{"id":66,"date":"2025-05-10T16:00:44","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T16:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/?p=66"},"modified":"2025-05-26T14:45:36","modified_gmt":"2025-05-26T14:45:36","slug":"dry-harvest-new-york-citys-community-gardens-face-a-perilous-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/dry-harvest-new-york-citys-community-gardens-face-a-perilous-future\/","title":{"rendered":"Dry Harvest: New York City\u2019s Community Gardens Face a Perilous Future"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
The main statue in Elizabeth Street Garden.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI write this poem for all the poems from you I must leave unwritten. All the beginnings we will not stop seeking. Why, when there are such green beginnings yet to come, do they choose the gray end?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

Brian Vogel, a long-time visitor to Little Italy\u2019s Elizabeth Street Garden, recited his ode \u201cTo a Garden Beseiged in Spring\u201d on a chilly March afternoon. But unlike the garden\u2019s typical poetry readings, which attract a few dozen SoHo residents on average, Vogel was reading to an audience of hundreds. The gathering of music and poetry had only been announced that morning, but there was barely room to stand in the acre of greenery.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Elizabeth Street Garden\u2019s supporters gather for a protest of poetry.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The community had gathered to protest the garden\u2019s destruction after it had received an eviction notice\u2014its second.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ray Black, another poet, recounted how he had stood at the garden\u2019s intricate pavilion and nervously recited his work for the first time, at age 61. Today, though, he had no such trepidation even as he was recorded by cable news networks and city officials.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The cameras soon panned around the crowded space, zooming in on the guest of honor: Patti Smith. Smith performed <\/span>People Have the Power<\/span><\/i>, sparking resilience and hope \u2014 but also sending a wave of solemnity across the crowd.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The power to dream, to rule<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

to wrestle the world from fools<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

it’s decreed the people rule,<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n

But did the people have the power to save their garden? With the flurry of negative court decisions that had plagued ESG despite over a million letters in support, the answer seemed to be no.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n

Eccentric Urban Oases<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

Tended to \u2014 and created by \u2014 the neighborhoods surrounding them, community gardens are so ubiquitous in New York City that they sometimes become invisible. Over 600 of them, tended by volunteers, thrive in plots bordered by asphalt and concrete. Often disguised as patches of green making up corner lots between avenues, the majority of these gardens are open to the public. The gardeners who run them ask for very little in return \u2014 don\u2019t hurt the plants, and maybe help clean up every once in a while.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThey’re these intimate community spaces that are shaped and developed by the community members who are engaged there,\u201d said Chrissy Word, the education director at the City Parks Foundation. \u201cThat aspect of the space is hugely important, especially intergenerationally. They are a place like no other where young people and older people can come together and share ideas, stories, but particularly where they can learn from one another.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Each garden has its own story and identity, carefully curated by the community around it, for the community around it. Some grow fruits, vegetables and herbs for nearby food pantries, others serve as aesthetic <\/span>third spaces<\/span><\/a>. Some are muses for artists, and others are recess fields for nearby elementary schools. A few provide volunteer opportunities as alternatives to juvenile incarceration. They are homes for everything from spontaneous potlucks to tense gang mediations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Ray Figueroa, the president of the city\u2019s Community Gardens Coalition and a professor at the Pratt Institute, has personally helped youth from different gangs find unity through the gardens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve been literally in the middle of mediation where I was surrounded by gang members, waiting for the gang leader \u2014 in this case known as a shot caller \u2014 to snap his fingers and the mediation would have been over,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can’t put a price tag on saving a life. Just can’t. And we’ve done that. And it took years to develop relationships of trust.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Figueroa often takes his students out to nearby gardens for experiential learning. On one of these trips, he remembered seeing a plot growing plants native to Palestine.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cTalk about coming from war-torn areas and trying to salvage a sense of yourself and your humanity by planting the seeds that you brought with you,\u201d he said. \u201cCommunity gardens are really doing tremendous work in terms of helping individuals stabilize their lives.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Because of their accessibility, nearly anyone can become a community gardener. Some gardens even let volunteers adopt a plot, giving them their own garden bed to plant and decorate as long as they meet a set minimum of hours. The majority are open for the same hours as any other park in the city, and unlike the city\u2019s plethora of cafes, have no purchase requirement to sit and catch up with friends or study.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This flexibility is possible because over 25% of the city\u2019s gardens \u2014 over 550 out of <\/span>over 2,000<\/span><\/a> \u2014 are city-owned under the Parks Department\u2019s <\/span>GreenThumb program<\/span><\/a>. It gives the gardeners resources and, crucially, the freedom to make decisions about the land.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the city\u2019s support, community gardens become integral pieces of every neighborhood they inhabit. That is, until the bulldozers come.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Placing Roots in Rubble<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

