Sophie Johnson is Executive Director of the Magnolia
Tree Earth Center, located in Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. The Center,
founded over twenty years ago, is listed among the National Registry
of Historic Places. It has recently been nominated for the National
Awards for Environmental Sustainability.
Q: How did the Magnolia Tree Earth Center come to exist?
A: It was begun by Hattie Carthan, an African-American
woman who had grown up in the South, in Virginia, and had grown to love
trees. In the 1960s she, along with many Blacks and Hispanics, settled
in Bedford-Stuyvesant, and she decided to put down her roots and plant
some trees and make the community look so much better.
She wanted to plant 1500 trees in Bedford-Stuyvesant and adopted a large
Magnolia Grand Flora. She decided it was her tree. In the 1960s, the
tree was already about ninety years old, and had been brought from North
Carolina in 1885. It is still standing outside the Center. It is over
40 feet tall and unique as a genus and in its height.
Hattie saw the tree as a symbol for community. She saw the neighborhood
had lost too many people, trees, and houses. The buildings behind and
to the side of the tree were condemned and she spearheaded a movement
to save the tree from demolition. She persuaded the City to sell the
abandoned brownstone houses behind the tree, and over ten years these
were developed into an environmental center for the neighborhood.
Q: What programs did the Center begin?
A: Well, Hattie loved children. She wanted to teach
them to love all trees. So, she and her neighbor formed the Tree Corps
and this program taught kids from nine to sixteen to take care of trees.
This program is still operational. She saved the main trees and helped
the neighbors plant 1500 trees. She took part in helping do the first
tree matching program, whereby she would plant one to the City’s
three throughout different neighborhoods in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Close
to 100 neighborhood groups benefited from the tree matching programs.
Q: What led you to get involved?
A: I have always been interested in trees and nature.
I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, but as soon as I came to New York
I involved myself in a community garden. So, I had my hands in the soil,
so to speak. I had a background in museumology and the cultural arts,
having served two museums in Brooklyn. I spent eleven years at the Brooklyn
Museum and the Magnolia Tree Earth Center was one of my clients. I helped
them develop. I got to know Hattie Carthan and she persuaded me to be
on the Board of Directors. She was a wonderful lady, there was no way
one could say no to her. She died aged 84, when I was vice-president
of the Board.
Q: Did the Center work with gardens?
A: The Center worked with vacant lot gardening. Hattie
Carthan and her staff began to transform the vacant lots into vegetable
and flower lots and used tools borrowed from the Center. A tool-lending
library was set up, as well as a book-lending library. Thirty to thirty-five
gardens were started over time working with neighborhood block associations.
Q: You are clearly involved in a great deal
of outreach.
A: We work directly with local schools, community groups
and senior citizen centers to enhance education. We provide classes
and workshops in ecology, horticulture, health, nutrition, architecture
and community planning programs. We have fine arts and crafts workshops,
which are related to an environmental art gallery at the Center and
we provide laboratory and field experiences. We also have a greenhouse
and our own garden.
Q: You mentioned education. Why do you think
children are important?
A: I think if we teach children to respect trees they
are more likely to respect other living beings. About two thousand
children
visit the Center or are visited by us in schools each year. Children
can join the neighborhood Tree Corps and the Children’s Garden.
We teach them about gardening, herbs, pot pourri, and herbal mixtures.
They make terrariums to learn about plants, and learn about urban pollution
— lead poisoning, health hazards, water conservation classes.
We have in-school classes and after-school gardening clubs. We also
have a group of twenty-three to twenty-five teenagers to whom we give
an environmental background and train them to do community service
and
take their place in the world of work. We also have our Junior Landscapers
who help other community gardens in spring and summer.
Q: What about at the Center itself?
A: Our buildings are especially formulated for exhibition
spaces: we have a print shop and small library. In our main meeting
room there’s a special photographic exhibit on Mrs. Carthan.
Outside the building is a beautiful mural in her honor and we have
art in the
Hattie Carthan Memorial Garden. Each year trees are planted in the
1.4 acre garden in honor of a community person; on Arbor Day we give
seedlings
away and teach children to respect trees.
Q: What types of trees have you planted?
A: We specialize in street and garden trees. For the
streets we plant hardy trees such as ginkgoes. In the garden we’ve
planted purple plum trees, and lovely varieties of trees such as weeping
willow, white ash, oak, and silver birch. We also have fruiting trees,
groves of apple trees and peach trees.
Q: What role do you think a good environment
plays in bringing about change and personal happiness?
A: It’s essential, especially in poor areas,
where people with less income live. It makes so much difference to the
mood and the environment for people to have trees. It’s always
a way to bring the neighborhood together, to bridge the generation
gap,
and to help the development that takes place on environmental projects.
We’ve also used programs for interracial work, such as groups
working on the Bedford-Stuyvesant landscape. Recently we entertained
a team of young international youth — from Russia, Costa
Rica, Europe, South America, India and other places — for a treeplanting
in league with the Earth Stewards. It was a wonderful adventure. The
international team and local youth lived together and involved themselves
with tree plantings. It was a wonderful opportunity for the groups
to
learn to live together and develop mutual respect via trees. We use
trees to teach people and come to learn to respect them in that way.
We need trees now more than ever to combat the pollutants in the air.
Q: How do you deal with the question of nutrition?
A: Resources to buy organic food in our area are scarce.
So, we talk about the practical application of food. People at the Center
often make their own apple sauce and tea. We talk about organic food
in that we teach them how they can make it themselves and make it inexpensively.
In the community people use the vegetables for their own families or
give them away.
Q: Have young people who have worked at the
Center gone on to work in the environmental area?
A: We have lots of alumni working all over: one was
Program Director of the Horticultural Society of New York, another was
a chief pruner in Brooklyn Botanical gardens, another was a Chief City
planner. We have other alumni at the Bronx Zoo and New York Conservancy
as well as other places.
Q: What plans do you have for the future?
A: We are branching out in different ways. We are
training local youth to document the problems of the urban forest,
by gathering
statistical data, using desktop mapping programs. We are developing
a training program for young adults to work on hazardous sites and
training
in lead removal. This is something we are doing for other parts of
the City than only Bedford-Stuyvesant. One of our forthcoming programs
is
the continuing acknowledgment of Mrs. Carthan’s work. We are planning
on renaming a few blocks on Lafayette Avenue, Hattie Carthan Garden
Avenue and we’ve adopted four vacant lots for this Spring.
Q: Did you encounter resistance, especially
from developers who wanted to build housing on the vacant lots?
A: Yes. But, remember that one of Hattie Carthan’s
priorities was housing. The Center rallied the community around the
asset of the gardens, and they named the area a Preservation Site Garden
in 1993. I was pleased to death at the community’s response, because
people in poorer communities have esthetic needs like any people. It’s
not just that they should have them or want them — they
need them. It makes life tolerable.
For more information, contact the Center at 677 Lafayette Avenue, Brooklyn
11216. Tel.: 718-387-2116. The Center is open from 9am until 6pm year
round. Brochures are available upon inquiry, and classes and workshops
are offered in connection with Bedford-Stuyvesant community groups.
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