SoHo, in Lower Manhattan, is known for its cast-iron buildings and busy shopping streets. The Broadway corridor alone draws more than 54,000 people a day, and its corners collect litter and trash bags waiting for pickup. Greenery is hard to add, too. Below many sidewalks, subway tunnels and utility lines leave little room for roots. As a result, the neighborhood has very few street trees.
The SoHo Broadway Initiative, the neighborhood’s Business Improvement District (BID), partnered with us about five years ago to add greenery to the district. We started with a few planters and have maintained and refreshed them since. This June, the district installed new trash containers along Broadway’s cross streets as part of the city’s Containerization mandate. The enclosed, rat-resistant design comes from CITIBIN, a Brooklyn-based company. Each container has a built-in planter on top. As the district’s longtime horticulture partner, we were asked to choose and care for the plants in the bins.
Working on busy shopping streets takes coordination. Cars and delivery trucks park wherever they can, so we planned ahead with the BID to make sure the curb would be clear when our team arrived. The soil on top of the bins is shallow and sits in summer heat at street level, so we selected plants that could handle drought. Sedums are low succulents that store water in their leaves. Alliums are flowering plants that also do well with little water. Larger planters of shrubs and summer annuals sit beside the bins and in New York City Department of Transportation curb extensions, the widened sidewalk corners at intersections. They add color and help shield pedestrians and the bins from traffic.
According to the SoHo Broadway Initiative, the bins kept more than 3,500 bags of trash off sidewalk corners in their first month of use. The plants have held up well, too, and only one bin needed a refresh heading into fall. We’re now bringing this work to two more neighborhoods in Brooklyn. In a city this dense, we often plant in unexpected places like plazas and rooftops. Now we can add trash bins to the list.