- People -- Introduction
- Living Memorials: Acts of Social Meaning Create Places of Resilience
- People's Relationship with Trees
- Lessons from the Field: Living Memorial Stewards
Park
Social Systems Support the Commons
September 11th Memorial Grove
Site: Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NY
Stewardship type: Non-profit
Initiated by: Prospect Park Alliance
Maintenance: New York City Dpt of Parks and Rec; Prospect Park Alliance
Land Jurisdiction: city
Purpose: According to Prospect Park Alliance's Amanda Eisen, the site is "to commemorate the lives of people from Brooklyn that were lost on that day, and to give the community a space for reflection and healing."
Reason site was selected: This site was selected because it is one of the closest points in the park to Manhattan and the former WTC, and yet it is not in particularly any neighborhood. It is in an area that needed restoration anyways, and this grant will help to restore some of Olmsted's original designs. As a grove, it will stand apart for 9-11 remembrance, but will integrate with the rest of the park landscape. The Alliance wanted to do something because people came to Prospect Park in droves on September 11 and the days that followed. Families gathered there to "give their kids a sense of normalcy," but the pervasive quietness and the presence of ash and debris marked those days as not just any other weekend.
Events planned for the site: The public will be notified of the grove as the project moves forwards, and individuals can dedicate trees for loved ones. The staff anticipates that many organic events will occur once the space is developed and dedicated, as such spaces are desperately needed in the city.
Additional Field Observations and New Developments:
The grove was dedicated on September 4, 2003. After that date, it is likely that the grove will be used much like the rest of the park, for active and passive recreation of park-goers from Brooklyn and all over New York City. The restored area will feature approximately 20 overstory trees, 30 understory trees, and 35 shrubs. Funding also went towards tree care and maintenance of existing surrounding trees in an attempt to improve the overall park health.
Although the area of the park is not being specifically set aside with 9-11-related programming, Prospect Park Alliance staff have a sense that the entire park is a sacred amenity. The importance of the park was apparent in the days immediately following 9-11 when the community gathered to seek solace, but also on the anniversary concert and candlelight vigil. Carol Ann Church noted, "We thought no one would come, because there hadn't been a lot of publicity about it until just two days before. So we were all there and people started pouring in....We were almost overwhelmed." Horticulturalist Anne Wong echoed this sentiment saying, "They were setting up Jumbotrons and I said 'who are these for?'" "We had 5000 candles that someone had donated and we ran out of them," Eisen added. The Park, the staff holds, is also a sacred place unto itself: it is Fredrick Law Olmstead's masterpiece and a landmark park, it receives millions of visitors, per year, and it is simply a beautiful place. Wong specifically identify with the Long Meadow, at the end of which the memorial grove is situated:
"I think the Long Meadow is really special, the whole thing. I work right in the middle of it, so it's what I see everyday. But, it's just the way the land is shaped and the groupings of trees. You come in in the morning some times and there's just this mist lying there. It's very magical. It's a big open space, it's also a gathering space. It's so well designed that people tend to treat it respectfully. I really do feel like it's a very special space... It's a 90 acre crescent-shaped space, it's one of the biggest open spaces in a public park in America. It's designed so that you cant see it all in one glance, you just sort of get pulled into it. The trees are pulling you into the landscape, because they hide some things and reveal some things.... I think it's the great thing about the park, that there are all these little secret areas. It's not open to you all in one reading, there are many, many nooks and crannies."
As committed ecologists, arborists, and parks staff, they identified with the natural assets of the park, but in terms of serving the community's need, they identified programming as absolutely essential. When asked about recent budget cuts, Eisen responded,
"Cuts to the Parks Department means that there's been talk of us having to pick up private funding to take care of trash removal and keeping the grass mowed. That takes away from dollars that we raised for programming, and programming is really what brings people into the park in meaningful ways and keeps the park used, populated, and safe.... Money for tree planting is wonderful and welcome, but it can't end there. You've got to have maintenance and programming."
One example of cutbacks relates to the placement of a granite plaque for the memorial grove. The Alliance had the plaque created in recognition of the project and a number of community members who lost their loved ones on September 11th, but cutbacks in City maintenance staff have temporarily prevented them from installing it. They plan on putting it in place in the spring of 2004. Although they are an Alliance with an enormous natural resource, a large permanent staff, and a significant endowment, their call for funding for maintenance and programming parallels that of smaller, community-based organizations. Certain basic funding needs for urban natural resource management will remain consistent and outlast event-based efforts like the Living Memorials Project.
The Prospect Park Alliance staff discussed maintenance of the park and community input in the process:
"What generally happens
is that the architect comes up with a plan that we show to the Community Committee and ask what they think of it.
It's not individuals, it's civic groups, local non-profit, Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce, business development
corporations, hospitals, and things like that. That group meets monthly and had significant input into our
five-year plan for the park.
I think part of the secret to its continued, active existence is because they
participated in the long term planning process, and they were able to see a lot of their ideas actually make
it through and a lot of things get revised. It's tangible for them to say 'we came up with that,'" said Carol Ann Church.
The Alliance has a core of dedicated community volunteers: "We have a group that comes in every Thursday. They are hard-core. They are retired folks. They are dedicated individuals. They work in the same office as the volunteer managers, and they'll call us and say 'it's going to rain tomorrow, it's going to be 40 degrees, they are still coming.' And they say 'okay, just have something for us to do.' Some of these people have been coming for years," said Amanda Eisen.
Arborist Chris McComiskey added, two of our volunteers are ministers in two different churches, and they met through the volunteers, and so one day they came last year, a couple years ago, and they switched churches for a day."
The Park also offers has a memorial tree program that has sponsored 3,000-5,000 trees in the park through individual and community memorializations. "The Alliance had received a grant before my time to reach out to community groups, and one of the groups they reached out to was the Puerto Rican community. They did a Boriqua festival in partnership with them that celebrates all things Puerto Rican. And in return, in appreciation for what was done, the festival committee decided that each year they will donate some trees to the park until they've donate a tree for each town in Puerto Rico. They usually donate in the name of a parent or grandparent or relative," said Carol Ann Church.
