A Garden Grows from Recovery and Penance in Bushwick

At the southwest corner of Himrod Street and Wilson Avenue in Bushwick stands the Himrod Wilson Community Garden, where tomatoes, basil, summer squash, string beans, eggplant, mint and more grow from four plots.

Luis A. Ramos, 46, who lives next door, started clearing the lot two years ago. “When I came to this lot, it was full of weeds this high,” said Ramos, who is five feet five, holding his hand at shoulder level.

While Bushwick has other community gardens built on formerly vacant lots, the fledgling Himrod Wilson garden may be the newest. But what’s invisible amid the greenery – and most distinctive about the plot – is the before and after of Ramos’s life. The garden showcases his journey from addiction to activism as much as it does the tomato plants that by August spill over the tops of their supporting stakes.

Miriam Gonzalez, a neighbor who has lived on the block for 13 years, says that Ramos restored what had been an abandoned corner. “We used to chase rats away that came scurrying out of that lot,” Gonzalez recalled.

Ramos hauled away garbage and cut brush. He built a compost bin, fashioned a cistern out of a blue barrel, replenished much of the soil, and erected the plywood frames that surround each bed. Just outside the garden, Ramos installed a low wooden fence around three young pin oaks. He painted the fence celeste green.

Rafael Garcia, who has worked at the glass business across Wilson Avenue for 23 years, said that before Ramos came along the city cleaned the lot once every year. “We think the guy is doing a wonderful job,” said Garcia.

Ramos grew up in Bushwick in a family of four boys and two girls. He liked science, and was among the first students to graduate from the city’s Philippa Schuyler Middle School for the Gifted and Talented. Though Ramos dropped out of automotive-repair school after he was unable to afford a new tool each month, he later earned a G.E.D.

In 1988, Ramos lived with a girlfriend and their infant daughter in the Ridgewood section of Queens. He worked mostly as a messenger or store clerk, with a new job every five or six weeks. While he used cocaine, marijuana and alcohol out of boredom, he also started to smoke phencyclidine, better known as PCP or angel dust.

Eventually, Ramos discovered crack cocaine and his drug habit intensified. “Crack is very psychological and intensely sexual,” recalled Ramos. “When I thought about getting high, I would throw up first.”

Ramos, who has known since childhood that he is gay, moved out in 1991 and started to live more openly as a gay man. He met a man who later became his partner. Together they marched in the first pride parade in Queens in 1992, and attended the gay march on Washington, D.C. a year later.

But the stability did not last. Ramos started smoking crack again. “From there, I was off the hook,” said Ramos. He also started seeing someone else, slept wherever he could, and worked on and off as a messenger. “I worked to get high,” said Ramos, who also steered other users to crack. “To get a piece of rock or a toke of the pipe, you help other users find where the stuff is.”

One day in 1993, Ramos steered two men to a spot where he knew they could score. The men gave Ramos a $20 bill to buy them eight “two for fives,” the small bags in which crack was commonly sold. Ramos purchased the bags and gave them to the men, who gave Ramos two. Ramos went behind a building to smoke them when two police officers approached. The two men for whom Ramos had purchased the cocaine were undercover agents.

Ramos was arrested and charged in State Supreme Court in Queens with the criminal sale of a controlled substance, which carried a mandatory sentence of six to 12 years. Though Ramos had several prior arrests for trespassing and minor assault, those cases had all ended in dismissals.

In 1994, a jury convicted Ramos of the criminal sale charge. Ramos was shuttled among several prisons across the state before serving four years at the Marcy Correctional Facility in Oneida County.

While at Marcy, Ramos also began treatment in a recovery program that he credits with helping him overcome his addiction and accept himself. “I learned you can adjust your present,” said Ramos. “Your future is assured when you think things through.”

Following his release in 2000, Ramos worked at a copy shop on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and later at another document business on Broad Street. But by 2006, years of substance abuse had extracted their toll on Ramos’ body and left him unable to lift reams of paper, a task his work demanded. He now gets by on disability income and Medicaid.

When Ramos’ mother, with whom he lived following his release, moved to a new apartment in 2007, Ramos lived with friends and in homeless shelters before finally finding an apartment of his own. Homelessness spurred Ramos to ask questions about how to obtain city services. “That’s when I really became an advocate,” he said.

Today, Ramos’ apartment is part garden tool shed, part political war room. From a computer at his kitchen table, Ramos produces videos in support of varied causes, including the successful push for same-sex marriage in New York State and a second mayoral bid by William Thompson, the former City Controller who lost a close race to incumbent Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg in 2009.

Ramos reserves most of his energy, however, for the Himrod Wilson garden. “I’ve had a life full of starting stuff and never completing it,” said Ramos, who has a trim moustache and olive skin. “I’m 46 years old, and in the past two years I’ve done something for the community.”

The neighborhood has responded in kind. The glass business and a pizza parlor next door donate wood. Neighbors donate packets of seeds. “Once a guy just pulled up in his truck and gave us a rose,” said Lauren Roche, 24, who moved to Himrod Street last fall and met Ramos on her way home from work. “Luis was playing funk music and working in a flower bed, and I just asked him if I could rent a plot.”

Roche and Ramos haul in their own water to supplement whatever the cistern collects. “It makes you appreciate what it takes,” Roche said. “Luis is super handy, and he doesn’t stop.”

In July, Ramos recruited six boys from the neighborhood to help him remove dead trees and other debris from a basketball court that adjoins the garden. They carried out 12 bags of trash, including bicycle rims, wheels and a saddle, which they set aside for kids who might need them.

Ramos says he hopes his experience can guide people younger than him. “I have Jesus advice, because I’ve been on that cross,” he said. “I try to prevent others from bearing that cross because all that drugs do for you is death.” Ramos wonders what his daughter, now 25, and two sons, ages 24 and 23, will think about their father’s life. He talks with them occasionally.

On the sidewalk outside the garden, Ramos sweeps debris into a pile for pickup. He plans to stay up all night to see who’s been leaving it there. Ramos also has asked the city to install a trash can on the corner and to post signs that warn people to curb their dogs.

While Ramos says he doesn’t have regrets, his past compels him. After someone left broken plastic bags of rotting garbage that neighbors crossed the street to avoid, Ramos donned latex gloves, dragged the trash to the corner, and washed the sidewalk with Pine-Sol detergent. “The garden is an accomplishment I did,” said Ramos. “The trash reflects on me. It’s an embarrassment.”

From his upstate prison window, Ramos saw fields of morning glories, the purple flowers that open during the day and close at night. He planted them in the Himrod Wilson garden. Ramos says he cries sometimes when he sees them.