Episode 110: Bridging Poetry and Plants with Ann Wallace and Kim Correro

Written By Nathalie Kalbach

About This Episode

In this episode of Nat's Sidewalk Stories, I explore the intersection of poetry and native plants with Ann Wallace, Jersey City's former poet laureate, and Kim Correro, a passionate advocate for native plants. Together, they host The Wild Story podcast, connecting ecological awareness with artistic expression. We discuss finding nature in urban landscapes, how slowing down leads to remarkable discoveries, and why both poetry and native gardening offer paths to hope in challenging times.

Meet the Guests

Ann Wallace is a poet, professor of English at New Jersey City University, and Jersey City's 2023-2024 poet laureate. Her most recent book, "These Days of Grace and Silence, A Chronicle of Covid Long Haul," documents her experience with Long Covid through poetry. Ann is the co-host of The Wild Story podcast and a dedicated gardener.

Kim Correro is the volunteer program director for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey and a professional publicist with 25 years of experience in the entertainment industry. A passionate advocate for biodiversity, Kim leads various restoration projects throughout Jersey City and co-hosts The Wild Story podcast.

  • Instagram: @kimcorrero

Key Insights

  • Finding hope at the intersection: Ann and Kim place hope at the center of their work, seeing interconnectedness between poetry, native plants, and community action.

  • Slowing down to observe: Both poetry and ecological awareness require careful observation and a willingness to notice what's often overlooked.

  • Urban nature exists: Even in concrete-dominated environments like Jersey City, nature can be found in backyards, window boxes, parks, and even pushing through sidewalk cracks.

  • Small changes matter: The guests emphasize starting with manageable garden modifications rather than completely transforming your outdoor space at once.

  • Healing through observation: Ann shares how watching birds and seasonal changes from her window became vital to her recovery from Long Covid.

Visual Documentation

Days of Grace and Silence book cover- see link in resources! - Courtesy of Ann E. Wallace

Polyphemus Moth cocoon - photo copyright and courtesy of Kim Correro



Native Plant Garden at the Museum of Jersey City History

Resources Mentioned

Jersey City Nature Organizations

Native Plants for Small Spaces

Kim recommends these plants for container gardens in sunny spots:

  • Butterfly Milkweed

  • Summer Phlox

  • Black-eyed Susan

  • Orange Coneflower (Rudbeckia fulgida)

Coming Up Next

In two weeks, join me for the final episode of Season 1, where I'll chat with a dear friend about what we've learned through these conversations and preview what's coming in Season 2.

Connect with Nat's Sidewalk Stories

Credits

Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler, and Pat Van Dyke.

Nat's Sidewalk Stories explores the places, people, and hidden histories that make our neighborhoods vibrant through conversations with practitioners, community leaders, and local changemakers.


Full Transcript

NSSP 110 Ann Wallace and Kim Correro

Note: This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity and readability while preserving the conversation's content and meaning.

Nat Kalbach: Hello and welcome to Nat's Sidewalk Stories where we explore the places, people, and hidden histories that make our neighborhoods vibrant. I'm your host, Nat Kalbach.

Today I am excited to bring together two perspectives that might seem distinct at first glance, poetry and native plants. My guests, Ann Wallace, Jersey City's former poet Laureate and Kim Correro, a passionate advocate for native plants, have created a unique podcast called The Wild Story that bridges these two worlds.

As an artist who documents our urban landscape, I'm fascinated by how deliberate observation connects these different creative practices. Join us as we discuss finding nature in concrete spaces, how slowing down can lead to remarkable discoveries and the ways poetry and ecological awareness intersect to create hope for our shared future.

Hello, I'm so excited to have Anne Wallace and Kim Correro today on my podcast. Thank you so much for joining Nat's Sidewalk Stories.

Ann Wallace: Thank you for having us. We're so excited to be here.

Kim Correro: Thank you, Nat.

Nat Kalbach: I just met you recently at an artist round table and learned about you and also your amazing work, which we will go in a little bit later as well as your amazing podcast the Wild Story. I would love to have you each introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about your connection to Jersey City.

Ann Wallace: All right, I'll jump in. So I'm Anne Wallace. I've lived in Hudson County since I graduated from college in 1992. I moved to Hoboken for a decade and then moved up the hill to the Heights and have lived here ever since. I was the poet laureate of Jersey City in 2023 to 24, and I'm a professor of English at New Jersey City University and the writing center director there.

I'm a poet. My most recent book, "These Days of Grace and Silence, A Chronicle of Covid Long Haul," which came out last year, chronicles my experience living with Long Covid. My daughter was one of the first people to be sick with COVID. She was sick before there were any official cases here in the city, and then I became sick. And so I just wrote my way through that, from my vantage point here in Jersey City. So that's a little bit about me.

