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A Onetime ‘Jungle’ Feels the Winds of the Past

THE crime occurred early on the morning of Wednesday, May 21. Mike Young, a handyman who is president of Padre Plaza community garden, arrived to find his saws, power drills, clippers and shovels — 24 items worth a total of $1,352, according to the list he keeps in his wallet — had been stolen.

Mr. Young discovered the theft when he was walking by the garden on his way to pick up his tools en route to a client’s house. A member of the garden called out to ask if he had left the shed open. Mr. Young said no but thought the question was odd. When he went to check, he saw to his dismay that the shed was empty.

Mr. Young is a stocky 46-year-old with a thin mustache and matching goatee who wears his work boots even on Sundays and spends much of his time maintaining the garden, a third of an acre at St. Ann’s Avenue and 139th Street in Mott Haven in the South Bronx.

During the night, someone had apparently broken into the garden’s aluminum shed, which was locked, and taken nearly everything inside.

“I sat down,” Mr. Young said the other day, ensconced beneath a canopy of redwoods, “and tears came to my eyes.”

The theft was an unsettling echo of the garden’s troubled past. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the surrounding area was plagued by problems, Padre Plaza was infested with drugs.

“It wasn’t a garden; it looked more like a jungle,” Mr. Young said. “There was one guy working in here, and his nickname was Flex. He had no ladders, no tools. He had a pair of scissors.”

One day last spring, Mr. Young offered to bring over his tools, and the two started working nights, cutting branches from overgrown plane trees, pruning unruly shrubs, trimming bamboo and pulling weeds, their work accompanied by the music of Marvin Gaye and KC and the Sunshine Band. Members of local nonprofit groups, along with residents and passers-by, started asking if they could help.

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A Garden in the Bronx

How a small urban farm is helping one community eat well without leaving the neighborhood.

Along Third Avenue in the center of the South Bronx, the street is filled with McDonald’s and commercial fried chicken joints that fit neatly among rows of low-income apartments. Though the fast-food enterprise rakes in billions of dollars each year in the U.S., it has a particularly overwhelming presence in poor communities such as the South Bronx. The neighborhood boasts the highest rates of asthma and diabetes in the city, according to the city Department of Health’s 2006 Vital Statistics Summary. Growing up on greasy hamburgers and high-fructose soft drinks, residents often find themselves with little understanding of healthy eating and where to find better options.

Just around the corner, on 165th Street and Boston Road, there is something surprising for this area: A once abandoned lot overwhelmed by rubbish and drug dealers has been converted into a community garden called the Jacqueline Denise Davis Garden, or the JDD. This community garden is part of an initiative called Learn it, Grow it, Eat it, started in 2006 and funded by the Council on the Environment of New York City to educate teens about their health and their community.

“Community gardens are becoming a trend,” says David Saphire, the project coordinator of Learn it, Grow it, Eat it, or LGE. The venture was partially based on other urban farms that have experienced great success, such as Added Value in Red Hook, Brooklyn and East New York Farms in East Brooklyn.

While there are over 600 community gardens in New York City alone, Saphire says that LGE is one of the only initiatives that incorporates health education in high schools. The JDD, Wishing Well Community and the Model T gardens in the Bronx are all part of LGE.

In Saphire’s office, on the opposite end of New York City, located just across the street from City Hall, he explains how the idea developed. Saphire was teaching a nutritional program in local high schools in the South Bronx, touting healthy alternatives to the common fast-food pitfalls. Saphire, a self-educated nutrition guru who has been an environmental educator and researcher for the last 10 years, is a thin man, one who looks like he practices what he preaches.

Working in the South Bronx, it didn’t take long for Saphire to notice a gap between what he was teaching in his nutrition lessons and what foods were readily available to his students. The solution Saphire proposed: Teach the kids about healthy alternatives by having them grow their own fruits and vegetables. And, as an added bonus, make it free.

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Farmers markets, Fresh Direct have fruit and vegetables pouring into the Bronx

In a borough typically cited for its lack of access to fresh produce, fruits and vegetables abound with the onset of summer.

The Bronx has more than 20 local farmers markets and Fresh Direct, a Manhattan luxury food delivery service, is offering groceries and produce to the entire South Bronx at a discount.

Health experts say the benefits of the fresh produce are endless.

“We’ve all heard ad-nauseum about the skyrocketing rates of diabetes, obesity and other diet-related diseases, and the farmers market is an enjoyable place to live a more healthy lifestyle,” said Gabrielle Langholtz, spokeswoman for Greenmarket, a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City, which runs three markets in the Bronx.

And through city funding for wireless card-swiping stations, the produce at most markets can be bought with food stamps.

Even better, while supplies last, folks who use food stamps at the farmers markets are given an extra $2 in Health Department “Health Bucks” to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables for every $5 they spend.

At Drew Gardens, on E. Tremont Ave., east of Boston Road, shoppers can go ultra-local and buy food grown in the Bronx, along with the produce from area farms.

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New South Bronx Apartments Named For Local Nun

A once-empty lot in the South Bronx is now the site of new apartments.

The Sister Thomas Apartments at 870 Southern Boulevard in Hunts Point was officially named Thursday.

The abandoned city-owned lot, once a reminder of the crime that plagued the neighborhood in the 1970s, was developed by the South East Bronx Community Organization into 103 units of affordable housing.

“When I came up today in my car and I went through the area, and it was extraordinary,” said former Mayor Ed Koch, who attended the dedication. “It was alive. And I remember when I went through this area when I became mayor and it was dead or dying.”

“And Lord make this home a happy place and bless it from above. So that’s how my new family knows how much I love them,” said Sister Thomas of the Sisters of Charity, whose name graces the apartments.

Sister Thomas was one of those who led the push to clean up the neighborhood and bring housing back to the borough.

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Rumblings of a Bronx Comeback From Espada

He has been out of the political spotlight for a few years. But Pedro Espada Jr. is clearly thinking serious of re-emerging into the raucous Bronx electoral life.

Mr. Espada, a former Democratic state senator and one-time candidate for Bronx borough president, is strongly considering running again for the State Senate. However, Mr. Espada, who represented the Hunts Point and Bronx River sections (the 32nd Senate District), is now looking instead at running in the adjacent 33rd Senate District, which stretches from Kingsbridge to East Tremont. He would be challenging the incumbent, Efrain González Jr.

Mr. Espada has long been a colorful political figure and, for a long time, the most prominent enemy of the Bronx Democratic Party organization. He has also been a lightning rod, of sorts, in the heavily Democratic Bronx because of his announcement in 2002 that he would switch parties and become a Republican.

In the end, however, he never officially changed his registration, although he began to sit with the members of the Republican majority to participate in that party’s conferences.

“My wife and I moved to the Mosholu Parkway area and people started asking me to get more involved in community activities, from visiting schools to participating in Little League activities,” Mr. Espada said. “And most of all, these people kept telling me that there should be an alternative to the present incumbent, Senator González.”

As a result, he said, those residents who urged him to run for the Senate, began circulating petitions to collect signatures to qualify Mr. Espada to get a spot on the ballot for the Sept. 9 Democratic primary.

“As of this moment, I have not announced my candidacy,” Mr. Espada said. “And I won’t until I’m convinced that the residents truly want a change.”

But then, Mr. Espada began sounding very much like a candidate ready for political battle.” There is a huge vacuum of leadership in this area and there is no time to lose,” he said. “And I’m positioned to offer them the leadership that this area deserves.”

Mr. González, the former senator said, is a virtual absentee official. “People have simply not heard from the incumbent,” he added. “And that’s not just in the last two years, but in the last 20 years.”

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