The flyers for the 44th annual GreenThumb Community Garden Harvest Festival said, \u201cFREE EVENT. RAIN OR SHINE.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And rain it did. Dozens of gardeners huddled together in Alphabet City, pulling their parkas tighter to hide from the chilly September drizzle. Others darted from tent to tent to collect seedlings and learn about plants native to the city\u2019s boroughs. The few lucky enough to have remembered an umbrella stationed themselves at the cooking booth, shielding the chefs who were competing with local ingredients on smoking grills. The garden\u2019s massive weeping willows provided some shelter, breaking the torrent into palatable, sporadic droplets, which fell into the nearby marshy pond with almost comically picturesque splashes. Surrounding the willows, on pedestals made of wood, were framed certificates of the year\u2019s harvest competition winners \u2014\u00a0photos of gardeners beaming with their prized zinnias, cucumbers and pumpkins.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The 54th annual GreenThumb Harvest Fair.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Near the entrance, a table displaying bright green t-shirts sat completely soaked through, a stream of green dye bleeding out from underneath the pile.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSorry, we only have extra-larges left!\u201d said the woman handing them out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

If the weather was a test of resolve, the gardeners who had gathered that Saturday morning in El Jard\u00edn del Para\u00edso had passed with flying colors.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

But in the early 1980s when it was first created, El Jard\u00edn del Para\u00edso (at Avenue C and 5th St) was hardly a paradise. In fact, with the plumes of fire that seemed to constantly pop up around Loisaida (a transliteration of the Spanish pronunciation for \u201cLower East Side,\u201d originating from the rich Puerto Rican presence on Avenue C) at the time, it felt like the exact opposite: a wasteland of old car carcasses, refrigerators and household trash.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was one of the biggest drug shooting places in the city,\u201d said Caroline Ratcliffe, who joined the movement in 1990 with the creation of 9BC community garden a few streets north of Para\u00edso. \u201cYou had junkies lining up to come back here \u2014 see the remains of that wall? They would go down into that broken basement\u2026 [workers] had to shovel out the needles and all the garbage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

El Jard\u00edn del Para\u00edso\u2019s story wasn\u2019t unique. With the city in a financial crisis and services drastically curtailed, hundreds of tenements were turned into rubble in the 1970s. Landlords found it easier to abandon than rehabilitate, leaving neighborhoods \u2014 often with residents of color and lower income families \u2014 with dangerous eyesores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The creation of the El Jard\u00edn pond. Used with permission from David Schmidlapp<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
EMTs attend to an overdose at el Jardin del Paraiso. Used with permission from David Schmidlapp.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t homeless people like they all said it was,\u201d said photographer David Schmidlapp, who started working on El Jard\u00edn when it was created. \u201cPeople don\u2019t like to talk about it, but it was landlords burning down their own properties and collecting the insurance.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

All around Brooklyn, the Bronx and the Lower East Side, communities wondered when the city would finally clean up their derelict lots. Spoiler alert: it wouldn\u2019t.<\/span><\/p>\n

Instead, a small group of determined gardeners \u2014 Liz Christy, Amos Taylor and Martin Gallent \u2014 took matters into their own hands, founding the city\u2019s first ever community garden at the northeast corner of the Bowery and East Houston in 1973. They were the start of the \u201cGreen Guerillas,\u201d a movement that blossomed into hundreds of empowered gardeners across the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a form of civil disobedience,\u201d Amos Taylor recalled in a history on the <\/span>group’s website<\/span><\/a>. \u201cWe were basically saying to the government, if you won\u2019t do it, we will.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The guerillas cleaned up garbage and planted sunflower seeds in sidewalk cracks. Fences didn\u2019t stop them, either. Anything that could be a container \u2014 balloons, ornaments, even condoms \u2014 were filled with soil and seedlings and tossed over the barriers of the razed-down lots. They put in thousands of dollars of their own money (an unfathomable amount in the`70s) to test soil, identify problem sites and design areas for neighborhood children to play in. The New York Times <\/span>reported that<\/span><\/a> the group worked with \u201cas much energy and imagination as if they were dealing with the gardens of Versailles.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe attitude at the time was, \u2018there\u2019s all this empty land, so why not dance on it?\u2019\u201d Schmidlapp said. \u201cWhy not grow on it?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 1985, when Christy died of cancer, the Bowery garden was renamed the Liz Christy Community in her honor. It stands in the same spot today. But many gardens have not had that kind of continuity.<\/span><\/p>\n

