Queens gets knocked a lot. It's not as hip as Brooklyn, it sure ain't Manhattan, and it doesn't even have the suburban veneer of Staten Island or the danger zone allure (such as that might be) of the Bronx. It's the borough with a booger half out of its nose.
Unfairly, by the way. At least where I've lived, I've always liked Queens, and I'm particularly fond of where I live now, in Jackson Heights. It's actually an historic district of co-ops that were some of the first ever in the country when they were constructed in the 1920s. (I only say "some of the first" because there's a tendency to overstate JH's importance, by the JH locals themselves; see more below. They may well be the first planned co-op community in the U.S. Or not.) Anyway, several of the buildings around here were planned so that they would wrap around a city block (or at least would have a sister building that mirrored a "C" construction and the both of them would take up the city block) and the strip in the center was reserved for garden planning. They're private, only accessible to the residents of the building, and once a year they're opened up for viewing. I went in 2001 on a gray day; this Saturday when the Jackson Heights Beautification Society held its 2006 opening, the weather was darned near perfect.
Went with my guy on a tour of all ten gardens. They ranged from the scruffy to the sublime. We started out at the end of the tour, and No. 10 was not necessarily an auspicious beginning. Maybe they put it at the end so that if you get tired and have to skip one, this is the one to skip. We were the first visitors to No. 10 and got a little tour by their character of a gardener (volunteer). He gets funds for half of the garden, the part he lives on and the other half, which is for a building run by renters and therefore is completely untended except for his efforts, comes out of his pocket. This means the rental half is fairly surreal. He likes putting faces on trees (those things creep me out) and he's got cats -- plastic ones, ceramic ones, masks of ones -- implanted everywhere. He's made a pile with a club "growing" out of the ground and set up a sign nearby explaining the origin of the "Egyptian" plant, which was allegedly used to beat the crap out of anyone who harmed a cat in Egypt. He was quite pleased with his fakery. There was also a sign affixed to a tree inviting everyone to a "Squirrel Barbecue." Love for the animals is limited to certain species, it appears. We also learned the long story of his cat who ran up a tree during a snowstorm, and how the fire department wouldn't come out to help.
The other gardens were prettier, but none more interesting, I tell you what. And they all have their own personality, with variations on flowers, grass, asphalt and benches. One had swings, so the guy and I partook. One or two had fountains (I like calling them water features, after James Lileks' woes), the benches in one were completely made of concrete. And one had tall pillars, as if it was a very well-kept ruin.
One building was even holding a bake sale (the cannier buildings all had some kind of baked goods or water or soda offerings) with these very elaborate buttercream cupcakes, a la the Cupcake Cafe. That same building gave us a bottle of water for free, which was very nice of them. The guy and I lamented that my building didn't have such a garden, because we'd use it all the time -- I'd love to read the Sunday paper out there if it was warm, or just read a book on a bench and exist in that little oasis. They are often very quiet (barring No. 10, which was essentially next to the 7 train) and completely peaceful. One garden was rife with dangling objects to catch the light, or faces that looked like rocks, and many had Buddhas or Vishnus or various Asian-themed statuaries. And one had sleepy kitties:
Who were just adorable. We hit all ten, including the very last one (No. 1) which should have been one of the prettiest, but has never grabbed my attention. Rather than being an enclosed private garden, it's just a big walkway up to the front doors, an inverted "V" shape with a large cascading pool, and a spurting fountain. Those might be nice, but the bottom of those pools is painted a highly-suspect aquamarine never found in nature, and it just has a bad-retro feel to it. Plus, it's not a true garden because you can't sit anywhere and enjoy. The guy and I walked in and saw they had their "Best Garden" plaque sitting out on a table with cookies. The date was 1998. "We just can't seem to find the time to hang it up," the woman noted with sadness. I told her if she waited two years they could have a 10 year dedication ceremony. Then she said something -- the guy and I would both swear on this -- about "if you go all the way to the back, they have pasta." Which seemed an odd "thanks for visiting" offering, but we couldn't locate it anyway. If there was pasta, we found none.
So we went back to my place and had ginger-and-molasses cookies.
No comments:
Post a Comment