Adam Purple

Who is Adam Purple?

Adam Purple is an activist and urban Edenist or "Guerrilla Garderner" famous in New York City from the seventies to the present day. His name at birth was David Wilkie, though he's gone by many others, including the Rev. Les Ego.

He is often considered the godfather of the urban gardening movement, and his "Garden of Eden" was a well-known garden on the Lower East Side of Manhattan until it was demolished by then mayor Rudolph Giuliani, after considerable controversy extending from the Koch Administration through the Dinkins Administration. He is one of fifty subjects featured in Harvey Wang's New York, a book of photographs and brief biographies of notable and colorful New Yorkers.

After Purple's "Garden of Eden" was destroyed, his friend, artist George Bliss, painted trails of purple footprints around the Lower East Side leading to the garden's former location.

The image of Adam Purple familiar to New Yorkers in the seventies and eighties was of a man wearing at least one article of purple clothing and with a thick graying beard, riding a bicycle through Manhattan streets and scooping up manure left by hansom cab horses, which he used to fertilize his urban garden.