Propagation at the Edge of Property proposes a networked system of spatial and ecological reclamation through city-wide cooperation, originating at the site of Elizabeth Street Garden in Lower Manhattan. The site has a contested history of erasure as Lenape Land, within a city plagued by the ecological and material burden of development, at risk of being demolished, along with the flora and fauna that call it home. This proposal hosts a soil generation facility that extends through the city, where ecology would transgress the human, to include material ecologies from the hidden life of soil to the intersections of pneumatic tubes and rhizomatic root networks alike. Once soil and propagated elements are prepared, new holes are dug and the garden spreads throughout the city, speculating on new sites of excavation; so not only is the garden propagated, but so too is the agency that comes with it: an agency that comes from people gathering in collective action where there are trees, agency in a city collaborating to produce a common output, and agency in advocating for an expanded ecology of care, where human and soil and butterfly alike partake in the material intervention of our habitats.
