Brian Slattery Photo
Three months after signing a lease on a lot in Newhallville for a plant nursery and community space, community organizer Doreen Abubakar was surveying the development of the program now called Urbanscapes — and marking a milestone in its progress.
On Saturday morning the nursery saw a steady trickle of visitors who were there to see what the project was all about, and to buy plants.
Inside the lot, a small crew of workers was tending to the small perennials and shrubs on offer.
“No watering today?” Abubakar said as she walked past the smaller plants.
“We already did it,” said one of the workers.
Urbanscapes Native Plant Nursery is a project of the Community Place-making Engagement Network, supported by the Menunkatuck Audubon Society and with help from the Urban Resources Initiative and the CT Northeast Organic Farming Association, among others. It’s part of the vision of Abubakar, who founded CPEN in 2014 and is also business resources navigator at the Community Economic Development Fund. In June, Abubakar entered into a five-year lease agreement with Livable Cities Initiative for the lot at 133 Hazel St., which before that was a spot named The Mudhole, known for drug dealing — and before that, was the site of the Newhallville landmark club Sonny and Viv’s.
Abubakar, center.
The plans Abubakar outlined at the time — for a plant nursery, woodworking and carpentry station, greenhouse, and outdoor kitchen — took a step forward on Saturday, as the plant nursery, with its official new name, is now open Saturday, Tuesday, and Thursday from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m., selling small native perennials for $10 and larger shrubs for $20.
“We started with about 2,000, and we’re down to 1,500 or so,” Abubakar said. “The word is getting around.” She hopes to be able to sell all the plants she has by the end of the season.
Abubakar’s other ideas for the lot are moving forward as well. She has a shipping container out of which to operate a woodworking maker shed, offering classes and providing equipment for students to make work benches, garden boxes, and raised beds for gardens of their own, made from upcycled pallets. She said Urbanscapes has also distributed 10 four-foot-by-four-foot raised beds to households in the neighborhoods, providing soil, compost, and seedlings to grow greens, peppers, and herbs — and hopefully instill in people a desire to grow an even wider variety of vegetables.
“We’re in Newhallville and this is a food desert,” Abubakar said.
Urbanscapes’ greenhouse is also well under construction, which will allow the plant nursery to extend its growing season on either side, cultivating seedlings earlier in the year and keeping them later.
Nearby is where Abubakar is planning to have an outdoor oven, kitchen, and pavilion, with some seating to be able to run a small cafe out of the space — “entrepreneur training centered around outdoor cooking and eating healthy,” she said. “Around here there’s no place to get eggs and bacon. Nowhere to get a cup of tea.” She also has ideas for creating a horseshoe pit and a small amphitheater.
Abubakar said she hopes the plant nursery can draw customers from within and beyond Newhallville.
“Part of our mission is that these plants go into other communities,” she said.
From an environmental perspective, the perennials Abubakar is planting at 133 Hazel are creating an oasis for pollinators — and extending and amplifying the effects of the pollinator garden planted along the Farmington Canal Trail across Shelton Avenue. The broader vision involves creating pollinator oases throughout Greater New Haven.
The work in getting Urbanscapes this far has happened thanks to a host of partners and small funders.
“I have never gotten a $10,000 grant,” she said. It has been “$1,000 here, $2,000 there.” The largest grant she has received has been for $5,000.
She herself volunteers her time. “Newhallville didn’t ask me to do this. I saw a need and I did it,” she said. She noted that not everyone in the neighborhood supports the changes she has made to the lot at 133 Hazel, but many do. “A lot of times they like to watch. Then they want to be involved,” she said.
So the idea for Urbanscapes is to connect Newhallville to the neighborhoods and greater area around it, and nurture the people and the nature in the community itself. With Menunkatuck Audubon, Urbanscapes ran a program for Black Birders Week, that took neighborhood residents along the Farmington Canal Trail, where trees and shrubs provide habitat for birds. “We had 17 people here learning how to use binoculars,” Abubakar said. “They identified 19 species right here.”
‘I am an urban environmentalist. My goal is to connect people to the nature right around them.” Of the entire operation, she said, “we want to use it as a way to foster economic development and unlock creativity and entrepreneurship,” and “we want to get nature in the space. We want to get beauty in the space.”
Urbanscapes, at 133 Hazel St., is open to purchase plants on Saturdays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 9:30 a.m. to 12 p.m.