The city’s Green Thumb parks program has paired with a team of local landscape designers to create a lush, wildflower-dotted meadow on a long-vacant corner of President and Van Brunt streets, next to Mother Cabrini Park in the Columbia Street Waterfront District.
The storefront-sized meadow — now an unmanicured thicket of knee-high grasses and rangy wildflowers — should be open for neighborly grazing by the end of the summer.
“There is really no place in the area for lying in the grass and looking at the flowers. It’s something we all need,” said landscape designer and neighborhood resident Julie Farris, who designed the new city park with designers at Balmori Associates and the Parks Department.
“It’s already the green counterpoint to all asphalt around here,” said Green Thumb Director Edie Stone, who said that the park could be complete even before the end of August if Mother Nature cooperates.
The new greenery is expected to clean the air of approximately 33 pounds of pollutants annually, according to a study of the soot-sucking capabilities of the .18-acre site.
Scientists from Columbia University also found that the store-front-size meadow will absorb the run-off equivalent of 60,000 toilet flushes, or 240,000 gallons of rainwater.
Park signage will alert meadow-users of such eco-benefits of their romping grounds, according to plans for the site.
