By Leslie Albrecht
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
UPPER WEST SIDE — To neighbors, the hydrangeas, basil and strawberries that made up a makeshift 9/11 memorial in front of 319 W. 105th Street was a welcome bit of nature that brightened the city landscape.
To the building's owner, it was a nuisance.
Landlord Joey Franco told tenant Takeo Lee Wong to get rid of the sidewalk garden, which Wong planted to honor a neighbor who died after the World Trade Center attacks.
It flourished over the years into a sprawling collection of more than three dozen planters, window boxes and pots in front of Wong's first-floor apartment.
Franco said the garden, and the soil and shovels that went with it, took up too much space and blocked an entrance to the basement.
"It became overwhelming to the building," Franco said. "It just kept on getting larger and larger.
"Think about it. If everybody in Manhattan had a garden like that in front of their building, what it would look like? There would be no oxygen left in the city."
Wong obeyed his landlord's order Friday by moving his plants across the street to neighbors' stoops and sidewalks.
Now there's a patch of bare concrete where the garden once lived in front of Wong's apartment.
He says he's the victim of an harrassing landlord who cares too much about money and too little about the neighborhood.
Franco said Wong is exaggerating the garden's importance.
"This is the first time I've heard it was a 9/11 memorial, this is the first time I've heard that people love it," Franco said. "It's ridiculous."
Neighbors said Friday they were stunned that anyone would object to the garden.
The mini-farm started with plants that a neighbor gave to Wong when she was sick with cancer thought to be linked to breathing toxic air at the World Trade Center site.
The neighbor died, and Wong kept her memory alive through her plants.
"9/11 really accented the fact that life is very fragile and you could go at any moment," Wong said. "In your final days, one thought comes to your mind: what have I done to leave something good?"
"For me, it will be the magnificence of that," Wong said, gesturing to the garden in its new home across the street.
The leafy menagerie includes purple and gold orchids, sweet potato plants with long green tendrils, Italian parsley, even a baby watermelon the size of a tennis ball.
As the garden grew, it gave neighbors something to talk about and brought people on the block closer together, some said.
On the block on Friday, friends and strangers alike stopped to comment on the disappearance of the garden in front of Wong's building.
"It's a heartbreak," said one man, shaking Wong's hand.
"What happened?" said Bobby Schraud, a building superintendent on West 103rd Street. "Oh my goodness. Why? It was so beautiful."
Schraude told Wong, "It was a joy to pass by this block. I felt like I was in some kind of paradise. Now it's like walking through a desert. It's like something you would see in Hunts Point in the Bronx."
But residents on the side of West 105th Street and Riverside Drive where Wong's garden now lives said they were thrilled by the leafy addition to their stoops and sidewalk.
"Absolutely gorgeous," called out one man walking by.
"This looks beautiful, thank you," said a passing woman.
A woman walking her dog stopped in front of the garden's new home. "Oh my gosh, very nice! Is this for a movie?"
Wong replied, "No, it's real life."
