Inspiration
While a prisoner of the Apartheid government of South Africa Mandela maintained a rooftop garden with the consent of his jailers. The following excerpt is from his autobiography, “Long Walk to Freedom”.
“The Bible tells us that gardens preceded gardeners, but that was not the case at Pollsmoor, where I cultivated a garden that became one of my happiest diversions. It was my way of escaping from the monolithic concrete world that surrounded us. Within a few weeks of surveying all the empty space we had on the building’s roof and how it was bathed the whole day, I decided to start a garden and received permission to do so from the commanding officer.”
“Each morning, I put on a straw hat and rough gloves and worked in the garden for two hours. Every Sunday, I would supply vegetables to the kitchen so that they could cook a special meal for the common-law prisoners. I also gave quite a lot of my harvest to the warders, who used to bring satchels to take away their fresh vegetables.”
“A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control. To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom.
“In some ways, I saw the garden as a metaphor for certain aspects of my life. A leader must also tend his garden; he, too, plants seeds, and then watches, cultivates, and harvests the results. Like the gardener, a leader must take responsibility for what he cultivates; he must mind his work, try to repel enemies, preserve what can be preserved, and eliminate what cannot succeed.” — Nelson Mandela
Who We Are
The Mandela Community Garden is a group of citizens working together to make our neighborhood better by fostering civic involvement and community pride. We have identified and reached out to supportive organizations, most importantly the J. D. Wilson Garden on West 122nd. J.D. Wilson’s founders have agreed to mentor us. We have also reached out to and received preliminary support from Green Thumb, 596 Acres, Citizens Committee of New York, NY Cares and In Our Back Yards. We have also partnered with Commerce Bank on West 125th St.
The Plan
Mandela Community Garden has been endorsed by Community Board 10 and licensed by New York City’s Department of Housing, Preservation. It consists of three contiguous open lots on West 126th St: 265 W126, Manhattan block 1932, lot 7 and 267—269 W126 Manhattan block 1932, lot 5.Because the term of occupancy is indeterminate our initial plan is to create a wildflower garden. Regional wildflower gardens are low cost, easy to implement, require little maintenance and are visually exciting. Wildflowers will seed and propagate throughout the neighborhood naturally. If the garden remains active, through time, wildflowers will rehabilitate the soil. We will also begin a container garden to grow produce. Container gardens can be quickly implemented because they do not require soil remediation. The scope of the project can easily be expanded or contracted based on community involvement.
Our Team
René Calvo
René Calvo is the owner of The Harlem Flophouse and the leader of the indy rock band The Goddess Lakshmi. He has lived in NYC for thirty years, 15 of them in Harlem. The Mandela Garden is inspired by his experiences at Burning Man.
Volunteers 2014-2015
- Tiffanee Thompson
- Cha McCoy
- Amy Davila
- Sam Lutzker
- Joshua Bauchner
- Spencer Rowe
- Aaron Lipman