Itty Island
A tiny island in Chelsea — for pollinators, pedestrians, and pause.
WEST 24TH ST & 10TH AVE · 40.7473° N · 74.0055° W · 5 × 10 FT · ONE ARCHED CURB
Now at the garden
On view · Pride 2026The gazing ball
A garden's gazing ball, remade in dichroic acrylic for Pride. By day it reflects the ever-changing people, art, architecture, and plants of West Chelsea. By night it glows from the inside out — for the community that kept this neighborhood lit long before we added LEDs to a 5×10′ dirt pit on 10th Avenue.
Acrylic, dichroic film, concrete · conceived, fabricated, and installed by hand, with a lot of trial and error
Previously at the island: a playoff-season tribute to the other Garden. The art rotates with the neighborhood's moods — the plants stay.
Commission one for your gardenAbout the project
The smallest public spaces deserve the most care.
Itty Island is a 50-square-foot pollinator garden in West Chelsea, New York City, on the traffic median at West 24th Street and 10th Avenue — one block from the High Line, and a pitching wedge from the bigger island that gave it its name. It began as a little patch of dirt we walked past constantly, until it felt impossible not to do something.
It isn't a community garden in the formal sense — no plots, no membership, no irrigation. We designed it, planted it, fund it, and care for it ourselves, with watering help from the best-situated neighbor in Chelsea. The surprise is how communal it has become anyway. In New York, gardens are usually something you admire from a distance; this one made the neighborhood feel smaller, in the best possible way.
"Some of the biggest improvements to our city begin with neighbors who care enough to take action."
Erik Bottcher, New York State Senator, after visiting the island
The field index
What's growing
Updated July 18, 2026
In the ground
Wild bergamot Monarda fistulosa✦Coneflower Echinacea purpurea✦Moonshine yarrow Achillea 'Moonshine'✦Hidcote lavender Lavandula angustifolia✦Catmint Nepeta sp.✦Russian sage Salvia yangii✦Mexican fleabane Erigeron karvinskianus✦Verbena Verbena bonariensis✦Ice plant Delosperma sp.✦Joe Pye weed Eutrochium maculatum✦Jerusalem sage Phlomis russeliana✦Lady's mantle Alchemilla mollis✦Lamb's ear Stachys byzantina✦Japanese anemone Anemone × hybrida✦Autumn Joy sedum Hylotelephium✦Pink muhly grass Muhlenbergia capillaris✦Elijah blue fescue Festuca glauca✦Aztec tobacco Nicotiana rustica✦Wild lupine Lupinus perennis *
* Carried back from a neighbor's family meadow in the Midwest, and planted here.
The planting plan — chosen for resilience, texture, and the ability to survive next to a Manhattan bike lane.
Work with us
Small, wild, and beautiful —
in your corner too.
From the tree pit out front to the roof above you — and the bigger gardens beyond the city — we design and care for the outdoor spaces most people assume are too small, too harsh, or too odd to bother with. These sites are unique and deserve to be treated that way. With the right choices, often at no greater cost than the wrong ones, the difference is remarkable.
Streetscapes
Tree pits, medians, and building frontages — designed, planted, and stewarded year-round, with seasonal moments worth photographing.
Private spaces in the city
Stoops, backyards, balconies, terraces, and roofs. Planting design built for real New York conditions — wind, shade, concrete, and all.
Beyond the city
Larger yards and gardens outside New York — design, planting plans, and seasonal direction for the place you escape to.
Itty Island is Alex Chapman — a trained design eye and horticultural hands, shaped by a career in fashion and landscape and garden design for private clients — and Pete Fehn, who brings the strategy, identity, and analytics that got this page in front of you. The garden you just scrolled through is the portfolio.
Start a projectFollow along
The whole process, documented in real time.
@ittyislandnyc on Instagram — plantings, pollinators, and the occasional dog waiting patiently outside the frame.
Itty Island started as a way to have the garden we didn't have in New York. It became a way to discover the neighbors we didn't know yet.
Contact
We're listening.
Questions, ideas, partnerships, press — or creating something small, wild, and beautiful of your own.