The same year that Christy died, Adam Purple, a man whose last name came not from lineage but from his favorite color, which he always wore, had been cultivating his own Garden of Eden in the Lower East Side for a decade. A staunch environmentalist, he traveled only by bicycle and lived a zero-waste lifestyle long before it became an Instagram trend. His 15,000-square-foot garden, which stood on the rubble of the very tenement he used to live in, was a circular maze with symmetrical yin-yang bushes in the center. He had wanted to expand it with greenhouses and sculptures. But when a judge ruled against him, Purple had to watch the paradise he had cultivated destroyed from his own window.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The Garden of Eden, created by Adam Purple. hotograph: Harvey Wang. Courtesy of SPACES\u2013Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments and John Michael Kohler Arts Center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
The destruction of the Garden of Eden. Photograph: Harvey Wang. Courtesy of SPACES\u2013Saving and Preserving Arts and Cultural Environments and John Michael Kohler Arts Center.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cWhen that garden was taken away, he said, \u2018It would have been better if they killed me instead of killing the garden,\u201d recalled Magali Regis, the vice president of the Community Garden Coalition and the stewardess of many city gardens, including the famous 6BC garden in Alphabet City. \u201cThere was a lot of activism to save the Garden of Eden. There were Purple’s footsteps from a lot of places in the Lower East Side bringing you to the garden, so if you followed the footsteps, you would see that now it’s a nondescript housing development.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The attack on gardens ramped up in 1994, when then-mayor Rudy Giuliani surveyed city-owned plots for housing development, to be sold to the highest bidder. Three thousand were selected as viable sites; hundreds of these were community gardens under GreenThumb licenses. By 1997, <\/span>a <\/span>Times<\/span><\/i> headline<\/span><\/a> asked the question that the movement would grapple with over the next five decades: \u201cIs This City Big Enough For Gardens And Houses?\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDo we sacrifice gardens to build housing?\u201d Fran Reiter, the deputy mayor for economic development and planning at the time, said to<\/span> the <\/span>Times<\/span><\/i><\/a>. \u201cYou\u2019re damn right we do.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Slowly, then faster, gardens in every borough were bulldozed. Some gardeners woke up to find their trees and plants entirely destroyed, while others were able to secure alternative sites. The Bronx lost spots like the Crimmins Group Association Garden and the Hostos Herbal Medicine and Cultural Garden. Harlem lost its Garden of Love, which resided in Public School 76 and was aptly named by the students who cultivated it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

By May of 1999, over 100 gardens were slated for development, and a proposed sale of over 600 additional gardens was in the works. Protests were small, and when they escalated, police got involved. The 22-year-old Esperanza Garden in the East Village \u2014 ironically translating to <\/span>hope<\/span><\/i> \u2014 saw community members standing guard outside of it 24\/7 to prevent demolition. When the bulldozers came, people chained themselves to fences and started chanting, leading to dozens of arrests. The garden was gone in 15 minutes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The destruction was met with resistance efforts just as quirky as the gardeners who championed them. Matthew Power, a 24-year-old journalist, dressed as a sunflower and climbed a tree in City Hall Park in 1999, demanding to speak to the mayor about the auction. Giuliani didn\u2019t say a word. Power was arrested, and the protest proved futile.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

A Microcosm of the Movement<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

Elizabeth Street Garden\u2019s battle with the city, now at a boiling point, has been simmering for over a decade. The garden was put into a development plan in 2012; in 2017, the city selected the proposal for a 123-unit affordable rental complex for low-income seniors called Haven Green. As the project made its way through land review, the garden began litigation and a massive letter-writing campaign \u2014 supported by the likes of Robert De Niro and Martin Scorcese \u2014 to save it. Nearby elementary school children contributed<\/span> handwritten notes<\/span><\/a> about their love for the space (\u201cOne reason why we should keep the garden is because with all the trees, we can play hide & seek and eat lunch,\u201d one note reads.)\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt would be devastating if the garden got demolished,\u201d said Joseph Reiver, the son of the garden\u2019s founder. Reiver tends to the foliage most days, with his curly hair up in a bun and donning his typical uniform of a denim jacket, green bandanna and gardening boots. \u201cIt would be devastating for me, for everyone in the community, and the city in the long run would have lost something that it will never get back.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Joseph\u2019s dad, Allan Reiver, was the owner of the next-door Elizabeth Street Gallery, and had rented the lot from the city in 1990 on a month-to-month lease. He was initially looking for a space to store sculptures from his art collection. He cleared the lot, planted trees, installed a gravel path and erected a lean-to near the back. The two marble lions that stand guard at the garden entrance became its hallmark, the main symbol of the garden\u2019s resistance.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Signs like these cropped up everywhere when the ESG movement started.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMost people thought he owned it,\u201d Joseph said. \u201cIncluding myself.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2012, District 1 City Council Member Margaret Chin, who had run on an affordable housing platform, proposed a separate land project for a different community board. What no one realized, however, was that ESG had been penciled in as a last-minute addition. The Department of Education was no longer its owner; the New York City Housing Authority now decided the garden\u2019s fate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Joseph, no one \u2014 not even his father \u2014 knew about the decision until over a year later.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After Allan found out about the change, he immediately opened the garden up to the community and neighbors came together to form the <\/span>Friends of Elizabeth Street Garden<\/span><\/a> non-profit, running public programming. Regis remembered the residents first coming to their meetings, asking how to bring a community garden to life.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was private, but when the community got together to turn it into a community garden, it truly became one,\u201d she said. \u201cSo what’s the argument that it wasn’t before? Well, it is now. It’s basically the poster child of community gardens with all the events they organize, all year long.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the outcry, the city sent out calls for development proposals in 2016, selecting Haven Green a year later. Allan Reiver passed away in 2021, two years into ongoing litigation between the garden\u2019s nonprofit and the city.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is my soul,\u201d he <\/span>had told<\/span><\/a> the website 6sqft.com in 2019. \u201cThis was supposed to be my legacy to the city.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But Haven Green, supported by the likes of Habitat for Humanity and Pennrose \u2014 a known nonprofit affordable housing developer \u2014 had its own arguments for development. Reiver had proposed alternative sites, but the developers said that they were simply <\/span>additional<\/span><\/i> options for building. Affordable housing needed to exist in SoHo \u2014 as much of it as possible.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe voices of those that see themselves as losing something are always going to be louder and more passionate and with the backdrop of what exists versus renderings of what could be,\u201d said Matthew Dunbar, a Habitat for Humanity representative that was part of the development team for Haven Green. \u201cIt’s dependent on the people who are currently there, enjoying the space, to partner in designing, stewarding, volunteering, and engaging with the future space.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

