apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

Boy I'm glad someone has figured out a good use for those cylinders (other than filling up another landfill).

From the pictures, I believe those cylinders are broken structural concrete test samples.
These samples are created when structural concrete is poured (for buildings, bridges, etc), and then tested at a later date to verify the concrete meets it's design requirements.
I used to throw out several of these broken cylinders each day at a former summer job in a construction materials testing lab.

This is an incredibly cool and creative idea! Great reuse of unwanted stuff.

If I were doing it myself on a building that abuts the sidewalk directly, I'd check my CC&Rs or make a call to find out whether it's legal for me to extend stuff onto the sidewalk. Just a thought, because it's a great idea to copy, but what's legal in Brooklyn may not be accepted elsewhere.

A classic example of taking lemons and making lemonade! Good for you guys, turning trash into something pleasing.

It's not legal, without going for approvals from DOT and the Art Commission (which I somehow doubt you did), but I don't think anyone's going to complain!

It's so, SO unfortunate and ridiculous that the legality of something like this is even debated. Since when is beautifying a neighborhood against the law? There was a big article in the Cobble Hill/Carroll Gardens Courier recently about just this because the DOT has apparently been issuing summonses--$250 to $1000--to people left and right throughout the CH/CG area.

Amy and Jim I remember your sunflowers from last year! I took pictures! Great job = )

Wow. That is so bad ass. Nice job.

Sandra, the reason I brought it up is because people *can* get summonses for altering city property or violating right-of-way and easement rules.

It wasn't meant as a criticism of the garden -- I have no idea what's legal in Brooklyn nor what precautions the gardeners took, and the garden itself is lovely -- but as a caution to other gardeners to look before they leap. A great garden is likely to be imitated, and it'd be a shame if imitation ended in fines and embarrassment.

I'm sorry my comment came across as "unfortunate and ridiculous."

I hope you will provide followup on the future of this small bit o green.
Some how I see the forces of darkness in the form a some city official demanding this be removed and someone fined for doin this.
Please keep us posted on its
survival.
Good Luck.

You know, we’re going on our second year and no one has said anything yet. No one said anything the nine months the cylinders sat there before we threw dirt behind them, either. Or after people nightly dump other construction detritus, sofas, chicken parts, tires. We’re not a high traffic area here, and we get no services—no street cleaning, no garbage pick-up. We can’t even get cable. After five o’clock, it’s like a cross between living in Mayberry (we just got our first traffic light—honest) and an abandoned Ford plant. But it’s our home, and it’s our garden. Unless you’re a government official. Then our position is “What garden?” Thanks for all the nice words from everyone. And if anyone is in the neighborhood dumping their own garbage while we’re out having one of our illegal barbecues in front of the illegal garden, stop by for a hot dog. And maybe a beer from an illegal open container.

Wow, cool! Do the concrete cylinders stay up on their own, or are they attached together somehow? Doesn't the dirt push them over...or have you ever had any problem with random people pushing them over? (Maybe there are just too many bored teenagers in my town, pushing over tombstones and the like, but the fact that it happens made me ask!)

Love It ! the before picture has me sold. the smiles, the day that pile turned into a garden, great work.

Oh, the limitations of the internet! Wende, I probably should have clarified my comment, as I wasn't wagging a finger at you or anyone else here! What I was *trying* to say was that I find the laws prohibiting the planters 'ridiculous' and 'unfortunate'. While I completely understand the need for such laws (to ensure pedestrian safety, handicap accessibility, etc.) there seems to be a lot of misinterpretation and willy-nilly enforcement here in Brooklyn. Your horticultural caveat is a wise one!

...and I totally agree with you that cities could stand to loosen up, as a garden like Jim's so visibly improves the community...

Pass that illicit beer, please!

This garden is awesome. I share your badass-with-a-good-cause spirit. My mom used to say to me "better to ask forgiveness than permission."

When I was living in Geneva, Switzerland there were really interesting, beautiful neighborhoods that were occupied by squatters. They built amazing collaborative street art (giant colourful sculptures made of chairs, bicycle wheels and random trash emerged from old buildings).

This garden reminds me of those illegal but beautiful modifications.

Good job! That's really inventive and every little bit of green space helps.

Love guerrilla gardening. Now how would they catch you? When you're out tending the posies, some ticket-toting city employee is going to sneak up and say gotcha? I think they'd give you a badge of honor instead.

I want to see your entry from last year. Can someone direct me to last year's greenest thumb contest? I've done a bunch of searching but can't find it. And, this is what I'm finding under AT Archives:
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/archives

No 2005 garden contest there.

I work as an engineer on const.project. I see these being made on daily basis and taken to the lab on daily basis as well. I couldn't possibly think use of it beside making it and breaking it. Great job fellows. Keep up the good work.

This is Amy, the other gardener of the guerilla garden. Glad everyone likes it!

To answer a few questions, we didn't enter the 2005 AT Garden contest, but we did start this garden last year.

And the cylinders stand up by themselves. They are quite heavy. We have had neighbors do some questionable things to the garden, some digging and some pooping (kids and dogs only). It's frustrating but seems to stop as soon as it looks more like a garden and less like a sandbox/poopbox.

We'll keep doing it until someone stops us, although I can't really think of any reason for it to be stopped!

Guerilla gardening is one of the most beautiful concepts on Earth. Yours looks so nice! I would have loved to have seen the sunflowers.

It's not just cool that they did it at all, but it's wonderful that they did such a good job, and let's face it ... those cyclinders should be sold and marketed for that very purpose. They're VERY nice-and-neat, and strange and wonderful and abstract and modern and delicious. They remind me of that bas relief wallpaper thing they posted on here the other day.

The spirit of this is just badass humanity at its best. Makes you think, "Man, if everyone took this kind of initiative, what a world it would be."

Y'all rock for this.

I love it. Good for you two. And good for the illegal barbeques and illegal beers too!

I think other people's gardens are nice and all, but this epitomizes what an urban garden is - an island of life in the clutches of concrete. Even if the palnts here are not the lushest and there are not finikey roses, this garden shoudl be the winner of the contest - because it's more then just a few plants, its a statememnt to the world :)

Anyone can plant pretty things in pots on a deck. This is really creative! And recycling trash into a garden too... nice.

I love it!

I live in Inwood in upper Manhattan and am actively
planting my neighborhood, wherever I can find a space.

Though we have amazing parkland, the streetscape is
grim.

Thanks for your inspiration.

peggy