Troy Lancaster lives in exile. In the Bronx. His relatives won’t visit him, he says, because like a lot of folks with roots in the South, they are not keen on concrete, noise and narrow streets. He felt the same way in the 1980s when he moved to a stretch of Grant Avenue that had been reduced to an open-air drug market along a weed-choked street.

His relatives do not know what they are missing.

Today, Mr. Lancaster spends his time tending to trees and plants that line shaded, winding paths inside the Dred Scott Bird Sanctuary just south of 170th Street. Often, children scamper about, entranced by nature, while doves, warblers and other birds flit about. Now the sight of a wild turkey does not elicit the same reaction it did in the late 1990s.

“It flew up on the roof next door then landed down here,” Mr. Lancaster, 65, recalled. “People were amazed by it. They wanted to catch it and eat it. But nobody got to kill it.”

The idea for this unlikely sanctuary came to him in the 1990s, about a decade after he and his wife, Patricia, and their children moved to the area. He had been helping out at a local garden run by Ann Adams, a community-minded neighbor, a few blocks away. Her garden showed him how green space made the area look better, he said, and increased property values.