New Haven Independent

But she didn’t let that deter her appreciation of the site and its stirring aesthetic potential. She cleaned it up, a bag and a half a day on her walks. Then others began to pick up too.

Move ahead two years: Bissell has successfully organized Riverview Block Watch Association, encompassing both sides of Lombard Street by the water. The group recently was successfully awarded grants from the Community Greenspace program (through Urban Resource Initiatives of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) and the Greater New Haven Community Foundation to establish plantings along the waterside of Front Street from Chatham to Peck.

On a beautiful Saturday, Bissell and her neighbor, Amistad sixth-grader Robert Manso (pictured), were putting in daisies, cornflowers, black-eyed susans, along with some 40 evergreen shrubs.

“We originally wanted the city to put in a sidewalk here, near the water,” she said, “but they only put in this gravel walk. Now it’s going to be beautiful. I love watching people walk along here now enjoying the view.”

Indeed, behind her, as Bissell lent support to the honey locust tree that had just gone in, you could see the ospreys fishing above the Fargeorge salt marsh preserve, and the phragmites and spartina, looking green and healthy along the river’s edge. “People pay a half-million dollars to live by the water,” she said. “To have what we have.”

Bissell of course did not plant alone.

Neighbors (on the left, John Bontatibus, Anne Massaro, Joan Forte; in back row, husband Brent Bissel and Greenspace interns (Yi-Wen Lin and Krishna Roka from the Greenspace program of Yale’s School of Forestry and Environmental Studies) were busy working along the walkway that, it is hoped, will eventually link the greenspace of Dover Beach park. The park is being restored in the front yard of Quinnipiac Terrace, all the way down to Quinnipiac River Park and down through the River Street Municipal Development District down to Cirscuolo Park on James Street — a walkway that never leaves sight of the water.

Yi-Wen Lin, in the green shirt, who is from Taiwan and in her second year at Yale, said the evergreen shrubs — mainly inkberry and bayberry — were chosen for being sand resistant. “We dig through the gravel,” she said, “then a plastic layer, which we cut through, and then into the sandy soil.”

But she was also careful to point out that the greenspaces, of which there are no fewer that 50 active in New Haven this summer, are about far more than environmental beautification. “Community building, and then stewardship of what is done are equally important.”

What does stewardship mean? At its most basic, it means watering all these plants and keeping them alive, Lin said. Which in this instance meant that Bissell and her block watch friends would need to haul water to the plants and tend them through the seasons.

That kind of horticultural coming together often leads to larger civic rejuvenation, which was evident in festivities in yet another of the city’s greenspaces a mere half mile away in Fair Haven. At this splendid community garden at the corner of Saltonstall and Lloyd streets, Alderwoman Migdalia Castro was presenting formal certificates of appreciation to Chris Ozyck, the Community Greenspace manager, and Rachel Holmes, the much-loved Greenspace intern from the program, who is also a student at the Yale Divinity School.

“With Rachel’s help, we brought together three different groups in the area,” said Castro. “We cleaned front yards, we put in curb plantings, and we planted 17 street trees, along Wolcott and Blatchley and Saltonstall. People share talents, and interests, it’s really beautiful.”

The centerpiece is the formal garden at Saltonstall and Lloyd, a place of flowering daisies and rhododendrons, with a white trellis formal entryway and a pleasant white gravel walkway circling an area for benches and chairs. It began life as the site of two abandoned houses, which the city demolished in 2003. Then a mother-daughter wonder pair, Adeli and Elba Dearce (kneeling on the right and directly behind her) began working with Community Greenspaces.

“We talked to the neighbors,” said Elba, “and asked what they wanted, and everyone wanted a place to sit and relax, a local park.” She pointed with particular pride to a stone bench. “That’s all made of the stones and foundation from the shuttered houses that were here.”

Other community people involved in the design and maintenance of this park and the plantings along Wolcott and Saltonstall are (left to right) Gwen Heath and Deirdre Casteel, on either side of Castro; behind them newcomers to the gardens, Luis Ortiz, in white, and Angel Santiago; and beside Casteel, Celestino Cordoba. Cordoba is one of the movers and shakers from the senior complex group on Saltonstall. He takes great pleasure in watching the trees grow. Ortiz, originally from Ecuador, and a resident in the neighborhood for 20 years, said he noticed the clean-up and dropped by to see what was going on.

And so it goes in Fair Haven and elsewhere where people plant: beautification not just in the garden but the civic spirit. In thanking people for the certificate Ozyck summed it up: “The people to thank are you. You’re the ones who have to bring water out here and maintain all this. It’s easy to build. But taking care of things, by bringing water from your houses… that’s not so easy, but it makes a great difference. It shows a caring for the neighborhood and builds stability… in a democratic space that belongs to all of us. It’s one of the greatest things, this space and the interaction that takes place here. That’s why people live in the city.”