The ‘secret’ garden of Kappock Street

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Gardening may be a fun pastime for some people, but for Rita Freed, it has far more importance. 

For the past nine years, the Spuyten Duyvil resident has created and maintained a garden on a patch of land along Kappock Street, which extends up a rocky cliff behind several businesses.

Before Freed decided to take it on as a personal project, the patch of land served as a common spot for litter. Someone had to keep her street clean, so Freed nominated herself for the job. Nearly a decade later, the garden now teems with various types of flowers and greenery.

“My intention was to hold the garbage at bay, which it does,” Freed said. “You see, I hang (garbage) bags. And when people see something tended, they respect it a little bit.”

The garden’s structure is far from ordinary. The way it extends up the side of the cliff makes accessing the plants toward the top very difficult. Tending to the garden requires a great deal of climbing for Freed, who is now in her 70s.

“It’s a totally mad project,” Freed said. “Totally bizarre.” 

In order to keep the soil from sliding down onto the sidewalk, Freed forms a series of terraces to hold the dirt back. Her resourceful and green solution includes collecting people’s Christmas trees in December and January and using stacks of the branches to keep the soil at bay. These branches also add greenery to the garden during the winter when the other plants are not in bloom.

There also is the challenge of getting water to the garden. Freed transports eight to 10 gallon jugs of water every few days in order to keep the plants hydrated. She has offered to pay the businesses at the top of the cliff to run a hose down to the garden, but none of them have agreed to help out. 

While the community supports the garden by littering less, she could use more physical help. 

The labor involved in digging, planting, pruning, watering and composting falls almost entirely on her. 

“We got 3,000 pounds of compost from the city sanitation, and there’s three of us 70-year-olds to receive the 120 bags,” Freed said. “And then I spent 10 days — four-hour days — spreading it on the whole garden.”

One obstacle to getting more help is the fact the garden is not along many residents’ daily paths.

“People who live in section one or section two, they generally either drive someplace else, or they go down the stairs, take the bus, go to Kingsbridge,” Freed said. “They never walk past south of the post office. So it’s like a secret garden, and the only people who know about it are 555 (Kappock) and the people that live down Johnson (Avenue) that come up.” 

While the garden remains Freed’s passion project, she still would love to see it become more of a community project, especially younger people. The feeling someone gets from growing something themselves can be very rewarding, Freed said, especially for children.

“I work with them, the parents are there, and you know, one on one the kids plant the seeds,” Freed said. “A few kids, they get a kick out of it, especially if it comes up.” 

And then there’s the original motivation for the garden — litter.

“If you put out a hand to people to let them behave nice, they will,” Freed said. “But you have to meet them halfway.”

Rita Freed, Kappock Street, Spuyten Duyvil, Lauren Schuster

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