Battery Urban Farm changes landscapes and mindscapes

In real estate it’s all about loca­tion, loca­tion, loca­tion, and the same is true for sus­tain­able envi­ron­ments. The land­scapes peo­ple encounter and inter­act with daily are the ones that need to be greened, not those on the fringe that require peo­ple to devi­ate from their usual paths just to get there.

In Bat­tery Park, com­post is decom­pos­ing, veg­eta­bles and herbs are grow­ing, stu­dents are learn­ing, and urban land­scapes are shift­ing. A mere stone’s throw from the 4/5 Bowl­ing Green sta­tion is a small urban farm that yields herbs, veg­eta­bles, and fer­tile soil from com­post. Last Wednes­day, at a fundrais­ing din­ner held by NRDC, din­ers enjoyed a meal made entirely from the farm’s yield. Bat­tery Urban Farm is sus­tain­able in its prac­tice and its design; the bam­boo fenc­ing is entirely reclaimed from last summer’s rooftop instal­la­tion at the Met.

Walk­ing off the side­walk into the grass around the farm is refresh­ingly un-Manhattan-like. The dif­fer­ence in sur­face between pave­ment and earth is notice­able, but most New York­ers in their daily bus­tle don’t have the chance to expe­ri­ence both.

Many incred­i­ble NYC farms are in the outer bor­oughs or Harlem, and there­fore off the radar of many. While Bat­tery Urban Farm is mod­er­ate in size (it feels more large veg­etable patch then farm), it is com­pletely vis­i­ble, cen­trally located, and 100 per­cent open to any­one to see, smell, and touch. You can pass by build­ings hous­ing incred­i­ble rooftop farms and never know it from street level, but hun­dreds of thou­sands of com­muters head­ing to and from South Ferry pass the farm daily, and thou­sands more Wall Street employ­ees see it as they enter and exit mas­sive office buildings.

Bat­tery Urban Farm marks the inte­gra­tion of sus­tain­abil­ity into a famil­iar, cor­po­rate and con­crete land­scape of Man­hat­tan. Nearby school­child­ren use the farm as a liv­ing class­room and vol­un­teers work along­side Bat­tery Con­ser­vancy employ­ees to main­tain it, but those most sig­nif­i­cantly affected by the farm are those who will prob­a­bly never par­tic­i­pate in it but sim­ply see it.

The more vis­i­ble and per­va­sive sus­tain­abil­ity becomes, the more likely it also becomes that res­i­dents who are not par­tic­u­larly “green” will begin to con­sider their own liv­ing and work­ing envi­ron­ments in new, more sus­tain­able ways.

Bat­tery Urban Farm pro­vides a ref­er­ence point from which more urban farms inside exist­ing city parks can stem. Imag­ine if Cen­tral Park, Bryant Park, Thomp­kins Square Park, Wash­ing­ton Square Park, Union Square, Madi­son Square Park, and Mar­cus Gar­vey Park all also had small urban farms to edu­cate local stu­dents and feed nearby res­i­dents (think dona­tions to food banks, even localer green mar­kets, or even sales to restau­rants).  The entire com­po­si­tion of the city could shift–CAN shift–as soon as we look places like Bat­tery Urban Farm and con­ceive that it’s possible.

More details about the farm, here.

View slideshow: Bat­tery Urban Farm

This arti­cle orig­i­nally appeared at exam​iner​.com.