Passage
On the roof of a five-story apartment building, rows of planters now hold tomatoes, beans, and herbs. A group of residents built the garden last spring. The gardener1, who’s tomatoes win the prize each year keeps the sunniest box. The garden’s coordinator2 a tenant who once farmed upstate keeps the watering schedule.
A rooftop garden is not like a backyard plot. The stack of clay pots 3 stand by the stairwell door. A resident fills a planter with soil4 and a neighbor carries up the seedlings. The 5 gardeners boots leave prints across the tar-paper roof. 6
Growing food up high takes planning. Each morning a volunteer checks the soil, waters the young plants, and 7 pulling the weeds. A rooftop crop is vulnerable 8 from wind more than to shade. Tall stakes and low walls help block the gusts.
The harvest surprises everyone the first year. The planters yield more than the residents 9 expected, baskets of tomatoes appear by August. By midsummer the vines 10 go over the planters’ edges. Neighbors share the extra vegetables down the stairwell.
At first only a few residents joined. 11 Therefore, before summer’s end more neighbors were climbing up each week to help. Many of them 12 have never grown a vegetable before they tried the rooftop beds. Each spring the coordinator and 13 her plant the first row together.
By the end of summer the roof is a green terrace above the gray street. Residents who once only nodded in the elevator now trade recipes and seedlings. 14 What had been an empty stretch of tar paper has become the building’s shared garden. 15
