Public Employee Press


Members prep New York's botanical gardens for annual
Spring Awakening

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

"Spring is the time of plans and projects," Tolstoy wrote. Yet long before bulbs and tree buds burst in a profusion of color, signaling spring's sometimes sleepy but always glorious return, dozens of DC 37 members in Local 374 work year-round cultivating the city's Brooklyn, Queens and New York botanical gardens.

New York's three public botanical gardens span more than 340 acres of lush, open space. Green lawns and varietal gardens give residents and tourists a refreshing verdant reprieve from the brick and cement, shadow and grit of the city.

Members of Quasi-Employees Local 374 and their Supervisors busily plant, weed, water, feed, mow, rake, compost and mulch acres of land as part of the strenuous cycle of sustainable gardening at these famous city parks.

The parks offer visitors chances to commune with nature. Beds of golden daffodils and tulips of every hue, allees of delicate apricot, magnolia and cherry trees bloom as the days lengthen and the sun's warmth revives the dormant earth.

Challenged by overdevelopment, dense population and global warming, New York City is using accelerated science and technology and the resourceful ingenuity of its municipal workforce to be green and sustainable for the 21st century, for generations now and for those to come.