Kim Correro: And I'm Kim Correro. I've lived in Jersey City since 2007. My husband and I first lived in Van Vorst Park and then moved up to the Journal Square area. We live in the hilltop section of Jersey City. I'm a publicist. I've been in the entertainment industry, working in PR for 25 years, but I'm also the volunteer program director for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey.

And I am a passionate ambassador for butterflies and birds and pollinators of all kinds. And I'm also a fierce advocate for native plants and doing what we can about the biodiversity crisis that we're all living in right now.

Nat Kalbach: Amazing. Thank you so much for telling us a little bit about yourselves. Oh my God, an English professor and a poet, and I'm not that good with my garden. I try to do more native planting. But it's been interesting for me as a European, of course, also to know what actually is native to the states because you kind of move here and then you think, "Hey, everything must be native that's in a garden."

So it's an interesting learning point. So maybe we get into that a little bit later too. But first I'm really curious about the Wild Story Podcast, which I listened to an episode yesterday and I really, really loved it. Would you tell us a little bit about the podcast, but also how did you two connect and what made you decide to bring together poetry and plants in this very unique format?

Ann Wallace: Kim and I met when our kids were in preschool together. Our kids, these kids that are now in college, so a long time ago. And also our children went to elementary school together and middle school together. I am the founder of the Ethical Community Charter School, where Kim's kids also went. And we worked on a performing arts program there that Kim spearheaded and was very ambitious and wonderful in all sorts of ways.

So we knew then that we worked well together. We both have an intensity, we're very different in many ways, but we have a shared intensity and a desire, I think for, dare I say perfection, which is never achievable, but we're always aiming for it. Right?

A couple years ago, I am a poet, Kim's a publicist. She was trying to help me figure out ways to promote my poetry and I started doing a couple of little Instagram lives, which was very scary for me to do, but I thought, I gotta put myself out there. And then Kim kind of latched onto that and thought we could do some poems on Instagram for the Native Plant Society, for the Hudson County chapter, which is what she was mostly involved. She was a co-lead of that chapter at the time.

So we started doing that, and not just my poems, but other people's poems. But then very quickly we decided to invite people onto Instagram live, to join us, the poets. They could read their work, talk about it. These were very short interviews, 10, 15 minutes, and it was really exciting.

But Instagram Live wasn't the best platform for the kinds of conversations that we're developing online. So we wanted something that had a larger reach and felt a little more permanent because Instagram live, you miss it. Well, we would archive them so people could watch them later. But then the next year, Kim thought, "Let's do a podcast."

And again, it was started to be, the original idea was poetry. And then Kim said, well, what if we had a little interview with an ecologist or a botanist or a native plant gardener or an entomologist or somebody related to the biodiversity crisis? So we thought of that as a small interview and then it expanded, and then the podcast kept growing and growing.

Kim Correro: But it was also a way to bring art. So Ann and I both have art backgrounds. I went to college, and I studied theater history and my husband went to Vassar and he has the same degree. My son is in college to be an actor at Emerson in Boston. So the arts are a big part of our household here, and I know that it's very important to Anne as well.

So Anne and I connect in that way.

Ann Wallace: Yes. And we're both gardeners.

Kim Correro: We're both gardeners. And so the idea was really to bring art, poetry, which I'm not a poet, but I love to experience poetry. And I start my morning every day reading some sort of short poem or I try to make it every day. And so we have that connection.

I love reading Anne's poetry, and I know because we're such good friends how hard she works at it and how hard and difficult it is for a writer's work to have a platform and to be recognized and celebrated. So that was really the thought process behind the idea. But then it was for the Native Plant Society of New Jersey.

So we wanted to make sure that we created a bridge to bring plant enthusiasts together with people who were inspired by nature and wrote about it and created in a different way and get everybody aligned. And that's the Wild Story.

Ann Wallace: Yeah, one of those things that we noticed in that first season when we were on Instagram was that a central theme was about observing and slowing down and noticing the world around you, and putting yourself into nature. Whether you live in a city or wherever, there's always something to be seen in the natural world.

And one of the beauties of poetry is it allows us to slow down and see it in a different way. Because you do have to slow down when you're writing or reading poetry. It is not a fast art. And that seemed to dovetail so beautifully with the work of the Native Plant Society. And all of the poets that we bring in are writing about nature and the environment.

Ecology in some way. Everybody's doing it differently, but it is a central point in all of the discussions that we're having with poets and in their work. And we thought bringing those two things together, that kind of keen observation of the natural world. This very senses open kind of way of taking in information, using all the senses.

That's also what botanists and horticulturalists do, right? If you're caring for the earth, you have to be attuned in all ways, and you have to slow down. You're not gonna notice all the different kinds of bees in your yard or in your community if you are not slowing down and thinking about what they need to survive.

