A Garden Grows On Truman Street

Kids who helped turn a downtrodden Truman Street lot into a budding garden look forward to plucking their own pumpkins to carve for Halloween. They celebrated their work-in-progress with gardeners from across the city, at the latest outpost of a growing network of community greenspaces.

Two school buses of community garden volunteers hit the Hill garden at the corner of Truman and Clover Place Friday evening as they toured 15 of the 50 properties given new life through Urban Resources Initiative’s Community Greenspace program. The tour gave New Haveners a chance to show off their hard work and to see the results of other volunteers’ work. This summer, more than 1,000 volunteers teamed up with URI to continue the program’s 19 years of revitalization efforts.

Some of the 50 sites, like one in Chatham Square, have been tended since 1995. Others started this year. The process begins when neighbors who live near a potential site decide they want to make something happen.

Neighbors like Leslie Radcliffe and Lars Krogh, who moved to new houses on Truman Street two years ago. At the time they moved, the street had a terrible reputation, they said. A police officer had been shot on their street just a few years before. Drug dealing and using was common.

Guided by the ​“Broken Window Theory” – that the appearance of neglect encourages crime and the further break down of a neighborhood – Radcliffe and Krogh began revitalization projects of their own. They led cleanups each spring and fall so that not a single scrap of paper or cigarette butt remained. That led to planting trees and getting the city to install black municipal garbage cans. Then they reached out to URI to get a garden going.

Radcliffe originally envisioned a structured park with planter boxes for each of the families on the street. When neighbors didn’t get on board, the group changed paths. ​“We didn’t just want to do it,” Radcliffe said. ​“We wanted the community involved.”

Chris Ozyck, URI’s associate director, came down to the park, pulled out white landscaping paint, and sketched out a new layout for the space. A big tree surrounded by stones for visitors to sit on would be the centerpiece of the garden. With everything he drew, ​“we said ​‘Ooh!’ ​‘Ah!’ ​‘Let’s do that!’” Radcliffe said. Radcliffe and Krogh attended every class Ozyck offered this summer, from workshops on tree planting to tree pruning. ​“We had a lot to learn,” Krogh said.

As the Truman Street project gathered steam, more and more kids started to show up to help. All told, 40 neighborhood children helped build the new garden. ​“They loved having something to do outdoors,” Krogh said. ​“If we had something for them to do every day, they’d be out there every day.” If not for the park, the kids told him, they’d be indoors playing video games.

Seeing how much the kids enjoyed the park and the work they were doing led Radcliffe and Krogh to reorient their goals for the space. ​“The children became the focus of what we’re doing,” Krogh said. ​“Forget the trees and the park and everything looking nice. The biggest impact is on the kids.”

Though the kids may only be 10 years old at the moment, Radcliffe and Krogh said, in just a few years they’ll be teenagers. Engaging the neighborhood’s children now, the two said, will help the kids stay on the straight and narrow in the future.

“This has given them a pride of neighborhood they wouldn’t have had. And pride in themselves,” Krogh said. ​“They’ll be adults soon and they’ll raise their kids that way too.” While just two years ago the park was an empty lot and the street was filled with trash, now the kids on Truman Street are growing up in a clean neighborhood.

As the Truman Street Garden continues to develop, Radcliffe, Krogh, and the park’s other volunteers plan to create an edible garden for neighbors to enjoy. Fruit trees, berry bushes, and vegetables. Flowers. A sitting area with lighting and benches. This fall, 90 pumpkin plants will line the garden’s chain-link fence so kids can carve them for Halloween.

Aboard the bus, Radcliffe and Krogh joined volunteers from across the city who have embarked on similar efforts.

Volunteers like Stefanie Lapetina, who moved to East Rock’s Mechanic Street 8 years ago. Lapetina recounted how she and her neighbors tackled blight at the abandoned Star Supply warehouse across the street from her house, the site of numerous failed revitalization plans in recent years. The large sidewalk in front of Star Supply used to be impassable, she said. ​“There was garbage, trash, tires,” Lapetina recalled. A crop of weeds overflowed from the curb. ​“People emptied their cars there.”

“People were always waiting on the city to develop the building,” she said. ​“But in the end it’s just easier to get together and do it yourself.” At first, Lapetina thought she might be able to move some plants from her own garden to the site across the street. Realizing the site was too big, she reached out to URI for help. Along with URI Intern and Yale Forestry Student Jeffrey Yost, Lapetina knocked on doors and passed out fliers to recruit her neighbors to help.

The group, which grew to 15 members, cleaned up the trash and planted a series of serviceberry trees. As the new trees took root, passersby stopped dumping their trash.

At the corner of Wolcott and Lloyd in Fair Haven, a vacant lot used to draw addicts looking for a fix. Now a trellis blooms with orange wisteria. Leafy bushes produce cone-shaped flowers. And benches made of old street curbs provide a place to rest.

At other sites, volunteers planted herb gardens, broke through concrete to plant trees, and turned an empty lot into a space for meditation. An unused pond became a flower garden. A lot filled with invasive species became a clean slate, then home to a butterfly garden filled with coneflowers, butterfly bushes, and herbs. In front of a house for sale, a newly planted tree had a dual purpose: beautifying the neighborhood and helping the house sell. New plantings replaced ones damaged last year by Hurricane Sandy and Winter Storm Nemo.

Near Wooster Square, community members have turned a neglected lot into a dog park, the Union Street Dog Park. Volunteers cleaned up the site, erected a fence, and added sand-colored pea gravel. Up next: painting the fence and adding a water fountain for the canines.

At each of the 50 projects supported by URI, community members take the lead. Volunteers choose the site, outline the problems they’d like to address, and describe their vision for the space. Then, URI’s interns and directors use their knowledge of horticulture and landscape design to tweak the vision and make it a reality. URI also provides all of the plants used in the gardens. The program is funded by the City of New Haven, the Community Foundation, United Illuminating, the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, and Yale University.

The bus tour gives volunteers a chance to get a big-picture view of all the work across the city, said URI director Colleen Murphy-Dunning.

“It’s all about celebrating what we’ve all done together,” she said. ​“The tour allows volunteers to see that what they’re doing in their neighborhoods adds up across the city. It’s really empowering to see they’re part of something big.”

Taking URI’s tour gave Truman Street’s Krogh even further inspiration. When the bus stopped by a park designed by Ozyck, Krogh used the map application on his phone to save the location. He plans to revisit the site and take pictures. The pathway used in Ozyck’s park would be perfect for the next site Krogh wants to tackle: a sliver of land near Truman Street that New Haven wants to sell, but no one wants to buy. Next year, the sliver might be a URI site of its own.