More from my ongoing quest to figure out how people garden in Manhattan: a rose in a cage on the lower East side. I suppose that if the plant survives to adulthood, the cage will come off, and it will have only its thorns with which to defend itself.
And in response to a comment about where people go in Manhattan to buy dirt–they go here! A little shop around 8th Avenue and 60th sells bags of potting soil that you could put in a cart and haul home. I did find a true nursery in the East Village as well, but didn’t get a picture of it. It was in a small building like this one that happened to have a parking lot next door–a rare sight in New York–and in the parking lot they had stacked bags of soil, rakes, shovels, containers, boards, etc. It can be done! 