He was hired as the gardener of St. Nicholas Park in Harlem just seven months ago, after working as an assistant gardener in City Hall Park, the crème de la crème of New York City Parks Department gardening positions, where everything is plentiful.
Unconsciously re-enacting his father's impulse to escape, Ludwig fled from Cambridge to become an assistant gardener in an Austrian monastery, sleeping in a potting shed.
"If there were a butterfly alive on the East Side of Manhattan, it would be here," said Constance Casey, an assistant gardener for the Parks Department, standing near the bright pink bells of a buddleia, or butterfly bush.
Lud Heat, subtitled A Book of the Dead Hamlets, maps London on the dual axes of the poet's experiences as an assistant gardener with the parks department, especially in his just-published Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire, and the "sacred landscape" delineated by the churches of Nicholas Hawksmoor.
None of this would have been possible without the help I received by way of legal advice and support offered at CAB. "We avoided the need for an employment tribunal claim and kept his career on track" Mr E is a 21 year-old man who was working as an assistant gardener for a landscaping firm.
Recently, as my assistant gardener was helping me mix some of it into the compost, she asked, "Grandpa, is it O.K. to put deer droppings into the compost since it will wind up in the tomato patch next year?" I was stumped.
