New York Community garden gets itself Broadway glow-up
Solar energy will light up lamps attached to each of the garden’s 11 vegetable beds between 5 p.m., and midnight during the winter months.
By Sarah Belle Lin
The Riverdale Press
Dec 6, 2021
Excerpt:
The renewable energy project will light up Marble Hill’s fenced area off Broadway and West 228th streets with lamps attached to each of the garden’s 11 vegetable beds between 5 p.m., and midnight during the winter months.
Two years in the making, the new lighting scheme was celebrated during a Nov. 13 dedication ceremony where public officials, community leaders and a number of Marble Hill neighbors braved what had been a rainy, windy Saturday.
U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat says the donation by Brooklyn SolarWorks is important because Marble Hill Houses doesn’t necessarily have access to specific funding resources like some of its counterparts do.
“Marble Hill was not federalized like other NYCHA buildings,” Espaillat said. “As a result, it was not getting the federal dollars that it needed. Now that we have so much money coming through the city, we have to be innovative and creative.”
What a long way the community garden has come, said its founder, Jacki Fischer. The mountainous planning drafts and long-winded meetings with NYCHA have still been fruitful. Now, the community garden can provide a new opportunity beyond healthy and homegrown food.