Nat Kalbach: I love that. I have this interest in history and art, of course, because I'm painting, but also historic preservation and storytelling, and it all is weirdly aligned. When I looked at it and I made a Venn diagram, and I wonder if you would make a Venn diagram of the interest that you have that are poetry and native gardens and gardening and theater. Like for me it comes down to place-based narratives. Is it observation, slowing down or observing your surroundings, what would be a Venn diagram of all these things?

Ann Wallace: How about we put hope at the center?

Nat Kalbach: Mm.

Ann Wallace: Everything ties to that, right? That podcast is at its heart about hope. And thinking about a different kind of future we can create, by slowing down, observing, appreciating, seeing the interconnectedness. I mean, also the podcast itself is a Venn diagram.

At its heart is interconnectedness. That what I do, what you do, what Kim does, we all, we impact each other, but we impact all the little things that we can't even see. The organisms, the pollinators, the plants, the planet from tiny to largest scale possible.

We're all making an impact with every decision, every action we take, and hopefully we can do that with an eye toward hope and an eye toward the future.

Nat Kalbach: Absolutely. That's something that we really have to have more of nowadays.

Ann Wallace: Yeah, for sure.

Nat Kalbach: I wanna go to Kim. I was struck by something that you shared on your Instagram recently. You were at the Peace Care Nursing Home Garden and you found a Polyphemus moth.

Kim Correro: We did and we were cleaning up, it was our first day. A good friend of mine, her name is Margaret Horn, she volunteers with me in that garden. It's a restoration project we've been working on for three years, and when we first started, it was just a neglected space.

Basically because the nursing home really doesn't have the means or the funding to have people come in and take care of the grounds. And so we've been volunteering to do it and restore it and make it a habitat for pollinators and birds. And we went back in for the first time, about a month ago to just look around a little.

I had been walking past it and I'd seen garbage just everywhere. So we went in and we're filling garbage bags. There was a lot of development around where I live. So I live in Journal Square where there are big skyscrapers and garbage just kind of floats from the top of the buildings and lands in our backyards and in these small garden spaces.

And so it was just covered. And then Margaret, she said, "Kim, come on over here just for a second. Take a look at this. Look on this stem." And there it was. And that's why we encourage, as native plant gardeners and educators, is for people to not rush back to cleaning up and tidying up their gardens or cutting back their stems because all of those caterpillars and moths and butterflies and bees have been hibernating for the entire winter, and we went back yesterday and there it was, still there.

So, going back to what Anne said about being an observer and slowing down there, I was rushing, rushing, trying to fill these garbage bags because I had another appointment to get to, and Margaret was taking her time, and so she saw that and it was miraculous to see it.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah. And it's such a powerful symbol of resilience too. What other wildlife have you two seen return to spaces that you have restored with native plants?

Kim Correro: I'll say for me it's the birds in the backyard, the hummingbird. You know, when we first moved in here, there was no garden. We didn't see birds. It wasn't until I started planting what I knew the hummingbird would come for. There it was. I started to see it, and every year, during the late spring, early summer, now it's probably not the same bird, but it's definitely the hummingbird is around the ruby throated hummingbird.

But other birds too, and definitely monarchs, they come for the plants. So if you're planting a host plant or some of the keystone native plants you are going to, they're going to come for it. They need that nourishment. And this is a concrete landscape, so these little tiny spaces of green and native plants are really important.

Nat Kalbach: I was struck by one of the guests, from the last episode that I heard, from you about how the culture of having lawns is so American and as a European, I do have to say I feel that way. When you go to the suburbs, I'm always astonished by the sheer amount of lawns.

More like a wildflower person per se. And my mom was very much about wild flowers as well, and I had those for my weddings, wedding bouquets on the middle of the table, and people would be like, why?

I don't understand. But I never thought more about it than the aesthetic. So it's interesting now to also think about what an impact you have when you change that and have more biodiversity and plant other things, native plants instead of just having lawns everywhere.

Ann Wallace: Oh, I just wanted to add it's not, well, I also think what could be more boring than just all these green lawns that, but, and not only is it just a monoculture, right? That it's not enhancing the environment, but think of all the chemicals that people pour onto their lawns as they care for them.

And so it's a double whammy negative impact.

Nat Kalbach: I'm also seeing a lot of people just putting these fake lawns out. What is it called? Turf or...

Ann Wallace: Yeah. Yeah.

Nat Kalbach: I don't want to step on someone's toes because I think it's always a little hard when we advocate for something that not everyone is like, might need a little longer to get to that and if you punch them in the face right away and say, I don't get why you're doing that...

