(Photos from christiNYCa)
Other than S, whom I have too many photos to share, I'd rather show Bellevue's Sobriety Garden where I spent many lunches and breaks trying to breathe in fresh air and recollect myself.
The Bellevue Sobriety Garden is at the Bellevue Hospital Center, 462 First Avenue (at 28th Street) in Manhattan. Enter main entrance atrium, and proceed directly back (with the main flow of foot traffic) to the older part of Bellevue to the building known as "New Bellevue." This brings you to a central lobby with a giant mosaic of the city. Exit right through the brown sliding doors to the "south parking lot." The garden is ahead, just to your left.
Since 1989, the garden has been a sanctuary for patients, and increasingly for staff and visitors, who come to garden, meditate, and relax amidst the flowers, greenery and unique folk sculptures and mosaics. Built by recovering addicts, funded strictly by donations of time, supplies and money, it is a showcase therapeutic site.
The garden sits on a wedge of land carved out on “the south lawn” of Bellevue Hospital, flanked by the main hospital building, the FDR drive on the east, 26th Street on the south, and “the south parking lot” on the west. It covers approximately 15,000 square feet. Part of it is cultivated in vegetables, much of it in flowers; its paths are created from mosaics and stones, heavily accented with “found objects;” folk sculptures and rustic art punctuate the space. Its home-grown, work-in-progress appearance, nurtured by scores of the predominantly poor and homeless patients Bellevue serves, creates an inspiring environment for all visitors.
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