Adam Purple and His Guerilla Garden of Eden

Long before the Lower East Side became the land of cafes and condos, it was a blank canvas for the city’s most determined squatter and his ever-expanding community garden.

Illustrations by Sam von Mayrhauser

Adam Purple is a cantankerous old man who refuses to become a martyr. He was born eighty-two years ago in the farmlands of Independence, Missouri, but if you ask him where he is from, he has been known to say: “the seventh planet, Uranus, and if you don’t know where your anus is, you are definitely part of The Problem.” He is thin, slightly hunched, with a long white beard reaching nearly to his navel and pale, wrinkled skin. He is fond of wearing purple clothing, but there was a period in his life where he refused to wear the color as a personal protest against the city of New York. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and has taught at high schools, junior colleges, and Purdue University. At the Gazette and Daily in York, Pennsylvania, he once worked the police beat before seeing things that soured him on both the police and mainstream life. In the mid ’60s, he took drugs and joined the migrant hippie culture, tr…