Semilla is Growing (So Are Its Problems)

An update from Semilla Pocket Park, The Bronx, NY

The biggest challenge, two professional horticulturists advised me, wouldn’t be watering the plants. It’d be the dogs.

Last month, we planted at the new garden I’m starting (still of questionable legality, as we still have not heard back from New York City’s Department of Transportation).

I walked to another garden to pick up the “starter” plants.

“David!” Jason, the community horticulturist for the New York Botanical Garden, said as I walked in. “I picked these just for Semilla. They’re all tough and love the full sun.” Every year, NYBG hosts the “native plant share” in the Bronx. They supply community gardens with young plants.

Jason is a Bronx-born Puerto Rican. He was wearing a green NYBG shirt and a cap with a mushroom on it.

We walked over to a pile of plants in small plastic trays. “So I got you two clethra shrubs.” This was the first half of the Latin name for a shrub also called summersweet. “It does well in swampy and sandy areas and loves the sun. It’s perfect for Semilla. You just need to keep it wet.” He went on. “This is beach plum. Its fruit is too sour to eat but good for jam, or for the birds. It’s good fuel before they migrate south.”

All these plants, Jason reminded me, were young. “When you plant them, know how big they get.” He sent me a link to a sheet that said how tall and wide they’d get as well as when they flower, so we can plant them far enough apart for each to thrive.

“I also gave y’all plants that bloom at different times of the year, so the pollinators will always have something to eat.”

The closest experience I have to gardening is learning a language. You ask what something is. A “native speaker” tells you. You add it to your knowledge bank. From watching plants at the community garden, I now recognize the same plant at different stages.

When I saw “New York asters” in our native plant share pile, I jolted up, because I knew what they looked like in the fall when they flower.

These are the same type of plant. On the left are the seedlings we planted at Semilla Pocket Park. On the right is a picture I took last fall at the community garden, Maria Sola.

These asters don’t look like much now. But in the fall of 2027, they should look like the ones at Maria Sola.

On the day we planted these, another horticulturist joined me.

His name is George. He has what you think of as a “New York accent.” He’s Greek-American, raised in New York’s five boroughs. He’s in his 60s and walks with a cane due to knee issues.

At Maria Sola, he often walks in, sits back in a chair, lights a cigar, and watches the plants.

He calls himself a “New Deal Democrat,” and often is frustrated by the “Lefties,” for a number of reasons. “Many don’t seem to understand that ‘vibes’ don’t grow the plants, know-how does.”

I appreciate the diverse viewpoints the gardens bring, united by a common cause to steward land. I’ve met self-proclaimed anarchists, devout Christians who see every plant that grows as an act of God, and people like George, who’d say that doesn’t give the plants enough credit. They’re wired, like us, by millions of years of evolution to survive.

This day at Semilla, George directed the volunteers as we planted. “Make sure they’re far enough apart! Don’t forget to ruffle the roots! Add some compost before you fill in the hole!” He reminded me that they’re going to need lots of water.

“David, I know I sound like a broken record,” he took a puff of his cigar, “But these are young plants. They need babying. The hot days are coming.” George knows a warmer world is here because he sees how the hotter summers affect the plants.

After we finished planting, we spread a mix of shredded leaves and compost around the plants. This helps keep moisture in.

A dog without a leash strutted over. I darted my eyes to him. I watched him sniff one of the big rocks that separated our beds from the walking path with wood chips. He lifted his leg up. He started peeing.

“Hey!” I called out, with an instinctual clap.

The dog looked at me. I looked at him. I moved towards him and he rushed to finish his pee. I looked over to the owner. He was partway down the block.

He evaded my gaze, acting as if he had no dog.

I took a deep breath. In that moment, I decided to go talk to him. If he took his dog off the leash, that’s not my business. This is the Bronx. You don’t go into what’s not your business. But I wanted to ask if he could keep him off the beds, as dog pee can kill these plants. That was my business.

I took a deep breath and put a soft smile on my face, rejecting the urge to escalate.

“Hi, how—” he cut me off before I could ask how he was doing.

“I was here years before these new buildings!” He held his arms up and stepped backward. “This is a public space, you can’t tell me what to do.”

“Oh I know—” I began to try and return to my initial point, but he cut me off again.

“Y’all can plant whatever you want, but dogs are going to pee where they’re going to pee.” He continued.

Other dogs were not really my concern at the moment, I thought. Your dog is the one who just peed near the plants, but I knew there was no point in trying to speak over him.

“We’re good. We’re 100% good,” his arms were still up.

“Well—” he interrupted me again.

“We’re good. That’s that.” He turned away. I kept taking deep breaths.

I went back towards the plants. George, I could see, was not far behind me, ready to have my back.

“I can’t believe you didn’t say anything back to that guy,” George said. “I know I’ve said this before, but I think my bad knees really keep me out of trouble.”

George continued. “You know, and I know this is anecdotal, but in my large sample size, dog owners do not understand or care in the slightest about plants. I mean, the amount of dogs I see go out of their way to pee on nice flowers or young trees, it astounds me, it really does.”

“I just wanted to talk to him, you know, I didn’t want to antagonize him.”

“Well, good luck being reasonable with a dog owner. People who are otherwise completely kind and reasonable become much less so when they’re walking their dog.” George turned his palms up and shook his head, as if the problem were gravity, a law of the universe.

20 minutes later, another man walked by.

“Wow,” he said. “I’ve been observing the changes. Thank you so much for doing this. Can I help you guys with anything? Do you need donations?”

I had a bright smile. A stranger had noticed what we were doing. “Wow, thank you, but we got the materials we needed donated from the Botanical Garden.”

“Oh well can I buy you pizza?”

I took him up on it. He came back 15 minutes later with a pie.

A week later, when I lugged full watering cans to the site, I saw a security guard leaning against the concrete barrier that had been dumped there long ago (and that’s not going anywhere, as it has partly sunk into the ground).

His job is to watch the area Semilla borders, industrial land leased to Waste Management for their waste transfer station, which processes garbage before shipping it to landfills on freight trains.

“Yo!” He called out to me. “Has this been you?” He pointed to the plant beds.

“Well we’re a group—”

“I’m so happy to see this, trying to make this place beautiful.”

I put my hand on my heart and said thank you.

“Listen, whenever I’m working, you don’t gotta worry about the dogs. I tell them to stay out of the beds.”

I was heartened by this, yet also disheartened, because it affirmed that when I’m not watching, dogs go into the plant beds.

I know I’m taking an urban gardener’s gamble. I fear the heat waves, and some days I see dog poop a little too close to their roots.

Some of the little plants have shriveled and won’t make it. One of the two branches of the beach plum broke off. Others have grown taller and are sprouting new shoots.

“David, if something happens and these don’t make it, I don’t sense you’re the type of person to lose it?” George asked me.

“I mean, I would be upset, but it is what it is.”

“If I were doing what you were doing for this, and somebody came and really did damage…” he paused and looked out into the distance. “I’d really lose it.”