UPTOWNflavor

Photo: New York Magazine

[Nobu] Otsu didn’t set out to change the world with his terrace. He’s not a budding lifestyle guru or an eco-activist/blogger with a spade to grind. “This isn’t a political statement,” he says cheerfully, showing a visitor around the lush plantings. All Otsu, a longtime art director, and his boyfriend, Joe Healy, knew was that they had lived too long in a cramped Upper West Side one-bedroom. They found themselves looking at the plans for a small three-bedroom apartment in a Harlem building. Though it was still under construction, they committed and moved in 2002.

The couple was delighted for many reasons: more space, obviously, but also a south-facing 1,100-square-foot terrace where Otsu’s been tending a vegetable garden almost since they unpacked. It’s now a lush, fertile rooftop with so much produce that the couple didn’t have to buy a single vegetable all summer—and still had plenty to share with the neighbors.

“We learned basically that two plants of something was enough for two people,” says Otsu, who developed a passion for gardening growing up in Japan. This summer the garden produced, among other things, eggplant, string beans, peppers, kale, broccoli, tomatoes, and a multitude of herbs.

And there are fruit trees—plum, peach, cherry, apple, persimmon, and lemon. The cherry and apple trees came pre-grafted: Otsu gets three kinds of cherries from one tree and four kinds of apples from the other. And flower beds: roses, rhododendron, peonies, lavender, and irises.

Read the rest: New York Magazine