How a Gardener at a Brooklyn Park Spends Her Sundays

A decade ago, Eve Brooks was unemployed and looking for help. A caseworker mentioned that the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation had several job training programs, including a six-month horticulture program. She immediately enrolled.

As a kid growing up in the 1960s in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Ms. Brooks said, much of her time was spent in her backyard, growing vegetables (mostly inedible) with her father. She also remembers that backyard as the site of her first battles with the city’s wild foliage.

“There was a big bush that grew out and over our chain link fence, so I came up with the bright idea to get my father’s drill and drill two holes in it,” she said. “I poured Drano in those holes and that invasive tree never came back.” (She was a teenager at the time and does not recommend that anyone do this now.)

Now she works full time for the Parks Department as the gardener at Herbert Von King Park, a storied 7.82-acre park in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. Most days she can be found zipping around in a miniature truck that overflows with her “prized possessions,” as she calls them — weed whacker, leaf blower, hedge trimmer — clad in her daily uniform of ski goggles and kneepads.

“I love my job and I do it well. It can be laborious, but I don’t find it burdensome,” said Ms. Brooks, who, at 64, said she has no plans to retire anytime soon. “Each day I get here I want to be a benefit to somebody, to make somebody happy.”

Ms. Brooks lives with her 32-year-old daughter in a two-bedroom apartment in Starrett City, an affordable housing complex in Brooklyn that overlooks Jamaica Bay.

PRAYERS UP My alarm is set for 4 o’clock. I’ve always been an early riser. I say my personal prayer right when I open up my eyes, and then later I’ll say a prayer for all people, like to take away the hatred. I like to sit on my balcony — you can see the World Trade Center and the Empire State Building — and have a cup of coffee. I take my coffee dark with two sugars, brown sugar.

JUST TURTLE I have about a dozen house plants so I’ll usually start the day by watering those. Then it’s time to feed my pet turtle; his name is just Turtle. I gave him lettuce, but he didn’t like it so now I give him frozen turtle food or dried shrimp. I might decide to go fuss with my daughter, but I usually don’t see her in the mornings. She’s not up yet.

COOK AND COOKE If I’m not working, I like to cook. Cooking relaxes me. If I’m going to work then I need to leave by 5:30 because it takes me about an hour to get to the park. I take the bus and the train. I like to listen to my music, Sam Cooke and that kind of stuff, or sometimes I’ll read the news on my phone. I was just thinking about how I missed the newspaper being delivered to my door.

CLOG MY ARTERIES I don’t eat breakfast until I get to work. I like two sunny-side-up eggs with salted bacon on a roll — pull out the center bread; I don’t like too much bread — and make sure you put enough butter on it to clog my arteries. Those are my instructions. I get it from Lincoln Market. It’s a grocery store near the park. I have their circulars and I check what’s on sale, too. They have the best short ribs.

WHAT’S THE WEATHER? The most important part of my job is checking the weather. You know those storms we were having? Well, we have sycamore trees in our park, and sycamore trees are hollow. If it rains too hard or if the wind is too strong, they are going to be on the ground. So I knew I had to come in that weekend because there would be storm damage. You should’ve seen everything I picked up. My job is to keep the park safe and beautiful.

TOOL TIME I buy a lot of tools that make my life easier. This year was the first time I planted bulbs where the trees are. Do you know how hard it was to plant 50 bulbs in that area? So I went and got myself a drill with an auger. I said, I’m not digging all those holes!

HOLD THE PEAS Sometimes I take lunch. I love Chinese food. I might have shrimp fried rice with lobster sauce, but I make sure there’s no peas. I hate peas. And extra sauce on the side. I usually take a smoke break, but not on park grounds. You can’t smoke in the park. I was thinking about quitting, but it’s so difficult.

“COMMUNITY SERVICE” To occupy my time, I’ve been doing some, let’s just call it community service. There are these swamp oak trees down on Pennsylvania Avenue near my house and they’re growing out onto the sidewalk. So I plan on taking my lopper home with me and going down there. They’re a hazard! We shouldn’t be assaulted by trees when we’re walking on the sidewalk.

FILTHY NAILS The first thing I do when I get home is clean my nails. My fingernails are filthy. I bought antibacterial soap, so first I wash my hands with that and then I get the nail brush and start scrubbing. I hate dirty nails. It just aggravates me. It’s disgusting.

TOO MUCH TV I have a 3-D printer and a Cricut machine so I might dabble with those after dinner. Then I’ll watch some TV before bed. I think we have too many choices; it was so much easier when we just had network TV. Now I have everything and I can’t find anything that makes me happy. The TV ends up watching me, and usually I’m sleeping by 7 or 8 o’clock.