While ESG\u2019s erasure would be accompanied with a slightly different green space integrated into the affordable housing development, this change was unacceptable for the community who had grown to love the garden, its stone lions, and its sunlight.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf the garden could be physically moved with all its trees, all these artifacts, you all the bushes, the gazebos, the sculptures, et cetera, if that could be taken and then auctioned off to the highest bidder, a lot of cities would want this garden,\u201d Regis said. \u201cIt’s like a little gem, right? And yet we see no value in it. The city here sees no value in it.\u201d<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Sowing Resistance<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

Karen Washington was one of the founders of the city\u2019s community gardens movement, having played a pivotal role in keeping them alive. By the time she moved out of New York City, she had already fought against Giuliani and DeBlasio\u2019s efforts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf you just look at the political landscape itself, it’s all about power,\u201d she said. \u201cIt’s not about community needs. They’re not listening, they’re positioning themselves to hold on to power and they dictate that power from a top-down mentality because if you give into the community, it’s seen as being weak. And again, there\u2019s the perception of Black and Brown people of color: <\/span>\u2018they don’t know what they’re doing, they need help<\/span><\/i>, <\/span>they need to be guided.<\/span><\/i>\u2019 \u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington had been a community gardener since the \u201980s. A single mom, she was ecstatic when she was able to move into a brand-new affordable housing unit in the Bronx. When she looked across the street, however, her view was an empty lot strewn with garbage and tires. It was more than an eyesore; it became a reason to mock the neighborhood and its residents, a reason to avoid her street. One day, when she saw a man with a shovel digging up the rubble for a community garden, she joined in. By the time Giuliani planned to sell the gardens \u2014 including her own \u2014 she was more than committed to the cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cFor ten years we were riding high, we were changing the complexion of the Bronx. Our neighborhood now felt safe,\u201d she said. \u201cWe had trees, we had flowers, we could grow food. It just changed the neighborhood from being desolate into something that was vibrant and happy and just full of love and joy. And then you had this mayor who decided without notice, without even talking to the community, that he’s going to auction off \u2014 in the middle of the night \u2014 auction off gardens.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAnd how did I feel? How did we feel? Betrayed,\u201d she said. \u201cBecause this was sweat equity. The city paid us nothing to take care of these empty lots and these spaces. So in fact, we were saving them money and to be betrayed by the mayor who thought nothing about the community, it was heartless. And so you have that initial shock. You don’t know what to do, what’s going on. And then all of a sudden it clicks in. Yes, something has to be done because it’s not just happening to our garden. It’s happening to all the gardens in New York City.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Washington created the now-thriving Community Garden Coalition, bringing together a cohort of community gardeners and legislators to advocate for the lots. Nonprofits noticed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The biggest push of support came from thriving actress and singer Bette Midler, who had moved back to New York in 1994. After realizing just how neglected the city she loved had gotten, she grabbed a shovel and headed to Fort Tryon Park in Washington Heights, set on cleaning it up. Eventually, Midler used her celebrity status to create and fund the New York Restoration Project, with the goal of revitalizing the city\u2019s greenery. The NYRP has planted over a million trees in the city, replenished 80 acres of parkland and \u2014 perhaps most notably \u2014 purchased 52 of the gardens Giuliani was auctioning the day before their sale.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other half were purchased by the Trust for Public Land, an already established green space nonprofit at the time.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGreen spaces are what make dense living livable, otherwise we would all be insane,\u201d said Tamar Renaud, the New York State Director of the Trust for Public Land. \u201cIn order to live densely in cities, which is the ecological way to live \u2014 we produce a lot less energy when we live together than when we live very sparsely populated \u2014 [we have] to have green spaces around us, places to walk, places to meet people, places to gather.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Although the plots were ultimately saved, either through private nonprofits or by gaining permanent recognition as city parks, Giuliani\u2019s administration sent a clear message to the gardeners still under GreenThumb licenses: the land that they had cultivated for decades wasn\u2019t truly theirs, and the city could take it back whenever they wanted. Warnings were optional.<\/span><\/p>\n

