Design Proposal

Project Title: Healing Trees
Project Lead: Open Road: Paula Hewitt, Alnardo Rodriguez, Ya-Wei Li, 420 East 12th Street, NY, NY, 10009. Email: OpenroadNY@aol.com
Funding Request: $60,000. Match: $60,000 ($45,000 was awarded 3/1/04)
Abstract: Healing Trees will create a living memorial integrating trees, ponds, swales, greenspace and hardscape throughout one acre of public gardens and playgrounds in Open Road Park, Manhattan, using a participatory design approach.

Healing Trees will bring together our diverse community surrounding our Lower Manhattan public park to nurture trees and each other. Our downtown community has been personally impacted by the events of September 11, 2001, and we have not sufficiently addressed community losses, including loss of life, a sense of safety, good community relations and economic strength. Our project brings together the public, schools, a mosque, a church, and secular groups, including our block association. On September 11, 2001 our public park became a spontaneous site for these groups to come together, and our art and planting projects helped to heal dangerous divisions, including block residents angrily calling on mosque members to leave the community. We invited them all into our park, established a sense of safety and respect, and created art reflecting the common desire for healing. Healing Trees seeks to expand these efforts by continuing the participatory design process through which our park was created to design an appropriate memorial to September 11, with living trees.

Location: Our location for this project is Open Road Park, a one acre former brownfield that we have transformed into a beautiful public park, with organic gardens, stormwater swales and ponds, greenhouses, basketball courts, play equipment, solar electric systems, composting bins, outdoor classrooms, and safe, quiet sitting areas. We, with our long term volunteers, are the stewards of this park and initiated its creation 13 years ago. We have a license agreement with the Parks Department and the New York City Department of Education, and we are permitted through this agreement to design and build new elements of the site. Every design element of this location has been designed through an extensive participatory design process, making it ideal for Healing Trees. An average of 150 people/day, 1000 each year, participate in programs at the park. Because of budget restrictions we were unable to plant the full number of trees needed throughout our playground areas, ponds and near our swales. Healing Trees will allow us to complete our original vision, with new community and professional input.

Methodology: Healing Trees will make use of a broad diversity of approaches to involve diverse constituents. Trees will be the unifying thread. We will use a participatory design approach that we have developed over the past 13 years at this site, working with students and the public during school day classes and after school/weekend workshops. We run daily programs at the site with funding from the Department of Education and the Department of Youth and Community Development. Healing Trees will be integrated with these existing programs and resources.

People will be involved throughout the life of this project through our current programs, which will expand to include Healing Trees. In Spring 2004 we will conduct the participatory design programs with teams made up of children, teens, parents, neighbors, architects, students, teachers, and partners. Teams will meet both during and after school, and generate a series of living memorial design ideas. Through our 2004 summer camp program, run in partnership and partly funded by our adjacent Beacon program we will finalize design ideas. In Fall/Winter 2004-05 we will resume our school day and afterschool programs and conduct tree planting and memorial construction. Simultaneously we will conduct stewardship and environmental education activities, and we will complete our living memorial by June 2005.

Through this highly participatory process we will design a plan to plant trees throughout hardscape and green areas in our one acre park, blending trees with our stormwater system's ponds and swales as a symbol of the interdependent elements of life. Recycling of water and organic wastes on site will communicate a sense of renewal, as well as providing compost and a steady water source to the new trees we will plant through this project. Our solar electric system provides ventilation in our greenhouse, where young trees will be nurtured for distribution to other gardens. People involved in the participatory design process will explore the symbolism of these natural and renewable elements and link them to the events of September 11 in a meaningful way. Instead of a static memorial, we envision a living memorial that will require ongoing responsibility, nurturing, cooperation, and outreach. The involvement of people with the trees and each other over time will be an integral part of the memorial design. Because of the high level of interactivity in such a public place, elements of the memorial will be designed to be changed by people and nature, while simultaneously allowing the trees to establish permanency. The therapeutic value of this approach will be explored through this project.

Staffed tours and events, as well as signs and design cues for self guided tours will lead the visitor through Healing Trees in ways that sensitively respond to our diverse community's needs for healing. We will also create guides for finding Living Memorials for OASIS, compatible with our current OASIS guides on gardens, that we hope will increase the diversity of visitors and members in our project.

We are now exploring potential partnerships with landscape architecture students and architects to collaborate with a participatory design team composed of diverse representatives of our community. As we did to create our park, we will extensively survey community needs and resources, conduct fact finding activities for the place (sun/shade, water, soil studies) and people (cultural significance of trees, stewardship capacity, long term commitment) in order to create a sustainable plan. We will conduct outreach to the public, neighbors, schools, and institutions, including our adjacent mosque, church and block association. We'll visit healing gardens, such as Rusk Institute, and community gardens. Daily activities throughout the project will build momentum and we will train volunteers in the skills needed for long term stewardship, including watering, pruning, improving soil around trees. The Parks Department, Trees New York, The Forest Service and other agencies will be tapped for their expertise. Technical assistance that we will request on this project includes, access to examples of living memorials/sites to visit/photos/descriptions, links to new potential agency partners, resources on the cultural meaning of trees, trees appropriate to the northeast, stewardship methods, using stormwater/rainwater to water trees, and water conservation methods.