Ann Wallace: I think it's a really good point because, and one of the things that I think Kim and I try to emphasize on the show frequently is about taking small steps, right? We have never, I don't think we've ever had a guest on who said, "All of your listeners need to rip up their entire lawn right now."

All of it on one shot. In fact, the interview you might have been thinking about was with Kelly Norris, and I believe he, if I'm remembering correctly, talked about taking on manageable bits of work. 'cause if you try to do it all at once, you're gonna fail, right?

And nobody, and then you get to toss up your hands and abandon the project. We want people to succeed and the way to do that is by taking on small bits of bringing in a few plants if you need to, to start with reducing the size of your lawn. I have a tiny bit of a lawn in my backyard because my kids were little and I needed that for them, for the kitty pool and a little play area.

I mean, my yard, I live in a city, my yard is not big, but even now that my kids are grown, I still have that little bit of lawn. It's so little. I have to mow it with a weed whacker, you know, it's too little for a lawnmower. Right? We're sort of, I'm talking tiny, but still I have that little bit of grass, it's just doing what's manageable.

Kim Correro: Yeah. And it's not about removing all of your lawn, keep the amount of lawn that you think that you need for, you know, you have young kids, if you have animals that need to go out, but just don't use the pesticides on the lawn because that's hurting your family.

It's costing you a lot of money to have people come in and treat your lawn. It's a shift in thinking, and as Anne said, it's going beyond aesthetics, right? Your native garden, adding plants, adding some native segs, making borders, creating a space that you are going to enjoy but is also gonna be good for the environment.

It's going to be better for your family. It's going to be better for the ecosystem. That's what we're trying to encourage people to start thinking about.

Nat Kalbach: And it comes back to what you said before, that everything is connected, right? So thinking about the bigger picture of what you do if you just changed a small part. I wanna go now to Anne. Anne, during your experience with long Covid, you mentioned that before you wrote a poem for the house finches...

Ann Wallace: Yeah.

Nat Kalbach: ...about observing birds from your window. Could you share a bit about how nature observation became part of your healing journey? And if you may have it by your site, maybe you don't, perhaps read a short excerpt from that poem.

Ann Wallace: Sure. In fact, I do have it here. And it's not a long poem, so I'll read the whole thing, if you don't mind. Again, it's very short. It's called "For the House finches." And in this collection I dated every poem that I wrote because I wanted it to be a chronicle, almost like a diary. And so I wrote this one on April 1st, 2020.

I'd already been sick with Covid for a couple of weeks at this point, and I was very sick. I'd already been in and outta the hospital a couple times, so, and I was on very strict bedrest that I broke during this poem. So for the house Finches:

I wonder if the house finches know they own the yard this year. The cheery, redheaded, finches, the cardinals, sparrows, morning doves and the large lone pigeon who began visiting last week as I fell ill to peck beneath the feeder. All of them, they can have the yard this year, I think as I heave myself off the couch, slip my feet into my empty red boots, pull a shawl around my shoulders and stumble outside to offer them some food.

I was on bedrest for a long time. In fact, I was on oxygen, but not yet at that point. It took a while to get it, but I was on oxygen around the clock for a month and had my oxygen for a year and a half really, before they returned it to the medical supply company and, so I couldn't go outside. Right.

I like feeding those birds. That day was an enormous effort that I probably should not have made, but their feeder was empty and the feeder was hanging in my window, and so I went outside, fed them and I could see I have big windows at the back of my house, and I would just watch the birds and nature like summer come spring, and then summer coming into bloom as I lay on my couch in my living room, which is where I stationed myself every day.

And that really was sustaining, even though I couldn't be out there. Just seeing it and that there's, I mentioned a lone pigeon in the poem shortly thereafter that pigeon started bringing a partner and they would come at like 11 or 12 every day. I would see first one and then the other. And it was always the male came in first, and then the female followed shortly thereafter.

And the two of them would, they would come to my yard every day. Never ever in my life have I paid attention to pigeons, and recognize them. The male had like kind of distinctive markings. So I quickly knew that this was the same bird coming back and then this pair of birds. And that was just a small joy, honestly, that if I'm in here, at least they're out there. They have that space, that space is for them this year.

Nat Kalbach: I love that and thank you so much for sharing that. I would love to share that with my cousin's daughter who's actually, they live in England in Westchester. And my cousin's daughter is for a year now in bed, with long covid, she hasn't left her room. So I can, not relate to it like I haven't been in this situation, but I'm thinking of sending this to my cousin to tell her daughter about it. And maybe there's something, they have a beautiful garden too, so hopefully that will give her some idea of how to brighten her day.

