As the owner of the urban garden design firm Prospect & Refuge, Maria Finn hears a lot of funny stories about people and plants coexisting in NYC — like the woman who brought in a lawyer to stop her neighbor’s ivy from growing on her brownstone.

As a writer, however, she knows there are few places to relay urban gardening tales, or concerns — like trying to grow plants in a shoebox apartment.

“What do you do when you only have a fire escape? What do you do when you just have a window box? That just isn’t addressed in other gardening publications,” says Finn.

So, this month, she launched her own. Called City Dirt (citydirt.net), her blog is reminiscent of an Apartment Therapy or Design Sponge for green thumbs — the perfect marriage of her two careers. Already, she’s covered they whys and hows of installing a bat box (that’s right, bats — they’re incredible mosquito eaters); creating a wildlife habitat on a terrace; indoor composting; and alternatives to that big fat energy suck: the lawn.

There’s also a place for people to pose questions to the “Plant Doctor” — Carmen DeVito, co-owner of the Williamsburg urban garden center Outside NY.

The blog, while national in scope, is rich in local coverage. Coming soon will be a slideshow of an elevated garden she designed for a Clinton Hill couple whose dog loved to eat their plants, along with late summer recipes for the fruits of their fig tree, herbs, and veggies; the best restaurant gardens for outdoor dining in NYC; and a story about a green-roof project by Sustainable South Bronx.

As Finn explains, much of her writing focuses “on the ways in which the natural world gets translated in urban environments” — like her own. Unlike her clients, the only outdoor space Finn has for plants is a window box in her Williamsburg apartment. “It’s like being tortured,” says Finn. But she’s found a great way to compensate.

Sent by Nicole.