A saving grace came in the form of New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who sued the city, arguing that gardens should be considered as part of required environmental review before construction over them began. Michael Bloomberg\u2019s administration, sympathetic to the gardeners\u2019 struggles, settled Spitzer\u2019s lawsuit by moving hundreds of gardens under various city departments\u2019 jurisdictions. When Mayor Bill DeBlasio tried to develop over 40 city-owned GreenThumb gardens again in 2015, more rallies followed. Official city maps had mistakenly marked the sites as vacant lots, but the City Hall protests proved they were anything but. The gardeners achieved bittersweet success; while a handful were bulldozed, the majority remained preserved under the Parks Department.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThese gardens are always in danger,\u201d Chrissy Word said. \u201cAlways.\u201d<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Fighting a Drought<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

At first glance, the late October protest outside City Hall looked like a fever dream. People dressed in sturdy denim jackets stood shoulder-to-shoulder with people in colorful butterfly costumes straight out of <\/span>Alice in Wonderland<\/span><\/i>. Some protestors were well into their seventies, needing help climbing the concrete City Hall steps; others were in their early twenties, sporting campy capes embroidered with massive tomatoes, vines and cucumbers. Despite their differences, there were two things they all had in common: a green beanie and a demand.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
Community Gardeners rally against Executive Order 43 outside City Hall.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cNO MORE 43! WE NEED STRONG AND GREEN!\u201d they chanted. Then, more straightforwardly: \u201cSAVE OUR GARDENS!\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the side eyes from councilmembers dodging them and the chilly fall wind, the gardeners remained steadfast. They didn\u2019t know for sure if Mayor Eric Adams had actually gone into work that day; but if he had, a flash of green would have been unavoidable from his top floor view.<\/span><\/p>\n

While most of the signs at the October rally had short phrases and slight digs at the Mayor, one stood out with a simple, yet blunt, message. Printed on a single sheet of paper, it read, \u201cPitting gardens against housing for the sake of a development deal is a sleazy move.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

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Housing vs. gardens has been a long standing debate, but advocates argue it is a false dichotomy.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By this point, the \u201cpitting\u201d they were discussing had become all too familiar \u2014 community gardens had always been the first to go under sweeping affordable housing deals. And the need for these deals has only been increasing since then, with the city facing the worst housing crisis <\/span>since 1968.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe see older adults that are living in deplorable conditions: lack of heat, lack of hot water, uneven floors,\u201d said Jennifer Vallone, the Associate Executive Director for Adults, Arts, and Advocacy at University Settlement, the country\u2019s first settlement home. \u201cSometimes they’re living in 4th floor walk-ups. When you’re 80 years old, you can’t live in a 4th floor walk-up any longer. We also see that people are paying sometimes 60 to 80% of their income. That is untenable.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

One of the families Vallone worked with needed repairs in their apartment. They had a hole in their ceiling, corresponding to a hole in the floor of the apartment above, where a senior lived. The senior\u2019s cat would hop through the hole between the apartments, sometimes nestling in the family\u2019s apartment without anyone noticing. \u201cThat\u2019s egregious, right?\u201d said Vallone. Yet this tenant was still better off than the over 300,000 seniors <\/span>who were currently waiting<\/span><\/a> for affordable apartments around the city.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was clear that anyone running for city office needed to make housing a priority, even more steadfastly than Giuliani and DeBlasio. In August 2024, two months before the October rally, Mayor Eric Adams announced <\/span>Executive Order 43<\/span><\/a>. The order called for the creation of a task force to review every plot of land under the city\u2019s ownership to consider for development. As long as building on it could happen \u201cwithout disruption to critical operations,\u201d the land was viable for housing.<\/span><\/p>\n

Until now, the gardens\u2019 establishment under the Department of Parks and Recreation had been their saving grace. But the mayor\u2019s executive order applied to every single department, including Parks. There was no language addressing community gardens specifically, so gardeners didn\u2019t know whether or not to expect bulldozers. Most land databases hadn\u2019t yet updated their status from \u201cvacant lots.\u201d The GreenThumb leases stipulated that they could be terminated at any moment. Their future depended on a simple question: did community gardens count as \u201ccritical operations?\u201d<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Blooming from the Bottom-Up<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

