Old, Young Bodies Huddle in Gardens

Hands moving, fingers turning and bodies huddling with one another. Youths, seniors and urban planners were all grouped around four tables in the courtyard of Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE), a community organization in the Lower East Side. With scissors chopping and pipe cleaners molding into shapes, they built a model of the community garden that they collectively designed.

According to Abby Deatley, a staff member at AAFE, the community garden is being created to bridge a bond teens and senior citizens through community gardening.

Since May 2010, AAFE have been incorporating this garden initiative to their youth program Teen Action Club, funded by the NYC Department of Youth and Community Development. Youths meet once a week to help build the garden.

Community gardens “stimulates social interaction,” according to the American Community Gardening Association, and the one near Norfolk and Staton streets strives to do just that.

“We want to gather the youth and the seniors together,” explained Rebekah Meeks, a representative at AAFE. “The garden is for everyone for the youths to have a suburban experience and for the seniors to have a place to go to.”

The seniors joined the youths and urban planners in the brainstorming and planning process in early May before transforming the courtyard into a senior-friendly community garden.

Thirteen youths, eight seniors and seven urban planning experts huddled together in a table to play a planning game called charrette. Pipe cleaners and construction paper are everywhere; the youths leaned in closely to hear what the senior had to say and the seniors listened closely to the ideas of the youths. Talking, exchanging eye contacts, and laughing over ideas, the seniors slowly yet sharply cut out shapes with the youth, helping them create a paper and pipe cleaner swing, a tree, trousers, plants, and seats.

Wei Hua Mo, 22, a sophomore at Hunter College and part-time staff at AAFE said, “They [the seniors] are just like kids! They love to talk and they talk a lot.”

“We also asked the seniors to plant their own seeds and many of them just loved touching the soil,” said WenBin Kuang, 20, a student at Lower East Side Preparatory High School, which serves new and overage immigrant students.

He added that after the spring planning session, the youths and the seniors mingled to help move the plants the youths planted into materials donated by the community. More than 90 percent of the community garden is made from recycled materials. For instance, they used a broken green sink found near the Lower East Side as a planting pot.

The seniors are involved with the planning process, planting seeds and taking care of the garden in the future once it’s done building. The youths are responsible for the building. In the beaming sun, the group of 13 youths came to the community garden after summer school to get their hands dirty. They saw the wood, screw the woods together, painted trousers, planted seeds and drilled holes.

“The first day of building was hard. I remember five youths was trying to screw the bench and it took the youths and us [AAFE staffs] the whole day to build one bench. Now they build two benches a day by themselves!” said Meeks.

“I’ve always thought of my grandma as annoying, but now I like seniors. It was fun and eye-opening talking to the seniors, many of them sound so active,” said Manshui Lam, 19, a senior at Baruch College Campus High School.

The seniors at the community garden are from suburban garden-friendly areas in China. Living and working in the United States have limited their exposure to parks and gardens. As a way to thank the seniors for their support, this community garden has been built by youths just for them.

Deatley noted that gardening is a great way to interact different generations and races that speak languages.

“I can’t speak Cantonese but I can still interact with the seniors. They show me what to do and I show them what I want them to do,” said Jin Mei Chen, 18, a student at NYC Lab High School For Collaborative Studies.

Meeks said this community garden provides the seniors with a space that is made primarily for easy senior access, including his/her seats that didn’t require seniors to bend down when they are planting.

“They [seniors] teach the younger generation skills of gardening, teaching them how great it is to grow your own food,” said Deatley.