The Hub City Prospect: NB Garden Tour

We're pretty intent on proving that New Brunswick is more than just a collision between the classic college town and a playground for cigar-loving, portly urban planners. It's a place where real people really live. In support of this hypothesis, I went to scope out signs of intelligent life in the city, and what I found was NB's best (and worst!) gardens. Whether for nourishment, decoration, or just plain hobby, the people of Brunfis work hard on keeping a couple plants in the ground, and that in itself is a testament to New Brunswick's unique position in the urban/suburban tug of war, as well as its place in history as one of New Jersey's oldest cities and one of its most thriving still. Our first installment of the tour starts humbly, a few meager plants behind the northeast corner of Somerset and Easton.

Without a patch of dirt, a fire escape becomes the perfect refuge for a couple of tomatoes, basil, peppers, and flowers. These are great choices for the gardener-without-a-garden, because all are pretty difficult to kill. This is where the college town/urban part of New brunswick really shows its face. The shoving of foliage in front of even the smallest slivers of sunshine is telling of urbanite ennui - everyone gets homesick for a little slice of dirt now and again. And it's completely hip to keep a few plants around if you're on a college budget: they're pets you don't have to feed, food you don't have to pay for, decorations that (usually) survive when your drunk friends accidentally knock them over. Oh, and you look so mature and cultured in front of your date when you actually pick basil from your porch to throw in the pasta you made for dinner. What's not college about a few easy-to-grow potted plants?

And of course, these fire escape gardeners have one more thing going for them: Since their plants are mobile, they won't have to part with them when this "blighted" corner is torn down early next year to make way for the new Gateway Center Transit Village.