The real reason Park Slope’s 8th Street (between 8th Avenue and the Park) snagged the Greenest Block award this year is because the block has fantastic team spirit and everyone came together—young, old, brownstoners and apartment dwellers—to do a little something to make the block green and special.

No, it’s not the Botanical Gardens over there. In fact, 8th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues is even more lush. But there was clearly a great spirit of cooperation and hard work on the winning block and I think that’s probably what convinced the judges that they deserved the shout-out Block dwellers like Thandie Center also said that the block has come a long way since last year when they embarked on this energetic group effort.

So sour grapes from Gersh, who I saw at the ceremony. He was none-too-impressed. But that’s okay. Quite a few of us were. Here’s an excerpt from Gersh’s scathing column (/brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/31/31_31_gk_green_angle.html):

I came to compost Eighth Street, not to praise it. Yes, I was there on Wednesday, when the gray expanse between Eighth Avenue and Prospect Park West was named the “Greenest Block in Brooklyn” by the Brooklyn Botanic Garden.

Up and down the block, I saw well-maintained tree beds. I gazed at beautiful window boxes. I inhaled the lush fragrance of begonias, impatiens and rugelach (oh, sorry, that was the refreshments table). I rolled around in mulch.

But there’s one problem with the Botanic Garden’s announcement: This ain’t the greenest block in Brooklyn.

Yes, there beautiful sweet potato vine arrangements, but there are also filthy, exposed garbage cans. Yes, the tree pits look like the Ritz, but some houses have cement courtyards without so much as a drop of green paint.

Sorry to stick a green thumb in the eye of the borough’s horticultural elite, but calling Eighth Street between Prospect Park West and Eighth Avenue the “greenest block” is a decision that will tarnish the Brooklyn Botanic Garden worse than the High Court was damaged by Bush v. Gore.

Full disclosure: I visit this Eighth Street block all the time because my daughter is close friends with another 6-year-old on the block. Yet in all those visits, I never once leaned in close to my wife and said, “Boy, what a green block! I wish we could sell our apartment — at a loss, even! — to move to such verdant splendor.

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