Volunteers to Plant 2K Daffodils in Hell's Kitchen Park for 9/11 Victims
October 12, 2016
By Maya Rajamani
UPDATE: The event has been canceled due to the rain expected on Saturday. A new date has not yet been set.
HELL’S KITCHEN — A host of golden daffodils will bloom in DeWitt Clinton Park in the spring as part of a yearly project commemorating the victims of 9/11.
Community group Cultivate HKNY is seeking volunteers to help plant more than 2,000 daffodil bulbs in the park on Saturday, Oct. 22, said Clinton Housing Development Company’s deputy director of community cultivation Julie Lawrence.
The park, located between West 52nd and 54th streets past 11th Avenue, was the inaugural site 15 years ago of the Daffodil Project — a New Yorkers for Parks initiative that plants flowers around the city each year as a “living memorial to September 11.”
“It’s a way of… commemorating the beginning of the Daffodil Project, and doing it again in DeWitt Clinton Park,” Lawrence explained. “It was begun… as a way of supporting and brightening the lives of people who lost family on September 11.”
Cultivate HKNY will provide bulbs, tools and gardening advice to volunteers who show up at the park between 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. that day. Light refreshments will also be served, Lawrence said.
Volunteers will also get a chance to learn more about the park's past.
“There’s so much history in this park… and this is a neighborhood that is very much in transition,” she said. “We really want to reconnect to that history and… activate this park in a way that brings as many different users to it as possible.