Nice to Meet You, Prospect Heights

I’M RE-ACQUAINTING MYSELF WITH BROOKLYN after an absence of a year-and-a-half, and discovering my new neighborhood, Prospect Heights. It’s hardly major culture shock, since I lived in Brooklyn most of my adult life, but still, there’s a learning curve. A person has to figure out where the nearest laundromat is, which delis carry soy yogurt, exactly what time you have to re-park your car after double-parking on alternate-side days in order to nab a spot, and so on.

Sure, I rented this apartment largely for its proximity to the Brooklyn Museum, the botanic garden, and the public library, but right now, the quotidian stuff is taking precedence.

Typical Prospect Heights limestone

This morning I joined the pre-Thanksgiving madness at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket, though all I bought was a bunch of eucalyptus (I’m going upstate for the holiday and not doing major cooking). Then I went to a 12:30 class at Shambhala, a storefront yoga studio three rather long blocks away, where I was the oldest by far (I tend to be conscious of these things). This neighborhood is young, something I never felt in Springs, where gray-haired people like me go to retire.

I had lunch at my go-to café, Milk Bar (where I also raised the median age considerably), and popped into Met Food for staples. Everything I need is right around the corner, either on Vanderbilt or Flatbush Avenues – banks, drug stores, about seven dry cleaners, hardware, shoe repair – convenient as hell, yet neatly tucked out of sight of my handsome landmark block.

Then I went to Pintchik, the venerable paint store, for yet another paint sample. I’m homing in on a color for my bedroom. With the yellow living room, below, a great success (according to everyone who’s seen it), I feel I need something equally strong for the bedroom.

I started in the coral family, moved to pink, and now I’m thinking red/orange. Clearly it will be on the warm side of the color wheel, but nothing so far feels right. The Pintchik guys will get to know me well.

Of course, as I made my rounds, I checked out the row-house architecture on surrounding blocks and was fascinated by how the styles differ from older neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, and Boerum Hill, which are filled with Federal and Greek Revival brickfronts and classic brownstones. Here in Prospect Heights it’s more varied, stylistically, and closer to turn-of-the-20th-century, with lots of limestone.

Looking at the decorative detail on a short stretch of Prospect Place between Vanderbilt and Underhill, I saw several carved faces in the lintels above doorways, something I never noticed much before. It must have been a late 19th century thing; the one below even looks like a mad Teddy Roosevelt.

I’m back in Brooklyn, but in some ways it’s a whole new world.

Doing Well by Doing Good on Court Street

Fork and Pencil, a new antiques/consignment shop at the corner of Court and Warren Streets in Cobble Hill, had a very successful opening weekend, with many items bearing “SOLD” stickers by Sunday.

The store, which took over space previously occupied by Brooklyn Artisans Gallery, has an unusual mission. After costs, proceeds go to worthy causes including the Open Space Institute, New York state’s largest land conservation organization, and Rooftop Films, an independent film-production cooperative, as well as our neighborhood PTAs, Greenmarkets, and local arts organizations.

It all sounds very pie-in-the-sky, but proprietor Alex Grabcheski, who has a day job in the financial services industry, and his wife, Tally Blumberg, seem committed to their utopian concept.

They have a background in the antiques business (they had a store in Chatham, N.Y. for a while), and someone has a very fine eye.  The merchandise is top quality and attractively displayed. Prices range from $150 for a wire chandelier of recent vintage to $850 for a 19th century landscape oil painting, $1,375 for a huge Staffordshire bowl with a Chinese pattern (which sold quickly), and $2,800 for an 1880s Italian settee covered in Brussels tapestry.

There’s also a colorful section at the back with new children’s toys.

The store is open Wednesday through Sunday from 11 to 7.  To inquire about consigning, call 718 488 8855.

Elke’s Terrace: Made in the Shade

THIS SPRING, IF YOU SPOT A WOMAN in a flower-covered hat pushing a red shopping cart full of plants around downtown Brooklyn, it’s probably my friend Elke.

A true gardener like Elke, whose outdoor space is a 15’x25′ terrace behind her second-floor apartment in Brooklyn Heights, doesn’t let a few obstacles stop her.

No car? No worries. She does her plant-shopping on foot at the Borough Hall Greenmarket and local stores like GRDN on Hoyt Street, takes the bus to Gowanus Nursery in Red Hook, and relies on Bruno’s Housewares on Court Street to deliver clay pots (never plastic), soil, and other heavy supplies. (The cast iron urns came from Restoration Hardware.)

No direct sun? Elke makes the most of every ray that penetrates the ailanthus canopy around her north-facing terrace: a single hour in the morning and a couple more at midday. By choosing the right plants and coddling them — even shifting them around from time to time to give each a piece of the limited sun — she has wrought a lush green miracle, don’t you agree? (These pictures were taken last June.)

