Greenest Block in Brooklyn award goes to Prospect-Lefferts Gardens

August 1, 2018 By Paul Frangipane Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

All the winners of the Greenest Block in Brooklyn contest pose together for a group photo on the winning block. Eagle photos by Paul Frangipane

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The signs are up on the block and it’s official: Lefferts Avenue between Bedford and Rogers avenues in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens was awarded the greenest block in Brooklyn at the 24th annual contest on Wednesday.

Hosted by Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Borough President Eric Adams, the contest promotes city greening and streetscape gardening to help make Brooklyn a greener place with stronger community ties.

“Gardening is more than just planting a seed for those flowers and trees,” Adams said on the block. “It’s planting the seed of tolerance in a borough like Brooklyn.”

Sandra Worrell, 58, boasts a colorful array of different plant species up the steps of her brownstone, throughout the front porch and onto the sidewalk, a garden 28 years in the making at 188 Lefferts Ave., a contrast to the indoor plants she grew in her home country of Barbados.

Across the street are planters made out of a grill and a baby carriage. Sneakers sprouting flowers sitting on porches and a basketball planter on Worrell’s next-door neighbor Doug Bruha’s front steps all give a nod to sustainability.

Bruha, 47, moved onto the block five years ago and started gardening with the newly founded block association, kicking off a half-decade effort for the prize that helped strengthen community bonds on the block.

“We built a stronger community, not just of gardeners, but of neighbors,” Bruha said.

The Botanic Garden also gave awards to greenest commercial blocks, best window box, greenest storefront, best street tree beds, community garden streetscape and the National Grid Leadership in Sustainable Practices Award.

The greenest commercial block award went to Nevins Street between Sackett and Union streets in Gowanus, Pro 1 Tire on Fourth Avenue in Sunset Park took greenest storefront, best tree beds went to Lefferts Place between Franklin and Classon avenues in Bedford-Stuyvesant, best community garden streetscape to 61 Franklin St. Community Garden in Greenpoint and best window box to both Patrick Noecker at 164 Cornelia St. in Bushwick and Ella McNair at 534 Putnam Ave. in Bed-Stuy.