During most growing seasons certain species of plants (See the NYS DEC’s list of “prohibited plants”) are removed regularly to ensure the park and its surrounding greenspaces mimic the European pastoral landscape originally conceived of by Frederick Olmsted and Calvert Vaux in 1858. However, with an economic and health crisis still impacting communities across the city, the business-as-usual approach to greenspace maintenance shifted in several neighborhoods as budgets were reduced, park staff furloughed, and as New Yorkers began to cope with the realities of social distancing. At the height of the spring growing season, unique assemblages of native, indigenous, and so-called invasive plants had commingled and spilled out onto the streets, obscuring once tidy edges, and offering a glimpse of a time when human supremacy suddenly took a back seat.
This Pandemic Exposes the Malignant Entitlement of White Women
For the last few months, Americans have been asked to come together as a community to take care of each other by wearing masks,…