Among Elke’s shade-lovers: vines and climbers like moonflower and morning glory on tuteurs, rosemary topiaries (in the sunniest corner), jasmine, hibiscus, ferns, caladiums, an amazing purple and white ‘corkscrew’ plant (below), coleus, hostas, spotted begonias, passionflower.  “I don’t do impatiens,” she says.

Here are Elke’s tips for terrace-garden design and healthy container plants, even if you don’t have a ton of sun:

• Use 4’x8′ sheets of wood lattice to obscure an unattractive fence but still let in light and air
• Make the terrace feel like an outdoor living room with chair cushions, mirrors on the exterior wall (also good for capturing extra rays), chandeliers and sconces
• Completely change the soil in each container every season, don’t just ‘top off’ with a fresh inch or two. “Nutrients in containers get used up very quickly, and roots completely fill the pot” by the end of the growing season, she says. She doesn’t have room for a compost heap, so she tosses it all and starts anew each spring.
• Feed with fish emulsion; it’s better for the environment, the cats (who sometimes nibble on the plants), and it seems to work wonders on the plants themselves
• Don’t set out plants before Memorial Day; these are mostly tender, heat-loving plants
• Water daily
• If you go away for a weekend, pull pots into even deeper shade so they don’t dry out in the heat

What makes Elke’s terrace garden so out-of-the-ordinary?  I think it has something to do with exotic foliage and unusual color combinations. A multi-disciplinary artist/designer, her favorites are gray/silver (e.g. dusty miller) with chartreuse and burgundy (e.g. sweet potato vine) — and splashes of pink from “as many flowers as I can get.”

My Rented Garden: Nil to Abundance in 2 Seasons

WELL, THAT WASN’T SO BAD, WAS IT? Unless we get some late snowstorms (which have been known to happen), spring is just weeks away. My thoughts are turning to my backyard in Boerum Hill, going into its third season.

I’m a renter here, which means:

• I don’t want to spend much money
• I can’t do anything too invasive (my landlady doesn’t like it, and I’m scared of her)

But as my pictures show, you can do a lot with a little, and fast.

 

 

When I arrived in November 2006, I found a scraggly rectangle of lawn about 22’x40′. Along the back was a raised bed held back by a stacked stone wall. All totally devoid of plants, except for one glorious dogwood tree in a far corner. (The photo below shows the garden in April of ’07, by which time I had dug perimeter beds and stuck a few things in them.)

The grass was bordered on one side by some phenomenal hydrangea bushes that belong to my next-door neighbors but topple into my yard, and on the other side, by a hideous, depressing, 7-foot-tall chain-link fence.

My first thought was to disguise the prison fence by lashing rolled twig fencing (useful stuff; you can buy it online) to it with cable ties.  That didn’t fool anyone, plus it blocked light.

Then I asked my next-door neighbor on the chain-link side whether he’d ever thought of removing the fence. I went out for a few hours, and when I returned, the hideous, depressing fence was GONE! My dear neighbor (who also mows my lawn of his own volition) had done a masterful job of fence-removal in a single afternoon.

That first tentative, unimaginative step in the spring of ’07  — digging three-foot-wide planting beds around the perimeter of the rectangle — was followed by outreach to friends and neighbors. I filled the beds with with catch-as-catch-can plants from a variety of sources.

These included buttercups, irises, lilies from garden-mad neighbors in Boerum Hill who were dividing their excess, as well as:

• plants imported from my own country casa (including catmint and lady’s mantle, my favorite combination, and ferns transplanted from the woods)
• Lowes and Home Depot specials: gallon pots of euonymous, juniper, and other small shrubs for a few bucks
• annuals from the neighborhood plant sales – the Hoyt Street Association and Cobble Hill Tree Fund both have great ones in early May
• birthday gifts (I had the nerve to send party invitations reading “No gifts – unless it’s a plant!”)
• vegetable starters from the Borough Hall Greenmarket

The first season was good; by the second season, I had color that lasted from early spring through October (someone gave me asters!) You know what they say about perennials: “The first year they sleep, the second year they creep, the third year they leap.” These seemed to be leaping pretty good by Year 2.

Summer 08

The color show is aided by containers of coleus and other annuals, and I cheat by placing large containers of annuals right in the beds. By mid-summer you don’t even see the pots.

It’s a north-facing garden, so it has challenges, but the sky is open. This past summer, I decided to try tomatoes for the first time. I bought two simple 4’x8′ raised-bed kits from a company in Massachusetts that makes them Colonial-style (they’re planks of cedar attached at the corners with pegs).

Then I made the classic newbie error of planting too much — 16 tomato plants, when four would have been sufficient. By August, it was out of control and an eyesore. I kept trimming and staking, trimming and staking; more trouble than it was worth. This year I’ll leave one raised bed in the sunnier position with herbs, lettuce, and a few tomatoes, and probably dismantle the other.

I’m raring to go with spring garden-cleaning. The next warmish weekend, I’m on it!