Ann Wallace: I hope so. That would be lovely if you did that. And I'm so sorry to hear that she's so sick. It's a really, really hard illness. Both of my daughters have it as well. My youngest, who's now 18, has really struggled with it, over the past couple years.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, it's really an eyeopener when you hear that, how some of us have moved on, of course, and thinking this doesn't exist anymore, but it does and it can do a lot of harm for a long time to people. So, one more question before I go back to Kim, to you. How has being a poet shaped how you observe your urban environment and do you think that you noticed things that others may miss? I know that you both are saying that you want to slow down but what do you think as a poet might be giving you the tools to do so?

Ann Wallace: That's an interesting question. Because as a poet, before I had covid, I occasionally wrote about the natural world and like my garden, but not very often. And I think it was being so sick and having to slow everything down. I mean, everything slowed down for me. My breathing was slow. And I had to relearn how to walk.

More than two months into my illness, I walked in place for three minutes on Zoom with my doctor. And when he asked me to do it, I thought, are you out of your mind? I can't walk for three minutes. But I did. And I was on oxygen when I did it. And then eventually I could walk, you know, the next day I walked for four minutes in my kitchen and it built up.

And then I walked down the street to the park. I live near Riverview Park in the heights. And it's one block down. And eventually I was able to walk down to the park, sit on a bench, gather my breath, walk back. It was very scary the first time I did it, but having that park with the view of the city was a destination.

And then later I could walk up and down my street and I could see, because I did that route eventually, like every day. And my older daughter would walk it with me and it was my rehabilitation. It was part of my healing. And some days I couldn't do it, but I always tried and I was not moving fast and that slowed everything down for me.

So I could notice though, because I was walking by the same houses, the same little planters, the same trees in the front yards if people had a yard. And I could notice things changing from day to day and I wrote about it, and I was writing poems tried every day. And so those things just necessarily connected if I'm moving through the world slower, I can observe more keenly.

And if I'm doing this outside, the thing I will be observing is my neighborhood changing or my yard changing, my garden changing. And it felt, in some ways illness is not a gift, but that aspect of my recovery felt a little bit like a gift.

Nat Kalbach: Mm. Yeah, I had cancer last year, so it definitely opens you up in a different way when you recover and you kind of are more out and about. But in general, I think even before that, I did something on my block, which I called stroll through the hood, where I would just take photos of my surroundings so there's something about also making your daily routines exciting by challenging yourself to observe it in a different way.

Like you could say "Today, I wanna look for plants," or "I wanna look for color or for a number, or, I don't know, cracks that are interesting shadows." I don't know. There's so many ways to do that and I think that's, I love when you are part of saying, looking for nature, Kim, like slowing down when you do your gardening work and then see what you can discover in your garden as well.

Which brings me to kind of loop sided. Kim, we often think of Jersey City as all concrete and buildings. What would you say to someone who says that there is not much nature here?

Kim Correro: I would say get into my car and I will take you for a drive and I'll take you to Lincoln Park West and show you the nature trails there. And I'll take you to Liberty State Park and walk you through the nature trail there. And I'll take you over to the heights. I mean, nature is not only in the big parks, nature is in our backyards.

Nature is sometimes in our front yards in planters if that's all we have space for, maybe it's just a window sill, you know, nature is in the sky, nature is coming up through the cracks of the sidewalks. It's how you observe. It's how you see it, but it is here. And you know, it is a struggle sometimes to see it because more and more buildings are going up and trees are coming down, and it is really painful to see that happening.

But there's an enormous amount of people out there from the Native Plant Society of Hudson County. They've got terrific co-leaders. There's the Sierra Club, there are the friends of Lincoln Park, there's Jersey City Birds. There are plenty of organizations, Canco Park is another organization.

There's a number of nature organizations out there and places for people to get information. People trying to advocate for their green spaces. And in Journal Square, we have a community of people that are fighting for courthouse park trying to open this up a little bit and give people those resources.

So yeah, I would just say you've got to take a walk or call a friend that is more into nature and go looking around. It can be life changing. You know, once you find it, it's life changing.

Nat Kalbach: Last week, it was very sad. I have an alleyway on the back of the house, which is rare in Jersey City. We have like, I don't know how many alleyways, but not that many. And someone who bought a house, cut down an amazing evergreen tree, which was like 50 or 60 feet high. We called it the Rockefeller tree. And it was really, really amazing. There was a hawk living in the tree. There were cardinals in the summer.

So it was really upsetting that they disassembled this beautiful tree in an hour. It was all gone and they wanted to take down another a hundred year old oak tree. And it was really disheartening. But then at the same time, what happened was that all of us neighbors came out. All of us neighbors came into the alleyway and you know, we haven't seen each other now it's starting to get warmer. So we haven't seen each other a lot and we are not like super well connected and we are all different, from advocates to people that are more reserved. But it was so interesting how we all came out and we were begging this guy to not cut down the second tree.

