Soil Testing at Swale

The Textile Dye Garden was built in 2021 in the courtyard space within the Cannoneer building on Pratt’s Brooklyn campus. Originally, this was a common space for the dormitory, and the courtyard was largely unmaintained. Since that time, construction has occurred to upkeep the building and transform the rooms for Writing majors, Senior Painting students, and office spaces. Over many years, industrial use of the land has introduced contaminants into the soil. The soil itself is also inherently dense, which can make plant rooting and water drainage challenging.

When the Dye Garden was created in the summer of 2021, the faculty co-leads  Gina Gregorio and Isa Rodrigues, with the support of Dean Anita Cooney were challenged with building an accessible space for the community where flowers cultivated for their natural dye properties could flourish. The decision was made to purchase large beds, layered with gravel, compost, and organic soil.  

More info on the garden’s start: https://textiledyegarden.pratt.edu/about/information 

As we expanded our plantings beyond the beds, we considered the quality of soil in the areas surrounding the garden. Looking for some answers, Summer Crew members Pearl, Beata, and Gris ventured to Governors Island, where Swale Lab was conducting free soil testing sessions.

Swale Lab is an extension of the organization’s floating food forest, which 

“is built atop a barge that aims to make access to fresh  food more equitable, traveling from NYC piers to allow visitors a chance to harvest herbs, fruits, and vegetables for free.” 

https://www.swalenyc.org/our-vision 

 “The Swale Lab on Governors Island is an extension of the floating food forest and foodways on public land. The Swale Lab gives space to art, science, and environmental justice projects working toward public food, public water, and healthy soil. We partner with the NYC Urban Soils Institute to run a residency and exhibition program from House 11 in Nolan Park on Governors Island.”

https://www.swalenyc.org/about-1

The group brought in a few curated samples from specific areas of the garden, each individually labeled and bagged. The examination by Swale took about 30 minutes. During this time, the group reviewed displays of various soils found in the five boroughs of NYC. The extensive samples were accompanied by all the variables that explained the quality of the soil. 

The results of the Garden soil testing revealed that our soil contained copper, zinc, arsenic, and lead. The majority of samples were above the threshold, the unit being ppm (parts per million). This means that the soil has exceeded the healthy amount per million of each metal, which can have effects on us and our garden depending on how we choose to use the soil. If we were to farm edible plants, for example, the high concentrations of lead and arsenic would make those plants toxic for humans to ingest.  The high concentrations of copper and zinc can affect people as well, but the higher concern there is the health of the plants themselves. If we were to plant our dye plants in this soil, the plants may experience difficulty germinating, low growth rate, and shortened life-spans. 

As predicted, the metals found in the soil were most likely a result of industrial activity such as smelting, the dumping of batteries and other debris, historical land use, soil dredging & relocation, and past use  of fertilizers & pesticides.

More about this can be found on the Urban Soils Institute’s website:https://urbansoils.org/soil-assistance 

Accompanied by the soil test results was an explanation from Laboratory Manager George Lozefski, who was able to answer the group’s questions on how to go about improving the Dye Garden’s soil quality. Armed with this information we are pursuing sustainable options for soil remediation. More updates to follow.