Community gardens provide a unique, bottom-up approach for communities to design space to fit their needs, whether that be by growing necessary crops in food deserts or providing activities for children. This a level of intimate collaboration that can\u2019t happen at the city level, advocates say.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Melanie Reyes is the housing director for Nos Quedamos, a Bronx-based advocacy and development group that focuses on small affordable housing units around the Melrose neighborhood. But outside of these developments, Nos Quedamos also created the South Bronx Land and Community Resource Trust, giving Melrose residents authority over their land. They also support and provide resources for the neighborhood\u2019s community gardens, including by publishing a 2014 study on how the gardens were helping improve morale and unity.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Many community garden advocates have called the choice between housing and community gardens a false dichotomy. For Reyes, community gardens and housing are not only both achievable, but rather two sides of the same coin: self determination for neighborhoods.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAt first, it kind of looks as if everyone has to struggle for land \u2014 everybody has to struggle and fight for the space that they can take up,\u201d she said. \u201cBut my experience with Nos Quedamos and the work that we’ve done so far, I would say that we actually combine them both.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the biggest examples, we have a building called Jardin de Selene. It’s one of the buildings under our ownership in which we can help provide affordable housing, and there’s also a rooftop that has a community garden. This is just an example of how intentional planning and community-driven design can really help to foster both of these critical needs that the city has,\u201d she said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Reyes also recommended repurposing empty corporate offices and college dorms that have fallen out of use for affordable housing before considering green space. Her perspective of intentional design isn\u2019t uncommon; for most grassroots advocates, the coexistence of housing and community gardens is common sense. This coexistence will look different, however, for every single neighborhood based on its topography and community, so a one-size-fits-all solution by corporate developers will inevitably result in sacrifices.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe Department of Housing Preservation & Development, for example, can increase their trust in community land trusts, and what it means for a community to quite literally own public goods,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is something called PLPG\u00a0\u2014 Public Land for Public Good \u2014 and it goes into the process of city-owned land finally being put in the community’s hands and what this can mean in order to kind of stop this competition that seems to exist between the two. Both of them are extremely necessary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Community Land Trusts \u2014 like the ones that purchased the auctioned gardens at the eleventh hour back in the \u201990s \u2014 serve as mediators between the community and city by purchasing plots of land and then turning over their management to neighborhood residents. Concentrated trusts focused on subsections of the city can hold meetings and town halls before changing the land, a luxury that isn\u2019t available to fast-paced city developers.<\/span><\/p>\n

When development happens on city land, recommendations from the community board and borough president are taken into account. However, these resolutions can ultimately be overruled by the city planning commission and city council. Often, community boards will ask for provisions specific to their neighborhoods before approving land review, whether this be improving green space, reducing construction noise or other issues. But actually fulfilling these requests is, ultimately, optional.<\/span><\/p>\n

The other option for community gardens to have their voice heard is through the State Environmental Quality Review Act, which requires all local and state level agencies to consider the environmental impact of their decisions prior to approving them. Developments like the one at Elizabeth Street Garden must pass an environmental review before they can be greenlit. The Green Guerrillas and Community Gardens Coalition led an initiative to consider these gardens as \u201cCritical Environmental Areas,\u201d making them essential to this review process.<\/span><\/p>\n

The proposal passed both the State Senate and Assembly, reaching the governor\u2019s desk in November 2023. The bill would have codified community gardens at the state level, giving them protection for perpetuity \u2014 so when Governor Hochul vetoed the bill, lumping it in a package with 31 others, it was a big blow to the movement.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThere was really strong support for it on the part of many, many, city lawmakers and state lawmakers,\u201d Sarah McCollum Williams, the Executive Director of the Green Guerrillas, said. \u201cI really don’t know why she would have vetoed this when it had such strong support. It doesn’t make sense to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

On the ground level, support for both gardens and housing remains strong. But as proposals move higher through executive levels, politicians take stances on the matter, and a pro-housing initiative snowballs into an anti-garden aftereffect.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Putting the Community in Community Garden<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

The most common use of community gardens is as third spaces. The concept of a \u201cthird space\u201d was coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg, who identified an increased need for socialization happening in places outside of the \u201cfirst space\u201d (the home) and the second space (work). Especially in a city as fast-paced as New York, community gardens provide an accessible location for people to connect with each other, engage in hobbies and take a break from work \u2014 all for free.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
A couple sits under a shaded tree at Elizabeth Street Garden, chatting.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Multiple decades after creating el Jard\u00edn del Para\u00edso, David Schmidlapp still lives in an apartment directly next door to it. Every weekend, he holds volunteer hours where neighbors can clean up the garden. After showing me his photographs of the garden in the \u201880s, he unlocked the fence and asked me if I wanted to help out. I had brought a friend with that exact intention in mind, and David didn\u2019t hesitate to assign us various tasks. It was mid-March; the last frost was coming up, and preparations for the growing season were in full swing. While David and another volunteer tackled the garden\u2019s large swampy man-made pond \u2014 he didn\u2019t want me to dirty my shoes \u2014 my friend and I fertilized and raked the massive central field.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

