BY YANNIC RACK | A group of green-thumbed volunteers wants to help the city spruce up Sixth Ave., where dozens of planted refuge islands will soon take root along a new bike lane.
The Chelsea Garden Club, whose two dozen members already take care of the planted pedestrian islands along Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Aves., from W. 17th to W. 30th Sts., reached out to local elected officials last week to offer their expertise in keeping the new tree pits flourishing.
“It worries me that these pits are going up, because it’s our neighborhood and it’s just tough to look at them when they become completely derelict,” said club member Missy Adams, who lives on Ninth Ave. and has taken care of a tree bed there for the past six years.
She recently wrote to local officials, including State Senator Brad Hoylman, asking them to include the Garden Club in the planning process for the 30-or-so pits soon coming to the stretch of Sixth Ave., between W. 8th and W. 33rd Sts.
“These things are going up all over town, but they’re not going to look so great just being out there, with a patch of dirt and a half-dead tree,” Adams said.
“Let’s plan ahead so it has a really good chance of thriving.”
The city’s Parks Department normally hires a contractor to plant the trees, but Adams said they only water them for two years, after which the pits are largely left to the elements — as well as passing traffic and local litterbugs.
“There’s just no provision to take care of them beyond the two-year contract they have with whoever supplies the planting,” she said.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) announced late last year that Sixth Ave. would get the 1.2-mile protected bike lane as part of the city’s Vision Zero initiative, but initially didn’t plan to include raised pedestrian refuges.
The concrete islands were added after the Community Board 4 (CB4) Transportation Committee withheld its support for the proposal because it lacked sufficiently safe design at intersections.
The DOT expects to start the project this summer, and a spokesperson said the city was happy to discuss planting bed maintenance with any interested local parties.
Hoylman, in a Feb. 16 email response to Adams, also pledged to support the Garden Club.
“You share some valuable perspectives and I’m certain that the community along Sixth Avenue would benefit from your in-depth knowledge of managing greenery along protected bike lanes,” he wrote, adding, “I’ll certainly take you up on your offer of assistance as we move forward with future similar developments.”
Acknowledging that the Sixth Ave. bike lane project is “already underway,” and under DOT design/construction leadership, Hoylman pledged to “apprise NYC DOT of your insight, as well as, of course, the relevant local community boards and other elected officials.” A regular presence on area bike lanes, Hoylman noted that he “was just thinking about the Chelsea Garden Club’s contributions the other day as I took a Citi Bike down Ninth
Avenue. Your group has made a tremendous difference in the quality of life for Chelsea residents by creating lovely gardens in unexpected places.”
A spokesperson for the Parks Department said no contractor has been hired yet to plant the trees, and added that the community board and local gardeners would likely be involved with planting flowers and other greenery, and would be counted on to take care of the beds in the future.
The Chelsea Garden Club has maintained around 40 tree beds in the neighborhood since 2010, when then-State Senator Tom Duane organized a meeting between the volunteers and city agencies.
Back then, officials reached a loose agreement with the club and also educated its members on restrictions regarding the planting — tall fences, vegetables, and plants over a certain height are not allowed, for example.
Phyllis Waisman, another member of the club, said the islands would look pretty bleak without the care of volunteers. Her tree pit, which sits right outside her apartment at Ninth Ave. and W. 23rd St., blooms with daffodils, purple allium, stonecrops, daisies, and peonies.
“In the summer, it’s so beautiful,” she said, adding that she gardens once a week in the warmer months — cleaning up, watering plants with a hose and removing dead flower heads.
The pedestrian islands also have a more practical function than just serving as colorful flower displays, of course.
“It’s much safer to cross for seniors,” Waisman said.
Adams added that the pits can help absorb rainwater and reduce flooding, and said they also provide refuge for native birds and insects.
A DOT spokesperson said this week that the department now has support for the project from all affected community boards.
“This will bring benefits to pedestrians, cyclists and motorists by better organizing traffic, shortening crossing distances, and providing a more comfortable and safer biking experience to cyclists,” the spokesperson told Chelsea Now.
Christine Berthet, who serves as co-chair of CB4’s Transportation Committee and co-founded the pedestrian safety group CHEKPEDS (Clinton Hell’s Kitchen Coalition for Pedestrian Safety), was one of the forces advocating for the islands to be installed along the street.
She is also calling on the DOT to install split phase signals at all intersections along the bike path — which are only planned for two of them, at W. 14th and W. 23rd Sts., she said.
“Essentially 66 percent of the injuries on this stretch happen outside of those two main intersections, so we ask that all left turns are protected,” she said.
“It is frustrating because we are in the world of Vision Zero, and since DOT is redoing the corridor, why not take the opportunity to do it right? It’s really puzzling to us.”
Berthet noted that implementation of split phase signals along Eighth and Ninth Aves. reduced accidents there by 50%, whereas the DOT’s model achieves less than half of that on average.
“That’s what we’ve been fighting for,” she said. “It’s going to give you double the safety.”
Regarding the plantings, she said the community board had specifically told city officials to include local gardening groups.
“They’re fantastic, they’re very dedicated, knowledgeable and experienced regarding what plants work on those medians,” she said.
“They do a beautiful job. When you go down Chelsea, some of those gardens are gorgeous. It’s the best possible combination.”
The Chelsea gardeners themselves are wary of the idea of branching out to take care of the new pits themselves, largely because they’re too far away and volunteers are hard to come by.
“I don’t necessarily want to be responsible for them,” Adams said.
“We’re kind of set with what we have here, we can’t take on Sixth Avenue as well.”
No matter who ends up taking care of the tree pits, she said the garden club certainly knows how to care for them, and should therefore be involved in the design process.
“A lot of people don’t know what they’re getting into, because there are some unique challenges, in that there’s some theft and some vandalism, and a lot of garbage. And it’s difficult to get water to them,” Adams said.
Apart from that, she said the job is pretty straightforward.
“You just put a plant in the ground and pour some water on it.”
Tree pits can be found on Seventh, Eighth and Ninth Aves., from W. 17th to W. 30th Sts. Visit chelseagardenclub.blogspot for info on how to adopt a tree pit.
