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Jefferson Market Garden Newsletter
Summer 2017 Newsletter
Volume 16, Number 2
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A Summer of flowers, shrubs, trees, birds, butterflies, bees and music
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Children's Harvest Festival
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October 7th,
11am-2pm
Bring children to our Free Annual Event:
Pumpkins & Cookies by
October 21, 11am-5pm
October 22, 12pm-4pm
All proceeds support the Garden
Tree lighting at 5:30 pm
Cocktails in the Catacombs
January 19, 2018
Visit the Garden on Facebook
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Pictures of people, events, flowers, birds, dogs and more. No need to join
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How can you help the Garden?
Every donation helps our plants, shrubs and flowers thrive, maintains our infrastructure, and helps our co
mmunity service grow.
Send
your tax-deductible contribution to:
70A Greenwich Ave
PMB 372
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Photo Gallery
2017 Free Musical Events for our
Community
Sunday Irish Harp & Song Concerts
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Summer 2017 Events
Friends Party
Children's Festival
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Summer 2017 Garden News
Every summer, we are astounded by the beauty of our garden that our Horticulturist/Garden Designer Susan Sipos creates throughout the year. This year our new, lush lawn has been surrounded by
a kaleidoscope of colors on flowering plants and shrubs that change throughout the season. Twice the lawn was magically showered with blossoms from our trees.
In addition to serving as a peaceful respite for community m
embers, visitors from around the world, and birds and
bees and butterflies passing through
the city, the G
arden serves local schools and summer camps with environmental educational programs and provides
history tours to adult groups. We also provide children's festivals and free concerts on summer Sundays. A primary goal is to expand our community partnerships with other local organizations.
At the same time, we are tending to the infrastructure needs of the Garden. Our historic fence has been scraped, repaired and painted in order to preserve it for the future. Unable to repair our Rose Arbor, donors provided funds for a matching grant from InOurBackYard to cover most of the costs for its replacement this fall.
Also in the fall, look for the construction of the replacement for our leaking garden shed. Of course, we are still dreaming of replacing the last of the chain-link fence on the Library side of the Garden with a matching historical wrought iron fence.
One bit of bad news:
Rose Rosette Disease, which required the Fall 2016 removal of the plants in the Rose Garden and those climbing roses on the fence, and special treatment of the soil, has returned to infect our replacement plants. Other New York gardens are having similar experiences and Susan Sipos is following the best scientific practices in addressing this problem.
The Board of the Garden is committed to maintaining, protecting and providing maximum community access to the Garden. Thanks to our gate volunteers, who are essential for the protection of the Garden, we have been able to expand open hours from 10 AM to dusk, Tuesday through Sunday, weather permitting, and the season the Garden has been open on Monday holidays.
Your contributions at the gate, through the mail and online make this stewardship of our Garden for our community possible. WE THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUING SUPPORT!
Best wishes,
George Paulos, Chair & Elizabeth Butson, Vice-Chair
& the Jefferson Market Board
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Say Hello to Tim Blackwell 
In midsummer, the Garden was able to welcome Tim Blackwell as an intern through a CUNY program. You may see him at the gate welcoming visitors alongide our volunteers, but he is also doing other chores while learning many aspects of the work of the garden.
Tim was a June graduate of Borough of Manhattan Community College in business administration. Now he has begun his classes for a degree in finance
from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.
Tim says to our visitors, "Don't take this space for granted. There should be more beautiful, quiet spaces like this garden in other parts of the city."
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Feathered Friends of Fall
By Diane Darrow
Autumn brings a special kind of visitor to our Garden: migratory birds, many of whom drop in for a day or so on their travels through our area twice a year, enroute
to their high northern
spring breeding grounds
and their Central or
South American winter
homes. Recent sightings
in the Garden include
American redstart,
chestnut-sided warbler,
ovenbird, black-and-white warbler, and brown creeper, as well as "the usual suspects" - year- round avian residents like robins, blue jays, starlings, doves, sparrows, and pigeons.
The ways these lively, active songsters explore our lawns and plantings (many helping to control undesirable insects) also brighten the visits of our human guests, both visually and aurally. Interesting species seen or heard in the Garden can be recorded in the Bird Log that's kept at the gate greeters' table.
The bird guide section of our website lists all the birds known to have visited the Garden in recent years, with a photo and brief description of each. Currently, the list includes more than 30 species.
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by Jessica Hildreth and Mary Alice Kellogg
Volunteer Co-Coordinators
It's been an amazing year for the Garden's 68 volunteers! Big news this season is that we have welcomed a record number of new volunteers into the Gate Greeter ranks alongside our seasoned "vets." All Greeters are passionately involved in making the Garden a warm and welcoming place for neighbors as well as visitors from at least 59 different countries this year. And dogs get a special welcome thanks to the treats that volunteers have helped to supply.
Gate Greeters also have been indispensable lending a hand at the many weddings and special Garden events- from Women in Jazz to the Children's Flower Festival to Adopt-A- Pot. We thank them all for their service, savvy, wit, and involvement in our Garden.
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JMG Historian
There's lots to learn about the history of Jefferson Market Garden and Jefferson Market Library, but it's the miscellaneous facts that are sometimes the most interesting. So here are a few that I share on my tours of the neighborhood.
Our gardening volunteers might very well qualify  as urban archaeologists. Over time they have discovered remnants of the Women's House of Detention, which existed from 1932 to 1973. Discoveries have included guns, shoes, medicine bottles and cell keys. One of the keys may have been from an older prison that existed here from 1878 to 1928.
The Garden is full of nature and so is the Jefferson Market Courthouse building. If you study its facade, you will find an abundance of sculpted flora and fauna. The flora consists of cattails, rosettes and tulips. The fauna includes a squirrel, a salamander, a snail, an owl, a heron and frogs. The representation of natural landscape onbuildings was a theme of 19th century British architecture. And indeed it was two Brits, Frederick Clarke Withers and Calvert Vaux, who designed the building.
We all know that the library is full of literature, but did you know that you can also find literature on the facade? At the corner of Sixth Avenue and 10th Street you will find a sculpture depicting Aesop's fable, "The Frogs who Desired a King." And above the entrance to the library, in what looks like the tympanum of a church, is the famous courtroom scene from Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice." These architectural elements reflected 19th century British belief that builders can be educators whose architecture can have moral instruction.
These are just a few examples of the fun facts and tidbits that abound in what I consider to be the most fascinating NYC block in terms of its evolution. I will share more in future newsletters.
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Photos in this issue thanks to:
L
inda Camardo
Fredda Tone
Laurie Moody
Jack Intrator
Barbara Sievert
Ron Wasserman
Sam Wilder
Enduring Beauty Since 1975
In 1975, visionary Greenwich Village activists took back the land where Jefferson Market, a farmers' produce market, stood before the Women's House of Detention (1932-1973) was built and then demolished. Their dream garden is now a reality.
Miki Yamanaka quartet featuring Melissa Aldana
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Village Committee for the Jefferson Market Area
Our latest annual report may be obtained, upon request, from the Office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271
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