Empty Lot Used as Dumping Ground Turned Into Community Garden on Stockholm in Bushwick

A formerly trash-strewn lot owned by the city, largely abandoned aside from scores of rats and some neighborhood cats, has been transformed into a large, open-to-interpretation community garden on Bushwick’s Stockholm Street.

The Stockholm Community Garden, a vision crafted by Stockholm Street neighbors, has been four years in the making and is set to open Saturday, April 1.

“We’ve had a lot of positivity around the project, we’re really excited about it,” one of the driving forces behind the space, John McGrath, said.

McGrath, a project manager, along with his husband Andrew Engel, a horticulturalist, bought their apartment in a neighboring building on Stockholm Street around five years ago and not long after set out to improve the conditions of the derelict space at 139 Stockholm Street.

Although fenced off and listed in city records as owned by the city since 1983 and designated NYPD parking since 1998, the lot had been abandoned for years. According to Property Shark, it had a crumbling garage structure taking up part of the site that was demolished sometime in 2014.

Over the years, the 2,499 square foot lot became a dumping ground for neighborhood trash and a haven for rats. “People would just come in and drop large trash in here, like couches and other things,” McGrath said. Along with others in their building, McGrath and Engel set about cleaning up the space, weeding the area, getting rid of rubbish and seed bombing flowers.

“The first thing that John did with our neighbors was build this tiny little box out there in front of that pole where the trash was going, so it’s sort of a form of guerilla gardening, and they started getting positive feedback,” Engel said. “There was a guy…he came out with these big planters, he’s like ‘they were in my garage, you guys should do something with them’. So I think the feedback sort of encouraged us to kind of get going with it.”

Four years ago, the group decided to stop the guerilla gardening approach and go through Green Thumb to try and get the lot dedicated as a community garden. McGrath said Green Thumb has “a fantastic system in place” and really helped the group get things off the ground. The first thing they had to do was get a core 10 member group, of whom eight live in McGrath’s building, he said. Then it was paperwork and registration, coming up with bylaws, getting the thumbs up from the community board, and NYPD’s approval to lease the space – which all went smoothly.

Although Green Thumb is reportedly leasing the space from the NYPD, which they don’t have to pay for, there is always the risk the spot could be reclaimed at some point. That’s just extra motivation for McGrath and Engel to ensure the garden becomes such a community asset that tearing down isn’t an option. They’re also hoping to attract some NYPD members.

Once everything was in order, the group of neighbors got to work with Green Thumb preparing the garden for its grand opening. But something they were set on from the start was to leave the lot a relatively blank canvas so the community could dictate what it wanted to see take root.

“One of the big things we know, because we’ve been involved in community gardens in the past, is becoming exclusionary and difficult to join is generally the first sign of the death knell of a garden,” McGrath said. “We’re not giving preference to ourselves, you know, not putting any one person forward. It’s an open community space.”

As part of that, he said the group did not want to start out with a finished space that was “the vision of a handful of people that is static and unchanging.” “We went for the first year with just a very basic rough draft of what the garden could be…in following years members will you know, vote and change and grow it as they want to. We want it to be relevant and don’t want it to be exclusionary.”

He said there was some debating back and forth about whether to have private plots, and there had been some interest from the community for them, but for now they were leaving the space open and wanting to hear what people wanted.

“We want to maximize the usability for everybody,” Engel said. “Something for me that I think would be important is having an experiential educational component to the garden, we’re lacking a lot of green space here and there’s a lot of groups in the city trying to build that connection between nature and food and schools.”

He added that if the community was interested he would like to see a historical component, possibly plaques showing what Bushwick used to look like, done in a “fun, educational and ready-to-move” kind of way.

The core group behind the project also would like to see the space used for community events and organized classes, and they had already had positive feedback from the community on that. McGrath said the Bushwick Free Store was already planning an event there, along with a local dog rescue who wanted to hold an adoption event in the space.

Ahead of opening next weekend, the group, with the help of Green Thumb, has dropped seeds for some wildflowers and built some planters, with plans to start out with a communal herb garden, and a native native flora and fauna garden. They have also laid soil and wood chips, and installed a gardening shed.

“The feedback has been great,” McGrath said. “Anytime we’re in here working, anytime Green Thumb has been in here working, we generally get people stopping and asking for info about wanting to join.”

Through Facebook and Instagram posts and word of mouth, the email list of people interested in the garden has grown from the original group of 10 to more than 150 people, McGrath said. Friday, March 24, the group held a meeting to go over opening plans. McGrath encourages anyone interested in joining to reach out over Facebook, Instagram or to email stockholmcommunitygarden at gmail.

He said there will be two membership options: $50 per person for a key plus volunteer hours, or no fee with increased volunteer hours. The money goes into a garden bank account, and members decide how it’s used, such as for tools, events, projects, and plants.

“We want it to be open to everyone,” McGrath said.

[Photos by Anna Bradley-Smith unless noted otherwise]

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