Websites

Garden Rant
Gardening While Intoxicated
Buffalo Spree

Quotes

A year ago, Licata became the fourth member of a group of garden bloggers with an attitude. Garden Rant ...is one of my favorites: A blend of gossip, news, crusade and, yes, raw rant, it blows the cobwebs out of gardening's mustier corners.

–Adrian Higgins,
Washington Post

... co-curators Elizabeth Licata and Amy Cappellazzo have magnificently transcended the limitations of what is, at bottom, a show of books. ...Preciousness—the bane of such exhibitions—is nowhere in evidence.

–Richard Huntington,
Buffalo News

"Garden Walk Buffalo: A Celebration of Urban Gardens," is a tour guide into dozens of gardens during the annual event held the last full weekend in July. It's knowingly written by Buffalo Spree editor Elizabeth Licata, and packed with gorgeous photographs...

–Mark Sommer,
Buffalo News

< back

Community Activist

UB Student-Designed Art Spruces Up Allentown (excerpts)

You have to look closely, in some of the most unlikely places, to see them -- beneath your feet, in a tiny wedge of space between two storefronts, on the slender poles that anchor parking meters to the sidewalk. But once you find them, organizers of a series of functional art projects in Allentown ask that you stop for a moment and take a look.

The seven projects, a joint venture of the Allentown Association and a group of architecture students at the University at Buffalo, were constructed to spruce up existing structures, correct damages with a unique flair and shed new light on Allentown's oft-neglected treasures.

"I really like how it's a combination of subtle things that you'd hardly even notice, and big, in-your-face things," said Elizabeth Licata, an Allentown resident who helped organize fund-raising events for the project.

A garden structure at Main and Allen streets—the "gateway to Allentown"—is one of the project's largest undertakings. The graceful web of metal anchors another recent community project—a garden planted in a former vacant lot.

Perched on a curb across from the Spirits of Allentown liquor store, a 6-by-1-foot granite rectangle frames Days Park, the historic green sliver that slices through the neighborhood's residential area. The stone slab will be outfitted with handrails and a bronze casting through which visitors can have an unobstructed view of Days Park.

Licata said the Days Park "viewer" radiates a message to passers-by. "It says: 'Stop, look where you are. Don't just walk by,' " she said. " 'Look at the uniqueness of where you are.' " The project would have exceeded $50,000, but donations from area construction and building materials companies and residents cut the cost to $7,000.

< back