LOOKING
GOOD!
The head of Narrows Botanical Garden is looking to grow native plants along a portion of the Belt Parkway.
Narrows Botanical Garden
COURIER LIFE, FEBRUARY 12-18, 2021 3
BY JESSICA PARKS
A local greenspace guru is
looking to beautify a stretch of
the Belt Parkway in Bay Ridge
with an assortment of native
plants to give drivers a dazzling
display of wildlife during
their commutes.
“These would be all kinds
of fl owers that were pollinators
for our native insects,
aesthetically beautiful as you
drive by, making it an absolute
wow factor than what it is
right now,” said James Johnson,
co-founder of the Narrows
Botanical Garden.
Located on a 4.5 acre plot of
land near Bay Ridge Avenue,
Narrows Botanical Garden is
separated from the busy Moses
era highway by a 20-to-30
foot grassy patch that’s infested
by mugwort — a meddlesome
plant attributed to
hay fever, which can be costly
to maintain as it requires regular
trimming, Johnson said.
“It has no aesthetic qualities,
and no value for wildlife,”
Johnson said. “There is a high
cost in mowing it down and
trying to keep it maintained.
It’s just sucking money up for
absolutely no reason at all.”
Now, Johnson is looking
to expand his beloved garden
onto the mugwort-infested territory,
which would adorn the
northern roadside with decorative
fl owers and shrubbery.
“We would really like to
expand green space onto the
Belt Parkway along the edge
there,” Johnson told Community
Board 10 at a joint Environment
and Transportation
Committees meeting.
The landscape designer
proposed planting grasses tolerant
of salt, wind, and fl oods,
as well as other native fl owering
plants in the space, which
would make the area both
more visually appealing and
cheaper to maintain after only
a few years of intensive care
under the Botanical Garden’s
stewardship.
And on top of the other benefi
ts, Johnson said he expects
the native plants to bring back
some of the wildlife once common
in the area — like the
state Bluebird, swallows, butterfl
ies and other insects.
“These are the guys that
would really benefi t from it,”
Johnson said. “If we increase
native plantings, native habitat
— they would come back.”
The board’s committee
members unanimously voted
to support the project, which
Johnson suspects will be
handled similarly to Adopta
Highway, where organizations
sign on to maintain a
section of the highway as an
act of goodwill. Now, the city
Department of Transportation
will ultimately need to render
its approval.
The board’s DOT liaison
expressed enthusiasm for the
idea, and told members he
would bring it back to the decision
makers for review.
Johnson found inspiration
for his proposal from highway
beautifi cation efforts in other
areas of New York and nationwide,
and said he would like
to see Bay Ridge be the leader
of this initiative in New York
City as it gains popularity.
“You’d drive by to the right
would be water and to the left
would be beautiful plantings
of native grasses and wildfl owers,”
Johnson said. “I would
love for Bay Ridge, our community
board, to start this off
so that we create a chain reaction.”
Plan to beautify Belt Parkway
could revive local ecosystem
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