By the time that this podcast comes out, the tree ordinance is hopefully in place but, anyway, it was so beautiful to see everyone come out and fight for it. And everyone had a different story to tell why this tree meant something to them. And it was beautiful to hear all the different neighbors from all sorts of life, talk about it.

Nature is for everyone.

Ann Wallace: It's amazing. And you know, even before you told that story, when Kim was talking about nature being in all sorts of places in Jersey City, I was thinking, when somebody says something like this is just, the city doesn't know any nature. Well, it is true that we don't have enough trees, that our tree cover is sorely lacking. It should be in parallel to other cities, it's lower, right? We know this. These are things that have been studied.

And for those people though, for people who say, who complain about it, well, for one, that's fantastic. You're complaining because it means that matters to you. And if it matters to you, then be part of the change, right? Then find those organizations that are doing work to plant trees, to plant community gardens, to turn empty, abandoned lots into green spaces. The people who are planting sunflower seeds or milkweed or what have you.

Be one of those people. Find those people and connect and get involved because there's so many fantastic groups, large and small in this city doing the work, or just start in a group of your own, like be a group of one. You don't even need a group. It just start doing it. There's so many ways to enter into this work and everybody's role is needed.

Nat Kalbach: Kim, I wanted to know, if someone has a little box, right, like a planter or this is for both of you, what would you suggest? Say you have only a little balcony, or, I know you shouldn't put it on your fire escape, but whatever.

Like any small space where you can put a planter, you don't have really ground, you have a brown thumb like me. What would you plant in that little planter?

Kim Correro: Well, it would depend on a couple of things, but if it was a shady area or a sunny area, I mean, we have to kind of think about those factors. If it's a native plant, we wanna make sure the pot is deep enough because the roots get pretty deep, so the roots need to have somewhere to go so that the plant can grow.

But for a planter, if it's a sunny spot, I might try some butterfly milkweed and put that, fill a planter up with that, or some nice summer flock would be a really beautiful combination. There also, there's a black-eyed Susan or an orange cone flower called Ru Fulda, which I love and I love to use in projects because it stays relatively small, but it's native and it attracts butterflies and bees love it.

But I think that I would start there and I would kind of keep it simple because native plants spread, which, but Natalie, if you ever want some help, I would love to come over and bring you some plants.

Nat Kalbach: I am really, I'm not, I have the best intentions. I'm probably one of those that you were referring to, like biting too much, like I will buy all this stuff and then I plant it and then I've traveled and I forget to water it or I don't have enough, you know? And then a lot of my plants die. It's really sad.

Kim Correro: They do need water. Especially if they're in a planter, they will need some water, young plants. You know, I was looking at your artwork on your, we were trying to get together, come over to see your work and one thing that attracts me so much to your work and your paintings is your use of color and the way you mix red with green.

And one thing that I noticed is in the buildings, the one, the photos that I have seen, all the lights are on all the time. And I loved that. And it just, I don't know, it kind of made me just think and ponder about what you do and how it relates to gardening and how it relates to design and art and, but I do wanna get over to see your work.

Nat Kalbach: Thank you. Yeah, I would love to have you two over whenever we find a time and we will definitely do that. So I'm really thankful for what you two are doing and I love the podcast. I understand you two are both involved with a project at the Museum of Jersey City History.

Could you tell us about that and how people can experience or even get involved with it?

Ann Wallace: Kim, so...

Nat Kalbach: Sorry, Anne.

Ann Wallace: No, no, that's okay. I think what she's doing is beautiful and wonderful and important.

Kim Correro: It's not just me, it's a new volunteer project to bring native plants to the grounds of the Museum of Jersey City history. So I collaborate with a wonderful, enthusiastic, caring, and kind gardener named Jerome Choice. He's a master gardener. You might have him on this show sometime because he knows so much about Jersey City history.

Nat Kalbach: Love Jerome. Yeah.

Kim Correro: He is wonderful and I'm having the best time working with him. Last year, we were able to secure a pollinator kit from Xerxes Society and the museum was awarded 1200 plugs, all native plants, a very diverse selection. And then through the Native Plant Society we raised some more money and we put some shrubs around and we're working to do that again.

So by the time this podcast airs, we will have had a great summer and I'm sure everything will have bloomed beautifully. It relates to the wild story because we are collaborating as a wild story demonstration garden. So Anne is a part of that. Of course, we haven't had any big events there yet to kind of celebrate both entities, but it's definitely a project that I'm really proud of because it sits right in the middle of Journal Square and people walk by constantly when we're out there working and asking, oh, what's that? And the butterflies are, we had so many butterflies last summer. It was fantastic.

Nat Kalbach: Before I get to the signature question for both of you, for someone who doesn't normally read poetry and who should absolutely read your poetry as well, is there a nature poet that you'd recommend as an entry point? Maybe someone who particularly writes about urban environments.