David had planted grass the week before for the kids who spent recess in the garden, because he had learned that their own school lacks a comparable recreational space. Benches and garden beds made up the periphery.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As my friend and I worked, we developed a system; she spread the fertilizer in an area, I raked it in, and then we moved to the next small plot in a spiral that started at the edge of the garden and ended in the center. It took some figuring out, but soon our system became intuitive, and we spent almost an hour chatting, laughing and working. The large area had seemed daunting at first, but by the end, we didn\u2019t even realize that we had covered the entire plot. Afterwards, David asked us to move the garden\u2019s benches to the areas that got the most sunlight \u2014 a three person job. He used to be able to do it himself, he said, but now he needed more muscle. I helmed the front of the bench, walking backwards through the garden, while David and my friend took the back and directed me. It was our first time meeting him, but within a few minutes, we were already trusting him to make sure we didn\u2019t fall.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"
The manmade swamp at El Jard\u00edn, lush with vegetation. Used with permission from David Schmidlapp.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Afterwards, we cleared up leaves near the pond. A woman walked past, yelling \u201cY\u2019all are doing good work!\u201d to which David responded, \u201cI know! When are you going to help?\u201d She laughed, paused her walk, and came inside. She asked me if it was my first time working, and I said yes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cDid you know all of this used to be burnt down?\u201d she asked. \u201cDavid and everyone cleaned it all up.\u201d They joked together as we worked, clearly connected by the garden. It was a history they were proud of, decades-old memories shared by the neighborhood. David sent us home with some sage and oregano from his garden bed \u2014 something he\u2019d always do for visitors. \u201cPut it in some chicken or pasta,\u201d he said. Next week would be arugula. Perfect for spring salads.<\/span><\/p>\n

My arm was sore for several days after volunteering there. My friend said the dirt under her fingernails took a while to pick out. We hadn\u2019t been able to check our phones in hours. But when I asked her if she wanted to go again, there was no hesitation: \u201cYes, of course.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s a whole lot of networking, it’s like a cute little family,\u201d said Ursula Chance, another veteran of the city\u2019s community garden movement. Chance is now the Director of the New York Botanical Garden\u2019s Bronx Green-Up program. \u201cYou’re not really receiving anything from it. It’s not transactional. It’s generosity and it’s true integrity; it’s physically demanding and not a lot of people are up for it. And it’s surprising to see how many people are able to, especially elderly people who’ve been working in these gardens for God knows how long, and they continue to relentlessly.\u201d<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

Growing New Roles<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

Over time, Chance explained, community gardens have expanded their purpose from social hubs and aesthetic enclaves to solving systemic issues, from food insecurity to stormwater drainage.<\/span><\/p>\n

During the pandemic, Chance worked with Figueroa to form the Bronx Community Farms Hub Network, which has 18 or more gardens who work together to distribute food. They have programs that give people certificates in various skills, from pruning to ecological gardening, and they host local harvest markets. The network donates between 15,000 to 25,000 seedlings a year.<\/span><\/p>\n

Figueroa recalled how the food insecurity aspect also played into the gardens\u2019 rehabilitation efforts, especially with incarcerated youth.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe first question I ask a youth that\u2019s been incarcerated, it\u2019s, \u2018hey, did you eat today? Are you okay?\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cWe take that approach before talking about, \u2018hey, we’re gonna compost, we’re gonna transplant seeds from the greenhouse, we’re gonna water, we’re gonna weed, we’re gonna harvest,\u2019 before we do any of that, we make an investment of time and energy in the well-being of that person.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The gardens also serve as a reclamation of ignored land that is inextricably linked to race and socioeconomic status. The majority of community gardens are in neighborhoods in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which consist primarily of low-income people of color. For these communities, development has been linked to displacement; they find themselves pushed out as gentrification ramps up, unable to make decisions about their own neighborhoods.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCommunity gardens are very much a response to policies of marginalization where [people] have reclaimed their sense of community via reclaiming areas where [they] were devastated by policies such as redlining and plant shrinkage,\u201d Figueroa said. \u201cSo it’s a power dynamic.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunset Garden in Ridgewood, Queens, has only been around for two years, but it was created the way most community gardens are: residents noticed a plot of land sitting unused and worked to renovate it with the city. It soon started following the same steps as its predecessors, hosting events to plant poppies to free Palestine and supporting the community\u2019s trans population amidst attacks from the Trump administration.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

