This winter, Maggie Shannon, like many New Yorkers, was feeling a little tired of city life. She wanted to go somewhere where she could be surrounded by green. Turns out, it wasn’t as hard to find as she thought: One day, her boyfriend surprised her with a trip to Manhattan’s flower district, a cluster of plant merchants on 28th Street between Seventh Avenue and Broadway.
“You’re walking down the block and then all the sudden it’s like a jungle of potted trees appear on the sidewalk. Many of the stores are so packed with plants it feels like you’re walking through a forest. You can barely see the walls or ceiling and you have to push past branches and leaves to make a path. Other stores focus more on cut flowers, and the bright colors and fragrances hit me more,” Shannon said via email.
The experience lifted Shannon’s spirits, and she became curious about this small slice of nature in the concrete jungle. For a few days, she woke up before dawn and commuted from Crown Heights, Brooklyn, to the storied market with her camera. Most of the work starts around 5:30 a.m. and many of the shops close in the early afternoon, so she had a small window to take photographs.
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