Ann Wallace: Oh, that's a good question. Well, I might go with Ross Gay. Ross Gay is just a fantastic writer. He does not only write poetry, he also writes short essays. He's got some short essay collections. But he wrote the, in terms of poetry, one of his most famous books is the "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude."

And he also has "The Book of Delights," "The Book of More Delights," another essay collection called "Inciting Joy." So he's a contemporary living, currently living black writer from Indiana Bloomington, I think it is. And so he lives in a city and is part of, he helped create a community orchard with many, he would not take the credit for this.

This was a very much a community effort. But he is a person who literally incites joy and he doesn't view the world through rose colored glasses, let me put it that way. He also sees all of the difficulties in our nation, in our world, and yet he finds delight, and yet he finds joy and helps spread it.

And yet he finds nature in his city and he shares it with people. He has a garden himself and he shares the things that he grows with people. He, you know, part of the orchard, they have events in the orchard. They bring people in. It's all about spreading joy and creating community. So he's somebody I would highly recommend.

Kim Correro: And if I may, he's written a few poems about Jersey City.

Ann Wallace: Oh, yes. He's been in Jersey City. He used to be an assistant coach of the basketball team at, what is that, St. Anthony's, that was downtown. Anyway, he used to live in Jersey City at one point, and even when he didn't live in Jersey City, he'd come back to help coach.

And he's lived all over the country, it feels like East Coast, I should say East Coast and Midwest. But yeah, and we interviewed him on the Wild Story.

Nat Kalbach: That is so cool. I have to definitely dig out that episode. I will link, of course, the Wild Story and that episode and your poetry and his up in the show notes. I have a question that I like to ask all of my guests, and that is, if you could spend an afternoon with anyone from Jersey City's past, you can cheat, who would it be?

Which corner would you choose as your meeting spot and what one question would you ask them? Kim, would you like to start?

Kim Correro: Sure. I would choose Morris Pessin and I would like to meet him. So, Ann and I, when we were talking in the very beginning, we were talking about how our kids went to the garden school. And that's how we met Sam Pessin, who was Morris Pessin's son, of course. So we learned a lot about him through Sam, and we're lucky enough to meet Mrs. Pessin when she was still living.

But Morris Pessin is so inspiring in the work that he did. He dared to dream, you know? And there's that story that he took his young family on a trip to Liberty Island, and he could see Jersey City a half a mile away covered in garbage and what most people would've thought as a garbage dump.

Morris had a vision to transform Jersey City's waterfront into a green scenic urban park. So it took him 19 years to get that park started. So the park is called Liberty State Park, and it was a grassroots effort to create this park. It took Morris Pessin 19 years to get the park started, and then another 16 years really fighting to preserve it. And so I'm inspired by the ways that he was able to figure out how to get the public fired up, how to get the public dreaming and how to keep advocating and pushing for something, and then he made it real.

I would probably meet him either at the Nature Center or Haven Point would be a good place to walk around with him. And I would invite Sam, of course, and I would invite my husband, Marshall, because my husband is a terrific historian. He knows so much about Jersey City history and is a huge fan of Sam and Morris Pessin.

So I think it would be a delightful lunch or conversation or picnic or whatever we decided to do.

Nat Kalbach: I love that you mentioned Morris Pessin, what a great story that is. And I will definitely find one of those insane pictures that show how it used to look like before it was our gorgeous park that many, many people from around the world come to visit and set out to see Lady Liberty as well.

We can all thank Morris Pessin and the people who helped him and all of that. You would ask him, how he got the people excited about the park when they might have just seen that dump, I think we all need to sneak in and will be probably a bigger group than just the three of four of you than Sam Morris, your husband, and you. It will be Anne, me...

Ann Wallace: That's right.

Nat Kalbach: Right.

Ann Wallace: Yeah. What a treat it would be to have met Morris Pessin.

Nat Kalbach: Exactly.

Ann Wallace: But I feel like we get such a sense of his spirit through his son Sam, who is a force in his own right. He's a very quiet, soft-spoken force. But he is both those things at the same time. And that's one of the things I love about Sam.

Nat Kalbach: Me too. Ann, so who would you like to meet from Jersey City's past? Who would it be? Which corner would you choose? And the question.

Ann Wallace: Well it's such a good question and you know, first I thought, well, Martin Luther King gave one of his very last speeches right before he was assassinated about a week before here in Jersey City. So that's top of list, but I'm not gonna go with the obvious.

I'm gonna go with Elizabeth Blackwell, Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, who was the first woman to earn a medical degree in the United States in 1849. And her family lived here in Jersey City when she was growing up. And then also she opened her medical practice here as a physician in Jersey City, she did not have that office here for very long.

