Midtown Garden Reopens To Public After School's 20-Year Takeover

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — A gated-off garden in a Midtown park will finally reopen to the public this month, prompting celebration from neighbors — but consternation from a local preschool director who enjoyed exclusive dominion over the space for the past two decades.

For months, neighbors had pressed the city to swing open the gates of the St. Vartan Park garden, which takes up the eastern end of the small but beloved green space in Murray Hill. This week, a Parks Department official announced that the city would heed those calls, telling a local community board that the garden would open daily for a two-month trial period.

"For more than 20 years that garden was a bastion of inequity," said Kevin O'Keefe, who chairs Community Board 6's parks committee and had helped press the issue in recent weeks.

Not everyone shares the same view.

"The garden should not be open to the public," said Stefanie Soichet, founder of St. Vartan Preschool, which has called the garden home since 2000. "Don’t let them start, because then they’ll want to build a supermarket and a restaurant."

With the city's blessing, Soichet has operated the preschool for the past 21 years out of a one-room schoolhouse within the park, with the garden serving as an extension of its classroom. Opening it to neighbors, she fears, could lead to the destruction of the manicured lawn and the 200 Dutch tulips she received as a gift and personally planted.

"Every petal, I kiss. I speak to every flower," she said, adding that medical staff from nearby hospitals stop by to admire the garden through the gates.

"Most of the community loves looking through the gates at the garden," she said. "It’s just a handful of pushy people who want to be on the grass, and I’m worried for the grass."

Complaints of privilege

But some neighbors say the arrangement reeks of privilege. St. Vartan Preschool, whose website boasts of a "private garden," is fee-based and requires parents to accompany their children all day, making it inaccessible for many of the neighborhood's working families.

Soichet counters that she handles the garden's upkeep herself, without taxpayer funding — though a Parks Department gardener has also chipped in on weekends, and she is herself listed on the city's payroll as a Parks employee.

Last night in @cbsix Environment/Parks meeting—after ongoing committee requests to end 20+ years of St. Vartan Park garden's closure to the general public—@NYCParks announced plans to open the garden from 8-6 daily for a two-month trial starting in mid-Sept. Onward to permanence. pic.twitter.com/ddisKbdjRn
— Kevin O'Keefe (@KevOKeefe) August 31, 2021

The city plans to install "no pets" signs and fencing around the tulips to protect them during the two-month trial opening, which will run from 8 a.m.–6 p.m. five days a week starting this month. Kyle Athayde, who chairs the community board, said he hoped the trial will convince the city that the garden "must be returned to the people of District 6 permanently."

A Parks spokesperson said the trial period "will be evaluated in collaboration with local residents and the Community Board," adding that St. Vartan Park recently gained a new synthetic turf field and renovated basketball and handball courts.

To David Sall, a Murray Hill parent who sent both of his children to St. Vartan Preschool, opening up the garden was a necessary step for a neighborhood that is otherwise starved for green space.

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"She’s done a beautiful job in upkeep of it over all these years," Sall said. "Unfortunately, since the city is not able to answer this need in any other way, it boils down to: this is really the only thing that’s even remotely available."

Soichet said she would work with the city to manage the space, where she and the preschool children "sing songs about empathy and light."

Still, she bemoaned the loss of her enclave.

"Greedy people usually want more, no matter what you give them," she said.