What Makes A Watch Tick?

At the Citywide Nursery, located in the Bronx, we have made many improvements, which have made the NYC Parks Arthur Ross Nursery a much more modern and sustainable place to work.

There are new hoop houses, automated irrigation sprinkler systems, O2 Compost systems, newly installed supplemental lighting, and many more additions which make the nursery operation a more eco-friendly work place.

Most recently, one of the old in-ground cold hoop houses was converted into a year- round heated propagation house. It boasts a two-layer inflated infrared poly covering, which increases the inside temperatures to 70-80 degrees on a cold sunny winter day. The Bronx shops staff fitted the house with a new oil burner and thermostat which protects the propagation area at nights if the temperatures drop below 60 degrees. However the double inflated poly keeps the house well insulated at night and holds in the warm air for most of the night. The house is also lined all around the perimeter with horse manure from the Van Cortlandt Riding Stables, which also keeps the propagation house warm at nights.
These ideas and ideas which thought of all around the City of New York would not be possible without the qualified and experienced tradesmen in the borough and citywide shops.

At the Citywide Nursery, I always try to come up with new innovative ideas to make things better, reduce our carbon foot print and make our nursery a more sustainable operation. Recently, as I saw a team of Bronx Shops plumbers, electricians and a sheet metal worker put their heads together to tweak and get the kinks out of the design I came up with to convert an old cold hoop house into a green-minded year- round heated propagation production area; I realized the need to acknowledge the great work of these unsung heroes of the parks. They even communicated with technicians out of the state to pinpoint and diagnose a very elusive problem with the newly installed boiler.

Many times we take a watch for granted and never think about what makes it tick, just as day-to-day our parks function like clockwork, and we take for granted the great work people like Danny Moon, Nelson Sweeting, Carlo Machi, Joe Damo, Wojciech Kaczorek, the carpenters and all the shops for all they do every day for all of us!

My hat is off to all the tradesmen, and as I hear many of you are thinking of retiring, I just wanted to say a special “THANK YOU!” to you all. Thanks also to Steve Yanolatos and Artie Rollins for all your support year-round.

Submitted by Richie Cabo

EMERALD SOCIETY DINNER DANCE IS COMING SOON!

You are cordially invited to the

City of New York
Parks & Recreation

Emerald Society
27th Annual Dinner Dance
Thursday, March 15th 2012
6:30 p.m.

The Vanderbilt at South Beach
300 Father Capodanno Blvd
Staten Island, NY 10305 | 718-447-0800

Colleen Clancy- Grand Marshall

Lisa Brooks - President’s Award

Marty Maher – Legacy Award

Bonnie Williams – Woman of the Year

Charlie Gili - Man of the Year

Tickets are $75 per person, which includes a cocktail hour, elegant dinner, open bar, dancing, raffles and more.

Table of 10….only $700!

For tickets and information call:
Brooklyn: P-j Greiner: 718-965-6606
Bronx: John Fitzgerald: 718-464-9048
Queens: Michael Browne: 347-386-4168
Manhattan: Lisa Brooks: 917-658-4059
Staten Island: George Sutton: 718-7275461
Group Sales: Greg Monaghan: 917-337-4748

QUOTATION FOR THE DAY

“Use this day [leap day] to do something daring, extraordinary and unlike yourself. Take a chance and shape a different pattern in your personal cloud of probability!”

Vera Nazarian

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