Marco Crisciotti The story comes from the city of New York: in the Brooklyn neighborhood, Crown Heights area, the "Lincoln Place" street has earned the reputation of "the greenest block in the place", where plants, flowers and vegetation become protagonists in the heart of the city .
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Lincoln Place, tucked away in the heart of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, has been awarded the title of “greenest block in the neighborhood.” Recognition dates back to 2019 when, through its 25 annual “Greenest Block in Brooklyn” competition, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden gave this street the highly coveted title with a reward of $300. The money is going to be reinvested into soil and supplies to keep nurturing the greenery of the neighborhood.
It is an award that extols the beauty of this area so rich in plants and flowers and pays homage to the tireless work of the citizens who have transformed the whole block into an open-air green museum. It is a familiar story: love of one’s surroundings combined with a desire to preserve natural beauty in the heart of a metropolis.
A legacy of green: Perri Edwards and the art of gardening
The main characters in this story come with 65-year-old Perri Edwards, who nurtures plants from the 1940s like living heirlooms:
“That’s my grandmother’s plant. It’s just a simple thing. It was something that she loved, and I’ve kept it.” These plants, inherited from her grandmother, have stood as witnesses to the passage of time for love toward greenery rooted in the past and blossoming in the present.
As a matter of fact, every one of the balconies at Lincoln Place has its similar story to tell: plants in reused containers from old cans to upcycled furniture pieces would seem to say that life is always reborn in different forms.
PLANT Association: Turning a Neighborhood into a Green Oasis
Thanks to the effort of the gardening association PLANT, the whole neighborhood now looks like an oasis of green, a quiet island in the hustle and bustle of city life. Edwards likens Lincoln Place to a museum, where each plant is showcased for the world, like a work of art in nature. More than 60 homes joined the collective project, with greenery serving both as backdrop and beating heart for the neighborhood.
Althea Joseph is another long-time resident who inherited a love for gardening. She remembers fondly how her mother would tend to the plants at dawn, in preparation for breakfast to be cooked for the family, symbolically showing that the nourishing of the earth came before that of the family. Today, Joseph and Edwards serve as mentors to their neighbors, sharing their knowledge of gardening like seeds sprouting into new generations of gardeners.
Despite the competition for the “Greenest Block in Brooklyn” award, the community sustains an attitude of mutual encouragement. They help one another; they shared resources, together fostering a beauty literally growing before their eyes.
A community around green spaces
The competition serves as a kind of social cement. The aesthetic value of the plants considered by the criteria of judgment is extended to the contribution which greenery makes to communal life. Lincoln Place has been singled out because it “has united its residents in a common effort, keeping its estate tidy and a pleasure to live in.” Greenery, in this sense, becomes a metaphor for solidarity: just as plants grow with sunlight, so does the community with mutual assistance.
As Jibreel Cooper, who oversees the community program at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden says, this contest could be interpreted as one by which neighborhood relationships are nurtured, and it encourages an active sense of belonging to neighborhood life. “Green spaces beautify the environment, but more importantly, they make for safer and healthier communities. Each plant, each flower becomes a metaphor for rebirth and hope, as if nature could regenerate not just the landscape but also the spirits of those living in it.”.
A model for urban sustainability and collaboration
The story of Lincoln Place is clearly a tale of how an interest in gardening can change a neighborhood. Edwards and Joseph’s efforts are steeped in love of community. Like a garden that continues to grow and spread, so their commitment has grown into a model of sustainability and collaboration to which other cities may look.
