A Mini Farm in West Farms
In the West Farms section of the Bronx, there is a bottle recycling center, a McDonalds, a construction supply store, but no farms. Not anymore. One block past the aging steel skeleton of the 5 train at 180th and Devoe Street there is a hidden oasis, River Garden. Most days you can spot the garden manager, Angel, working in the garden: harvesting tomatoes, weeding the lawn, or building improvements to make the garden a peaceful place to come and sit.
River Garden is affiliated with the NYC Parks GreenThumb project, an urban gardening program that helps fund over 500 gardens throughout the city. The garden, with 23 raised beds, features fruits, vegetables, and herbs. In an overgrown corner, grape vines thrive with what seems like thousands of delicious organic green and red grapes. While I devoured more than my fair share of the juicy oblong fruit, Angel explained to me his gardening philosophy, “I make sure we use no pesticide,” he says. Everything in the garden is planted, maintained and picked by hand. The garden is equipped with several rain collection bins, ensuring that rainwater is used whenever possible.
Angel, originally from Yauco, Puerto Rico, found a home in the Bronx in 1982. Every year, he goes back to the island to maintain his nine-acre family farm. There he grows avocados, cassava, yams, oranges, coffee, tamarind, mangos, and pineapple. In America, he was a construction worker. He enjoyed his job, but after 25 years in the business, an accident left him out of work. He explains, “It was a helpful company that made sure you had the equipment, made sure you were safe... but [one] day, I don't know what happened.” While on a ladder, reaching for a tool, he lost his balance and fell. The incident shattered his heel, leaving him in the hospital for 22 days, in a wheelchair for a year and in a walker for another year.
During recovery, he poured his soul into the garden. Using $500 from his own pocket, he built a beautiful brick walkway as an entrance to the garden, an open-air shed-like structure with lounge chairs and various other benches situated throughout the space. Each project built by hand using recycled materials; the bricks for the walkway, for example, were entirely salvaged. This relationship is not a one-way street, Angel needs the garden as much as it needs him. Many workers, after such incidents, often fall into a depression. With a smile, Angel recounts that because of the garden, he is almost fully recovered and is happy.
The River Garden is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. If you volunteer with the garden for a year, you are given a raised bed of your own. Angel has transformed the garden into a stunning escape. He recommends stopping by and reading in one of the lounge chairs he built. With a completely organic, almost spiritual way of gardening, and the repurposing of scrap materials into garden accouterments. His environmental mindfulness and dedication to organic farming, you'd be quick to think Angel is a new age environmental hipster, but these practices are nothing new, quite the opposite. Angel is an old-school guy from the Bronx whose graciousness, thankfulness and overall contentment with life radiate from him. It's hard to tell if the garden’s beauty has made him happier, or if his happiness has made the garden more beautiful.
1086 E 180th St, Bronx, NY
Wednesdays and Saturdays from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m