This support also included the installation of a ceramic altar reminiscent of stained glass, depicting transgender community leader Cecilia Gentil. When community member Cristina Wilkinson \u2014 who had <\/span>already called the garden members \u201ccrazies\u201d<\/span><\/a> for their other political activism \u2014 complained about the altar to a friend who was also a city councilmember, the garden received an order to take it down. The order cited a GreenThumb rule restricting memorials, even though the altar was much smaller than the memorials the rule concerned. The subtext was obvious: remembrance of a trans woman made the wrong people uncomfortable, and the garden was to blame.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCecilia Gentili was a pillar of our community,\u201d Sarah McColumn Williams said. \u201cAfter all of the struggle trans and immigrant communities have been through \u2014 and the publicly documented inaction from the Adams administration in showing support for our communities \u2014 it is appalling that the Administration would use resources to erase a very small celebration of a trans immigrant woman that did so much for so many New Yorkers.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Their unique role as outlets for marginalized communities have made gardens constant homes to grassroots movements and progressive advocacy, even when tensions with the city threaten to take them away.\u00a0<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

A Price Tag on Planting<\/i><\/b><\/h1>\n

It\u2019s hard to define exactly where these gardens fit into the \u201ccritical operations\u201d of the city. Benjamin Ratner, who wrote his master\u2019s thesis for the Pratt Institute on community gardens and land value, discovered a fundamental disconnect between the way the city valued land and the way community gardens operated. When calculating the value of a piece of land, New York City determines what the \u201chighest and best use\u201d of that plot would be; subjective terms that, when boiled down, refer to solely the most profitable use \u2014 what the highest bidder would pay.<\/span><\/p>\n

Community gardens, whose civic benefits don\u2019t have monetary equivalents, don\u2019t fall into this equation.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe \u2018highest and best use\u2019 paradigm thus values land as a product rather than a place,\u201d Ratner argued. \u201cIndeed, it is a placeless and peopleless definition of value, one that refuses to see land as an integral piece of a community\u2019s social fabric.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But the profit definition of value is far from the only one. In Naples, Italy, a redefinition of land use in 2012 led to the incorporation of \u201ccivic added value,\u201d where the contributions of land to a community are taken into account. Through this framework, citizens can identify a public property and submit a request for it to be designated as a \u201ccommon good\u201d for<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201curban civic and collective use.\u201d In order to qualify, a space must simply provide unpaid and unrestricted access, be governed by its users, and allow for a rotation of social and cultural activities \u2014 criteria that every community garden, by definition, automatically meets.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe places we hold dear \u2014 the handmade, the spontaneous, and the rebellious; the <\/span>neighborhood spots where we are known; the places where we build community \u2014 these <\/span>can only survive if we become a city of roots,\u201d Ratner wrote.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Elizabeth Street Garden is no exception to this concept of civic value. The garden hosts weekly free Tai Chi Sundays with local instructors and poetry readings open to the public. Live musicians play as often as feasible, providing ambient noise as friends chat, kids grow up and people meet their significant others. It\u2019s hard to decide whether these operations are considered \u201ccritical.\u201d But, at the very least, they\u2019re irreplaceable.<\/span>
\n\"\"<\/p>\n

This spring, supporters of ESG filed a desperate, last-minute request for an injunction against the city under the Visual Artists Rights Act, urging the government to classify the garden as an important work of art. The injunction was denied in late March, and the chances for the garden\u2019s appeal continue to grow slimmer. Reiver doesn\u2019t know when fencing will go up, but the city could close the space to the public any day.<\/span><\/p>\n

A glimmer of hope came from newly-appointed First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, who was formerly Giuliani\u2019s Chief of Staff. Part of Mastro\u2019s role is to review the ESG development, and he has <\/span>reportedly been voicing his support<\/span><\/a> for the garden to Mayor Adams. Despite the court decision, the garden still stands a month later, possibly because of Mastro. But so far, even with its famous supporters, the Adams administration remains publicly set on continuing with developing the space for housing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The back-and-forth between ESG and the city raises concerns for New York\u2019s hundreds of other lesser-known gardens: how will resistance work when a garden doesn\u2019t have the backing of powerhouses like Mastro, De Niro and Scorcese?<\/span><\/p>\n

Every day, ESG\u2019s Instagram posts a new story: a photo of the garden with the sun shining and plants glistening, captioned \u201cWe\u2019re open today :).\u201d It\u2019s an invitation for the community to visit, but also a subtle sigh of relief for the thousands of followers worried about the morning this will no longer be the case.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s been intense and we\u2019re still going day by day,\u201d their latest post reads. \u201cSo make sure you find a moment to sit with the daffodils.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The garden\u2019s future is uncertain, but its supporters remain prepared to chain themselves to fences and trees if the bulldozers come. By the end of his poem, Vogel had captured this resistance:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIn times like these, when you are left no choice, spring up. Spring up, Spring up, Spring up.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI write this poem for all the poems from you I must leave unwritten. All the beginnings we will not stop seeking. Why, when there are such green beginnings yet to come, do they choose the gray end?\u201d\u00a0 Brian Vogel, a long-time visitor to Little Italy\u2019s Elizabeth Street Garden, recited his ode \u201cTo a Garden […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":72,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-66","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-all","8":"entry"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":109,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66\/revisions\/109"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shoeleathermagazine.com\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}