In a city teeming with people, Robert Urban takes this time to be by himself at the intersection of Columbus Avenue and 95th Street.<\/p>\n
\u201cI enjoy being with plants and animals,\u201d Urban said. \u201cI\u2019m in Manhattan and I see people all the time. It\u2019s \u2014 it\u2019s nice to be alone.\u201d<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
Robert Urban started the first of his street intersection gardens five years ago
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Urban is a professional gardener
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He now cares for four spaces on the Upper West Side<\/p>\n
Urban is the caretaker of four small tree bed gardens on the Upper West Side corner. Greenery has been a lifelong passion for Urban.<\/p>\n
He started growing plants as a boy alongside his father in Connecticut.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day he took me out into the backyard and he said, \u2018Rob, that one is going to be yours,\u2019\u201d Urban said. \u201cI was about four.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast forward to 2021, Urban, who was working as a professional gardener, was walking by an empty tree bed in his neighborhood.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s plantable,\u201d he thought. \u201cIt would look really nice.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He started planting a small garden free of charge. When one of his neighbors could no longer take care of her green space across 95th Street, he put down his mat and got to work.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe saw me doing mine, and she asked me if I would take over and do hers,\u201d he said. \u201cOh, I was honored.\u201d<\/p>\n
Then he started another garden, and another garden after that. During the summer, Urban can often be found hauling water cans to the corner.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a big lift, but one he\u2019s happy to make.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s something instinctual in me,\u201d Urban said. \u201cI see a space and I go, that could be a garden. And I just start to imagine it, and I plant it up.\u201d<\/p>\n
And even though this is a bit of alone time for Urban, he can\u2019t help but smile when his neighbors compliment him on his work.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s really nice. It\u2019s Manhattan and nobody does that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want the place to look nice. You\u2019ll see that there\u2019s a certain charm to each garden and that that\u2019s its own reward. Is that too corny?\u201d Urban added.<\/p>\n
For giving his neighborhood some pops of urban green, Robert Urban is our New Yorker of the Week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a city teeming with people, Robert Urban takes this time to be by himself at the intersection…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":280948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[7914,25,128,7913,9,24,7911,12,63,7912,129,131,130,27,200],"class_list":["post-280947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-the-bronx","tag-app-new-yorker-of-the-week","tag-app-top-stories","tag-bronx","tag-chelsea-katz","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-yorker-of-the-week","tag-news","tag-nyc","tag-pat-kiernan","tag-the-bronx","tag-the-bronx-headlines","tag-the-bronx-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/280948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}