West Side Community Garden

The West Side Community Garden’s 21st annual Tulip Plant-in is 10am-4 pm, Saturday November 12 and Sunday November 13 . Come for an hour or come for the day, bring along your friends – everyone is welcome. Hot Drinks, Chili and Turkey for the workers. Gloves and trowels  provided. The garden is mid block between 89th and 90th Streets between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues. (135 West 89th Street) New York City, 10025. For more information, call Jackie at 917 414 1950, or if you want to bring food or volunteer for helping with sign in sheets/organization call Mira at 212 875 0632.

Arts and Crafts Fair on the Horizon: September 17/18

Join the West Side Community Garden Arts and Crafts Fair Craft artists are setting up 10 am Sat and Sun for an all day exhibition and sidewalk sale.

Call Jackie 212 316 5490 or Jane Grundy at 212 787 8454 for space

And, please join our readers with some of your own poetry or short stories.

Come celebrate the Red, White, and Blue …

Join the West Side Community Garden at a BBQ!!!

July 4th, 2011

6:00 pm – 8:30pm

West Side Community Garden

The theme this year is ‘Community Garden’
Send us your original photo or artwork, showing how our community interacts with the garden.
There are two age groups:
Ages: 4-7 and 8-12

In each age group will receive two complimentary tickets to the Summer Benefit on June 15,2011,
where the winner will be announced.

Submission deadline and judging is
Saturday, May 21st, 2011
10am-2pm

WSCG Children’s Art Contest Entry Form 2011

The West Side Community Garden serving the Upper West Side for the past thirty-six years, one of the prominent gardens in the United States and winner of the Philip, N. Winslow Award, is holding its annual benefit party.. Sumptuous food donated by west side restaurants and garden cooks amid garden floral ambience will be avaailable. This beautiful public space is host to world-class summer concerts, Shakespeare for Children and Adults, an Arts and Crafts Festival, a spectacular tulip show that has gained encomiums world-wide, an integrative school program and much more. Run entirely by a group of tireless volunteers, the Garden has made it its mission to enhance the quality of life for West Side residents.

Join us for the 36th Anniversary Spring Benefit
Saturday, June 15, 2011
6:00pm -8:00pm

Tickets $60 per person, and checks may be sent to:

West Side Community Garden
P.O. Box 20301
Park West Station, New York, NY 10025

2011 Children’s Shakespeare Festival

Come see a blaze of 15,000 tulips on display Saturday, April 16 and Sunday, April 17 from 1 – 4 pm at the West Side Community Garden, West 89th between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues.

Additionally, all children twelve and under are invited to submit artwork on the theme of “Spring in the Garden” for our Summer Art Contest.

The West Side Community Garden is a not for profit, all-volunteer Garden located at 135 West 89th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenues in Manhattan.  Subways: B/C to 86th Street or 1/2/3 to 96th.

For more information about the Tulip Event, Art Contest, or the Garden, please contact Mira  at (212) 875-0632 or Jackie at (212) 316-5490 or (917) 414-1950

The West Side Community Garden is open every day of the year, weather permitting.  Entrances are on 89th and 90th Streets between Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues.  This event is open to the public, is appropriate for all ages, and there is no charge for admission.

Blanche Hodges Long term Garden member and Board member Blanche Hodges passed away suddenly in mid October.

Jane Wilson Another loss of a great lady of the Garden was Jane Wilson, one of the garden founders who passed away in November. Jane organized the food prep /service table for our benefits, picnics, and Tulip planting festivals for the past 15 years. She was an excellent cook and cook book author. and longtime owner of “The Party Box” on Columbus Avenue. .Jane brought a huge dish of her signature Coleslaw to the Garden Tulip Planting November 14 this year, and cleared out her Vegetable plot for the last time. Two weeks later she was gone. Below is a poem of remembrance she sent me October 28, about Blanche Hodges:

“Fond Memories” by Jane Wilson

For so many years Blanche gave unstintingly to the garden as CO-treasurer she along with Fred Young were the checker-inners of everyone who came to any and all of our events. At Community events; meetings and parties there she was again, with that warmth and wonderful deep laugh. We knew we were in good hands. My fondest memories of Blanche happened on many many weekends, where I joined Blanche Vivian, Irene, the regulars .as sellers of our books that we stashed in the shed.Mid- morning we would start taking the books out put them on the wagon and set then up on two or three tables on 89th. and 90th side entrance to the garden, our chairs facing the tables., Blanche keeping her eye out to be sure everyone paid.

We charged next to nothing for our books paper back 3 or 4 for a dollar, hard-cover books from big art books to cookbooks, to political books to fiction and non-fiction, and children’s books one or two dollars. What a bargain but weloved seeing people browse through the books including us, finding a book likean old friend, or for a grandchild, and we would talk together with the browsers and with each other, a lovely way to spend the time.

It seems to me Blanche had a way of reacting to all of us in the same way, with interest, with listening, with good conversation and caring. every time and everywhere we ran into each other. , How lucky for us to have her as such anintegral part of our community garden which she helped flourish

How we will miss her! Jane Wilson

And how we will miss both of you….Jackie

Thanks to everyone for making 2010 our best year!

The 2010 Spring Tulip show with a wonderful “Tulip map of the Garden ( designed by Emma Curtis) our picture in “The New Yorker” and the “Live with Regis and Kelly” show about how to plant the perfect herb garden featuring the Garden; our wonderful June Benefit with food from over 50 local restaurants and stores, thanks to recruiters Maureen Nipar and Betty Lerner, and Edith Marks set the ball rolling and masterminded, and thanks for the “Music in a Garden” Series organized by member Randa Kirshbaum – six delightful Sunday afternoons of old and new music with an average attendance of 100 people at each concert, and our Children’s Shakespeare Festivals “Twelfth Night” directed and professional mounted by award winning playwright and director Morna Martell, for six weekend performances entertaining over attracting over 600 parents children and seniors during the season, and our wonderful arts festival with writers reading their original works and featuring world premier of “Four Pieces for Orchestra” by Stephen Josephs with the New York String Orchestra.

Throughout the three seasons our Flower Committee and volunteers headed by Tom Thies with Liz Voight, Maki Hino, mounted a bountiful floral display, as our vegetable gardeners enjoyed an excellent harvest of greens, many peppers and tomatoes which flourished in the hot dry weather. Fall brought sadness as two of our long term members Blanch Hodges and Jane Wilson passed away, but we look forward to a new year, with new projects, new members, and ever more strange and beautiful plants, and flowers.

Welcome Yule!

Saturday/Sunday Nov 13/14, anytime 10am-4pm- everyone is welcome.
135 West 89th between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue- New York( Manhattan) New York.

Celebrate with us and help us fulfill our mission to the community

in our beautiful Garden Party 123 West 89th Street –
located mid-block between Amsterdam and Columbus Avenue, New York City.

Taste our fabulous international buffet of fine foods and wines
from local restaurants and purveyors of fine food.

Join us to honor Eric Schneiderman, New York State Senator, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Dr. Scott Gaynor, head of the Gaynor School on West 90th Street.

And  special tribute to our founder Dee Parisi who passed away last fall.

Tickets are $60, and checks may be sent to West Side Community Garden, PO Box 20301, Park West Station, New York, NY 10025 . To pay Electronically click on the NY Charities button on this web site, before June 5. the West Side Community garden is a  Not-For-Profit New York corporation and all donations are exempt to the full extent allowable by law.
For further  information call Mira Stulman at 212 875 0632