People didn't really wanna see a woman doctor. So she closed up that office and then she opened a hospital in New York City, so she moved on to even bigger ventures, doing really important work as a physician in the 1800s.

And I just find it so inspiring that she lived here and is linked to Jersey City's history. So I would wanna meet her downtown and think I would just wanna ask her about her experience going to medical school.

I mean, it was very difficult for her in medical school. As a woman, she was not wanted, and yet she persisted. This is a theme throughout history for women. And I would just wanna ask her to tell me some of the stories and where she found the strength and resilience to keep going even when people were closing doors on her.

Nat Kalbach: Yeah, that's an excellent choice. I told you earlier that I'm writing a book about my house, actually. It's called "If These Walls Could Talk," where the house, she is an old lady telling the story and one of the people who lived here was a doctor in 1906, Dr. Edwina Frech. So I learned about Blackwell because I was looking into that because even in 1906 it was rare to have female doctors.

And one of the things that really struck me was one of the stories how students when they would see female students studying medicine would be just be obnoxious and mean, and throw things at them and joke about them. Crazy guys in the theater, just like yelling at them and making fun of them. So, great choice.

Ann Wallace: And if people wanna learn more about Elizabeth Blackwell, there's a really wonderful book called "The Doctors Blackwell," about her and her sister, I believe it is. It's been a few years since I read it, but tells her story. It's a biography.

Kim Correro: It's interesting that you say that about your house and the topic of the book you're writing "If These Walls Could Talk." My husband again, has done a lot of research on our house and people that have lived here before us and before them, dating back to the 1890s, and he came across one family that's so interesting to us.

They were the Fennely's. This was a big Irish area and they were Democrats and he thinks it was sometime around 1928, 20,000 people who were Democrats were ordered to show loyalty to the mayor. Do you know this story? Mayor Hague at the time, and they had to switch for one day over to Republican to vote out a judge.

I think it was judge Kerry, he was gonna be governor. I, my husband knows the story better than I do, but they were called the One Day Republicans and they lived here in this house.

Ann Wallace: Wow.

Nat Kalbach: Crazy.

Kim Correro: That interesting? Yeah.

But it's just, you know, when you stop to think about all the people that have lived in these old houses, have walked these sidewalks, have fought for the things that they have fought for in their neighborhoods. It just makes the things that you are fighting for 'cause we're all doing it right in our own communities and our own neighborhoods. We're fighting for things that we know that we need or that will make things better, and it just makes it richer and it makes the experience more important.

Ann Wallace: Yeah.

Nat Kalbach: I mean, you're continuing something that other people have done also maybe in a different field, right? With being part of the native society, with planting, putting out beautiful words in form of poetry, seeing what you're seeing in the city. So you're all part, we are all part of this fabric and it's not just about the Hagues and the big names that everyone is saying over and over. It's all of us doing our part of trying to make this place a better place or keeping the good things that are working as well for generations to come.

And maybe someday someone's gonna say, "Wow, in that house there was a poet, her name was Anne Wallace," or "There's Kim. Wow, nowadays we have all these native plants everywhere, but there was a time where that wasn't normal." So that's something that I find so interesting just talking with people that wanna make a difference, and that's why I'm really happy that I was able to have you as my guest. I really love what you're doing in general with the Native Plant Society and also with the Wild Story.

Thank you so much for being part of Nat's Sidewalk Stories.

Ann Wallace: Thank you so much for having us, Nat. This is really fun.

Kim Correro: This was fun. Thank you, Nat.

Nat Kalbach: That was my conversation with Ann Wallace and Kim Correro. I hope this discussion inspires you to look at your surroundings with fresh eyes, whether that means noticing native plants pushing through sidewalk cracks, appreciating the architecture of your neighborhood, or simply slowing down to really see the place you call home.

You can find links to Anne's poetry called "Days of Grace and Silence," information about Kim's work with the Native Plant Society of New Jersey and their podcast, the Wild Story in the show notes.

If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and sharing with others who might appreciate these sidewalk stories. You can also read my follow up article coming out next week "Between the Cracks: Finding Nature, Hope and Connection, and Urban Spaces" on My Substack.

My last episode of this season will come out in two weeks where I will chat with a dear friend about what we've learned through these conversations and what's brewing for season two of Nat's Sidewalk Stories already in the planning. Until then, remember to look up, look around, and discover the stories beneath your feet.

Thank you for listening to Nat's Sidewalk Stories. I'm your host, Nat Kalbach. Our theme music is "How You Amaze Me," composed by Jim Kalbach and performed by Jim Kalbach, Bryan Beninghove, Charlie Siegler and Pat Van Dyke.



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Episode 109: The Statuary Story with Ted Chubb