I keep finding trash in this planter at a corner on the far west side of Manhattan, just as summer flowering bulbs are coming up and seeds are sprouting. A neighbor told me that taxi/truck drivers relieve themselves in bottles and bags and drop their uh fluids wherever they feel like it. Besides signage, what kind of low cost DIY barrier can I put here to discourage littering. There’s a trash can about 30 ft. away on the median — not ideally located but some people will never put trash where it belongs IMO.
by enormous-jeans
4 Comments
Yeah, if you are going to put a planter out in NYC, you have to have a chill attitude about it or you risk the entire endeavor being too upsetting and stressful to be worthwhile. I think of picking up nasty trash like I think of watering; it’s just a daily task that’s part of caring for my plants.
Wildest thing that ever happened to me was some random dude dumped a full bucket (a literal bucket) of shit and piss on my containers. It was like 2am. My neighbor’s security camera caught the guy, and even watching the footage I could hardly believe it. My god, the smell was something else. After that, I’m almost grateful to be cleaning up mere cigarette butts and Gatorade bottles of piss LOL
You can try to put a No Dumping sign, but people are kind of shitty lol, you might just have to deal with it
You just have to let it go. It’s the city. I was gardening last weekend and someone parked outside my house and put their trash right in one of my planters. They looked up and saw me there holding a massive container of compost and apologized and took their trash and threw it on the floor of their car and shut the door.
The look on the woman’s face was…like…shame, not because she got caught, but because she realized she was doing it to an actual person and not some bucket with a plant in it. It was weird. You just gotta let it go because any concave object in NYC is going to get filled with trash.
Would sticking chicken wire or some similar metal netting around the perimeter work?