By Jim O'Sullivan

Now Augustine Ogiste is getting ready to plant a tree in his backyard. It is his own way of acknowledging what's happening next door, growth of another sort.

"I was by myself," said Ogiste, who lives on Bernard Ave., next door to 75 new affordable housing units slated to welcome residents this month. "Now I have neighbors to cherish. I can talk with them now."

Ogiste joined his new neighbors at a Monday ribbon cutting for the units, 44 of which will be rented to families at affordable rates, with the remaining 31 rented to seniors at affordable rates. With funding hauled in from 14 different sources by the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation (NDC), the west-of-Washington neighborhood has watched what was once a brownfield towyard become lively-colored apartment buildings. During its 20-year existence, the Codman Square NDC has replenished the surrounding neighborhood with more than 750 housing units.

Charlotte Golar Richie, the city's housing chief, said Monday celebrated "an effort with transformative value."

"It wasn't a place where you wanted the kids from the Lee School to come and play," Richie told the crowd. Richie said landscaping and street-paving were elusive goals toward which local activists now need to turn their attention.

State Senator Jack Hart, into whose turf the Codman Square area was enveloped by last January's redistricting shift, predicted that a sound barrier wall would be high on the new community's list of priorites.

And Mayor Thomas M. Menino encouraged the soon-to-be dwellers to "continue to transform Talbot Ave. into the gateway into Codman Square."

For 62-year-old Doreen Powell, who has been living with her daughter in Mattapan, it is a chance to remain in the area, but to get closer to her church, Greenwood Memorial United Methodist.

"I'm looking forward to being in Dorchester still," Powell said, who arrived in the neighborhood in 1966. "And we got a new home; praise God."

Travis Nadeau, job captain for architectural firm Mostue and Associates, said designers focused on forging a sense of community, on "building a neighborhood from nothing."

Ogiste said he is gratified by the redevelopment of his neighborhood, adding that he and Councillor Charles Yancey had met "many years ago" to talk about what could be done with the then-blighted Talbot-Bernard area. On Monday, the Trinidad native could look at the new homes for his new neighbors, and lay plans for an arboreal addition.