The Riverside-Inwood Neighborhood Garden (RING)
Moves to the Lt. William Tighe Triangle
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After having been one of the first community gardens in New York City to be bulldozed (in November, 1987), the RING gardeners worked for two years to move operations to an asphalted Parks Dept. -owned triangle one block away, at the confluence of Broadway, Dyckman St., Riverside Drive, and Seaman Avenue. This triangle was largely empty, cracked asphalt that was often strewn with loaves of bread left for pigeons and trash. |
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We had had our eye on the Triangle as a centrally-located spot for a garden for some time. In 1989 RING secured grants from Assemblyman Murtaugh and Senator Leichter for $5,000 and from Columbia Presbyterian Neighborhood Fund for $1,000. In September, 1989 in a meeting with Manhattan Parks Commissioner, Pat Pompisello, he agreed that RING should move to the Triangle and that it would become Manhattan's second Green Streets garden. RING would purchase plants and railroad ties to hold in soil in a raised garden, much as we had done with the first garden. Parks would truck in soil, erect a chain link fence, and hammer together our railroad ties. In early spring, 1990, Parks transformed the triangle to a giant, raised-bed garden, ready to plant. RING was given the use of a stone shed nearby on Broadway at Thayer St. for our tools. By summer, RING volunteers had transformed the Triangle to a garden and won its first of many Mollie Parnis, Dress Up Your Neighborhood Contests. In 1994 RING received a grant of about $1,000 from Borough President Ruth Messinger, which purchased our first solar photovoltaic cell, our first pond, and our weatherproof bulletin board.
