Green Thumbs Up: Co-op City's First Community Garden

Nov. 14, 2014 — Co-op City marked a first at the end of October. The mammoth housing development in The Bronx inaugurated the Rivers Run Community Garden, its first riverfront green space. The Bronx Times reports that the garden's co-founder and vice president, Leslie Peterson, wanted to transform the unused space into something that would raise Co-op City's profile and benefit the community by giving people a place to plant flowers and grow vegetables and herbs. Helping in the endeavor are the Facilitators Building 13 Association; Riverbay Community Relations; and Rivers Run Community Garden's Steering Community, which in turn, includes Co-op City residents, NYC Parks' GreenThumb and the New York Botanical Garden, among other collaborative partners. You might think their timing is odd, since winter is fast approaching — but there is plenty of work to do ahead of the garden's anticipated spring 2015 completion, including landscaping, constructing walkways and laying mulch in certain spots.