Volunteers spruce up High Bridge Park

By Erin Arnold
Staff Reporter

On Saturday, November 9, volunteers with City Year, the New York Restoration Project, and members of the parks department met at High Bridge Park to clean up the landscape, put in erosion control materials and add native plants and shrubs to the area surrounding the Bronx side of the High Bridge at University Avenue and 170th Street. Maria Luisa Cipriano, Bronx Outreach Coordinator with the Partnership for Parks, spearheaded the project, which has been a long time coming.

“I have been working on this project for four years. My goal is to eventually get the bridge open again,” she said. “The High Bridge Coalition was formed a year ago to restore the areas on both the Manhattan and Bronx sides of the High Bridge. We did some restoration work on this side last year fixing up the tables and benches here in the park.”

Partnership for Parks received a grant to fund this project, which included buying supplies, plants, and jute mesh, a biodegradable ground covering designed to trap falling debris and prevent erosion.

“Usually, when it rains, the soil gets eroded down to the street, and this jute mesh will help hold it in place and make the slopes look better. Eventually, we hope DOT will give us money to replace the steps along this hill as well, once they see what we have done,” explained Ms. Cipriano.

City Year volunteers planted lamiastrum, a part-shade flower; tiarella oak leaf, which is a leafy plant; and shade tolerant shrubs like vibenaum and witchazel along the steep slope, which holds large trees and doesn’t allow for much sunshine.

One of the City Year volunteers: Ebette Fortune, 22, from Boston. She is part of the 10-member start-up team that is recruiting volunteers from New York, which will officially become a City Year service site in September 2003.

“We work 4 days a week in schools educating children on social issues like HIV and drugs. We also participate in leadership development and community service. The physical service that we do is usually beautification projects similar to this,” she said.

Jose Padilla-Quijano, who assists the recruitment team for New York, is the City Year organizer for corporate service days. He explained that City Year is primarily responsible for providing the manpower and planning for projects.

“Each City Year team has a corporate sponsor and we get out and do service projects,” he said. “We hope to keep up our partnership with the Parks Department.”

City Year New York will become the 14th site in the United States, and the 10-member start up team is optimistic about increasing membership.