SWS Oasis is a wonderland for 4-year-old Cairo Torres.

“When he's in here, I don't feel like I need to be on top of him as much. I know that he’s doing his thing, and he’s having a good time, and he’s being safe,” Tamy Cruz, Cairo’s mother, said.

What You Need To Know

  • SWS Oasis is affectionately referred to as the Sherman Avenue Garden. Before it was teeming with fruits and toys, it was a vacant lot

  • Rosalie Toledo says four and a half decades ago, people were using the then-empty lot as a dumping ground. So she and her neighbors transformed it into a garden

  • It has since grown into an oasis for the community. People have their own garden beds

  • It’s a reprieve from outside streets that Toledo says can get violent

This space is affectionately referred to as the Sherman Avenue Garden. Before it was teeming with fruits and toys, it was a vacant lot.

Then came Rosalie Toledo.

“I feel alive, and I feel happy,” Toledo said, standing in the garden on a Monday afternoon. “You got the breeze. You got the sun.”

Toledo lives in the area. She says four and a half decades ago, people were using the then-empty lot as a dumping ground. So she and her neighbors transformed it into a garden. 

“We have to educate people in the neighborhood,” Toledo said. “We live here. Where will we want to be surrounded by trash?”

It has since grown into an oasis for the community. People have their own garden beds.

It’s a reprieve from outside streets that Toledo says can get violent. 

“They are going to forget about all that ugliness that we leave in the gate outside, because we’re not going to bring that in here,” she said. “This is a peaceful time.”

Toledo also started a second space — the Grant Garden is just a few blocks away.

She books both spaces for birthday parties and family gatherings. Her real goal, she jokes, is to host a wedding.

“I haven't had a wedding yet. I want to get a boyfriend, so I could have my own wedding here,” she said.

But in the more immediate future, Toledo is planning for a Halloween celebration.

“I don’t really want them to go trick-or-treating and asking from door-to-door,” she said.

SWS Oasis is a place to connect with the Earth and with the community.

“When they get involved with the plants and they see this is, ‘I’m helping this. I’m helping this little seed grow. I have a part with the land.’ And it’s a gift,” she said.

For planting the seeds of community in the Bronx, Rosalie Toledo is our New Yorker of the Week.