PA: U.S. Department of Agriculture,
Forest Service, Northern Research Station. 278 p.

A collection of 18 articles inspired by the Meristem 2007 Forum,

“Restorative Commons for Community Health.” The articles include
interviews, case studies, thought pieces, and interdisciplinary
theoretical works that explore the relationship between human health
and the urban environment. This volume is a joint endeavor of Meristem
and the U.S. Forest Service Northern Research Station as they work
to strengthen networks of researchers and practitioners to develop
new solutions to persistent and emergent challenges to human health,
well-being, and potential within the urban environment.

Keywords: civic stewardship; natural resource management;

design with nature; neighborhood resilience; sustainable city;
green infrastructure; ecology.

Non-discrimination statement
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) prohibits discrimination in all its programs and
activities on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, disability, and where applicable,
sex, marital status, familial status, parental status, religion, sexual orientation, genetic
information, political beliefs, reprisal, or because all or part of an individual’s income is
derived from any public assistance program. (Not all prohibited bases apply to all programs.)
Persons with disabilities who require alternate means for communication of program
information (Braille, large print, audiotape, etc.) should contact USDA’s TARGET Center
at (202)720-2600 (voice and TDD). To file a complaint of discrimination, write to USDA,
Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, DC 20250-
9410, or call (800)795-3272 (voice) or (202)720-6382 (TDD). USDA is an equal opportunity
provider and employer.

Printed on Recycled Paper

I ordered Restorative Commons for every student in my course this year,
and I plan to use it again next year. This important volume speaks to
reunifying urban planning and public health, which is central to our
Interdisciplinary Planning for Health course. I recommend Restorative

and Well-being through Urban Landscapes

Restorative Commons: Creating Health
Commons enthusiastically to all my students.
Dr. Mary E. Northridge
Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences, Mailman School of Public Health
Columbia University

Professionals and citizen advocates concerned with the planning

and design of 21st-century American cities will find a wealth of
valuable insights in this broad spectrum of multi-disciplinary essays.
Restorative Commons:
Creating Health
Dr. Reuben M. Rainey
Professor Emeritus, School of Architecture, University of Virginia

There is undoubtedly an inextricable link between healthy people and

healthful qualities of their environments. Restorative Commons illustrates
the many dimensions of this connection with detailed case studies
that serve as exemplary references for my colleagues at the Parks
and Well-being through
Urban Landscapes
Department. I’m proud that one of our own projects is featured in the
book and I welcome its presence in my personal library.
Adrian Benepe
Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation

The need for the world’s urban ecosystems to nourish human populations Edited by
and serve as restorative ecological landscapes is one of the most
pressing of the 21st century. This book is an excellent intellectual and Lindsay Campbell and Anne Wiesen
practical introduction to this mission. Together, the sections on theory
and concepts, on case studies, and on interviews with practitioners
Foreword by Oliver Sacks, M.D.
present a comprehensive view of the compelling idea of restorative urban
commons. I will certainly find the insights and perspectives useful as we
plan our future activities in the Baltimore Ecosystem Study, Long-Term
Ecological Research project.
Dr. Steward T. A. Pickett
Senior Scientist, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

General Technical Report NRS-P-39

I S B N 978-0-16-086416-2 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800
90000 Fax: (202) 512-2104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402-0001

I S B N 978-0-16-086416-2

9 780160 864162

General Technical Report NRS-P-39