First Community Meeting for ‘Siempre Verde Garden’ on Stanton is Tonight

Guerrilla gardening efforts have entered the next chapter at 181 Stanton Street. This sliver lot of dormant real estate, already primed for eventual development, recently gained some city-sponsored legitimacy as public green space. Thanks to CB3 backing, the Siempre Verde Garden, officially its name since the mid-1980s, now carries a one-year “license” through the GreenThumb program. Said designation was awarded last November.

According to a commenter on the grassroots 596 Acres website:

In the mid-1980s, a woman named Cecllia lived at 179 Stanton Street, in a older tenement back building. Like many older Latino residents in the neighborhood, she was concerned with having three small and desolate empty lots next to her building. Over 25 years ago, she started Siempre Verde, a garden which used the two HPD lots and had obtained permission to use the privately owned Gottleib lot in between them as well. Siempre Verde was listed on 1980s and 1990s garden maps of the neighborhood. In the 1990s, other residents of her building planted the two large trees that shade these lots today.

But the garden is a temporary arrangement, at best. This particular parcel, together with 137-139 Attorney,was pitched to Community Board 3 a year ago for development. The board fully backed the idea at the time, which called for Wormser + Associates to construct a five-story residential building with rear yard, and a stipulation that affordable housing be “maximized.”

Nevertheless, the first community meeting for Siempre Verde Garden is tonight at ABC No Rio on Rivington Street, 6:30pm.