Friends, You'll be reading more coverage of this remarkable event later, but this story is too amazing to sit on.
Adam Honigman (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/nwgardens/89202_compost01.shtml) SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER Tuesday, October 1, 2002 9/11 FLOWER VIGIL COMPOST ENRICHES NEW YORK GARDEN By BILL THORNESS Special to the Post-Intelligencer NEW YORK -- Five wheelbarrows full of Seattle-made compost were lined up at the entrance to Liberty Community Garden in lower Manhattan. It was the last move for the compost in its cross-country mission to enrich a garden decimated by the World Trade Center attack. Nearly 100 people attended the garden rededication ceremony Saturday in Battery Park City on the southwest tip of the island. Two Seattle City Council members joined New York politicians and community garden leaders from both cities in a symbolic gesture of rebirth. The presentation of one cubic yard -- about 1,400 pounds -- of Million Flower Compost was a key element of the garden rededication. The compost was created from flowers contributed to the flower vigil at Seattle Center after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Most of the 30 yards of compost went back to Seattle Center, where a small bag of it was given along with a tulip bulb to 20,000 people at a remembrance this past Sept. 11. Some also will be used on Seattle Center grounds, and at the Interbay P-Patch. Members of the Seattle contingent traveled to New York at their own cost or with donated funds. The compost, created by hundreds of volunteers at Interbay P-Patch, was transported using donations from Taylor Shellfish in Shelton and United Parcel Service. Seattle poet Ann Hursey and musician John Van Amerongen used their artistic skills to share feelings about the event. Seven-year-old Mason Shigenaka, whose father is a P-Patch gardener, brought poems about Liberty's rebirth written by students at his Seattle school, John Stanford International. "Compost is a metaphor for renewal, it's a metaphor for new life, and it's a metaphor for restoration," Seattle City Council member Richard Conlin said. "I think it's also a tribute to tenacity, and these gardens are a tribute to the tenacity of the people of the Liberty Garden area. It shows people care very much about having a garden." "It's not just about gardens, not just about community. It's about the human spirit," said Alan Gerson, New York City Council member from the First District. "Planting has been part and parcel of confidence in every human society that it would persevere through good times and through bad times," Gerson said. "This is a continuation of our rebirth." Seattle City Council member Judy Nicastro, who grew up in New Jersey and lived in Manhattan for five years, also attended the ceremony and was moved by the Seattle gardeners' gesture. "That fact that Seattle is so intimately sharing this compost went right to my heart," she said. Gardeners who made the compost wanted to give some to New Yorkers as a symbol of solidarity. "I can't imagine what people in this neighborhood went through. Even in Seattle, we were emotionally drained," said Jon Rowley, who was Interbay garden coordinator and a leader in the composting effort. "The day we made the compost, we made a commitment to send it to a community garden in New York City." But, he said, "we had no clue there was a community garden only a block-and-a-half from the World Trade Center." Although the Battery Park gardens were knee-deep in debris and the neighborhood was cordoned off after the 9/11 attacks, gardeners say they believed they would return to grow again. "I came out to look at my garden, and everything was coated with 3 to 4 inches of gray dust," recalls Mike McCormack, an attorney who lives and works within four blocks of the garden. "But there were two or three marigolds coming up, and it looked like they were growing through the dust." Returning only briefly to get belongings, it would be three weeks before he would set foot in his garden. "We spent pretty much the whole winter figuring out how to get the gardens back." The gardens were battered on all sides: In the north section, where 28 gardeners had plots, Environmental Protection Agency workers vacuumed up all the plants along with the ash. During reconstruction efforts, a pedestrian bridge over busy West Street was planned that would land right on the garden. The separate south section, home to 29 gardeners, was spared such heavy-handed cleaning, said Tessa Huxley, executive director of the parks agency. Staff gardeners from the Battery Park City Parks Conservancy saved the plants by removing ash by hand a week after the attack, using shovels, rakes and trowels. The soil was tested and found to be free of asbestos and heavy metals, so the garden could be salvaged. "The biggest problem we had with the dust was that it was very base -- it had a lot of Sheetrock, so lots of calcium," Huxley said. "We had to amend the soil to make it more acidic." For the first time, she said, the garden had to purchase compost. "We lost all our abilities to make compost last fall, because all of our leaves were covered in dust. So we appreciate very much this gift. It has such meaning to all of us here." To accommodate the gardeners from the destroyed north section, new garden plots were created in front of Liberty Court, a condominium building adjoining the south section, but that ground wasn't suitable for gardening. "After 9/11, they put a pyramid of destroyed cars up to the sixth or seventh floor of this building, 50 to 60 feet high," said McCormack. The cars were removed, then so was the soil on which they'd sat. The area was then refilled with clean soil and, yes, compost. The common element in Liberty's rebirth holds a deep significance for local gardener Miriam Kimmelman. "I gardened with my husband, whose heart and soul was in compost," she said, explaining that Richard Washburn, who died in May 2001, helped build Liberty's compost bins. The couple was attracted to Battery Park City because of the presence of a community garden, and had gardened there for nine years. "The compost is really important to me because it was so important to my husband," she said. "I want to commune with him, and am really happy to get a garden, and now to have real compost to work with. "It's a healing experience to work in the garden." ========= Photo: Mason Shigenaka, 7, presents poems from his Seattle classmates to Mike McCormack of Liberty Community Garden at a ceremony in Manhattan last Saturday. ========= Bill Thorness, a former Seattle Tilth board president, is a free-lance writer based in Greenwich, Conn. 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