The steps in our participatory design process are summarized, below.
1. Organizing; Meet with students, teachers, custodian, neighbors, architects, Create your design team, Decide what you need to know, Learn what you can and can’t do, Plan your budget and timeline, Train adults, teenagers, and kids, Select your site, project or theme, Break into working teams (theme or section of site)
2. Fact Finding; Study your site (sun/shade, soil, water), Learn about trees (cultural significance, hardiness, origin), Find or make maps and a base model of your site, Study people near your site and people who will use it, Study people’s current use and desires for the design, Learn about neighborhood and city wide resources
3. Generating Design Ideas; Make drawings and lists of design ideas, Make moveable model pieces of design ideas, Generate design ideas on the model, Presentation to community of design ideas (boards)
4. Creating a Design
5. Building the Place

We will also involve customers and vendors in our public market, a potential vehicle for social integration, outreach, and economic renewal that needs the attention this project can bring. Our community, and our park, has been experiencing economic difficulties since September 11, and the number of visitors to our site has also decreased since then. The public market will help to address both of these problems, as it will provide financial support, and markets have the potential to dramatically increase the number of visitors to a park, as can be seen with the Greenmarkets citywide, and especially in Union Square, Manhattan. Income from the market will support educational programs on-site and will support stewardship of the trees planted through this living memorial project. We will conduct outreach to market vendors and customers and involve them in Healing Trees.

Besides planting purchased trees on-site, our community will experiment with planting trees from cuttings, purchased immature trees, and seed in our greenhouses and outdoor nursery beds. These trees will become part of our living memorial once they are mature. Our garden members are culturally diverse, and members from many regions of the United States, Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Mexico, Senegal, and many other countries have expressed interest in planting trees native to their countries. Some trees will be raised to plant on site, and some will be donated to public gardens through GreenThumb, so these gardens can create small, simple living memorials of their own. Prior to planting these non-native trees, the participants will conduct research on which species are appropriate for planting in the Northeastern United States, and the care they require. Through this work, participants will learn more about other cultures, an approach we have used in the past to reduce prejudice and bias in our programs at the site.

We will develop criteria for groups to receive trees through our community process, but a sample criteria is shown below, based on our past experience with providing plant material to gardens. Garden groups should have:
1. A desire to raise trees as a living memorial, and space in the garden for the new trees
2. Active, diverse members and existing public activities
3. A track record of taking excellent care of their garden
4. A desire to involve members in a participatory design process for the living memorial.
5. A garden on public property with regular open hours.
6. A plan to have self guided tours, signs, or volunteers to support stewardship of the new living memorial project.

The activities of our proposed living memorial project also support our goal of increasing public participation in our park and recruiting new members. Our greenhouse is a year round warm public gathering place where we will hold Healing Trees participatory design sessions, public workshops, our winter market, and host partners. Our daily public market will be an outreach tool and long term source of Healing Trees stewardship funds once the Forest Service withdraws support. Oasis guides will expand the number of visitors to Living Memorial Project sites, including ours. Public and local press events will serve to involve more people in our park. The participatory design process will continue to add new community defined elements throughout the life of the project, including signs that will reflect community needs for healing, reflection, and memorializing, and involve new people in the park. New trees planted throughout the playground, ponds, and swales, will connect the public to trees, including people who never visit gardens, but see the positive role of a tree shading their basketball court. We will build on these new relationships to connect people to trees and each other.

Draft Milestones
March 2004: LMP Training/Forum. Recruit volunteers, student architects, new partners.
April-June: Outreach. Participatory Design Program.
July-August: Write/publish Oasis guides on Living Memorials. Hold daily market.
September-October: Plant trees. Publish Oasis guides on Title VIII street tree project.
November-March: conduct workshops during/after school on trees, ecology, stewardship.
April 2005: Hold public/press event. Hold daily tours, school classes, public workshops.
May-June: Project complete. Install signs. Oasis guides on tree stewardship. Daily tours.
September 11, 2005: Dedicate project.

Targets/Measures
Volunteers: We plan to involve 500 volunteers, documented through sign in sheets.
Funding: We have current commitments of 100% of our funding match. We will raise additional revenue through individual donations, local business donations, foundations, market revenue, and in kind/volunteer donation and commitments.

Partners/Roles: East Side Community High School, New Design High School (student, teacher, parent participation, funding match), 11th Street Block Association (public outreach, volunteers, architects, lead public events), Medina Majid mosque/school, Mary Help of Christians church/school (volunteers, translation, student/parent participation, youth participation, events) Green Thumb/Parks Dept (distribute donated trees, hold workshops on tree stewardship open to gardeners, provide links to gardens, outreach)