Strolling through the steamy streets of the East Village – it’s been a scorching couple of weeks here in New York – we stumble across a lush sanctuary, a luxuriant community garden offering refuge from the heat.
Sometimes the community gardens come as a wonderful surprise – we feel a welcoming breeze and turn in the direction of its source to discover a tangle of vines dripping over a fence, and a verdant garden tucked between two tenement buildings. Finding one at this time of year is like coming across an oasis in the desert!
At other times, the gardens are not so secret. One of our favourites, the 6th and B Garden, is the life of the block, always buzzing with activity and people taking advantage of this piece of paradise in the concrete jungle. Aside from gardening, there’s always something going on – belly-dancing classes, yoga, storytelling, poetry nights, film screenings, jazz concerts – and the occasional tourist, who can’t believe their luck, taking photos or just enjoying a breather and the chance to rest their weary feet.
With each new garden we encounter, we notice the differences between them, each boasting its own very distinctive personality, and the more we have become intrigued about them. There are charmingly-cluttered ‘casita’ gardens, with a Latin flavour, with chickens running about the place, where groups of Puerto Ricans friends sit around tables in the evenings playing cards as they down cold beers. There are wild, English cottage-style gardens with beds of vibrant flowers and shady trellises, where people read books, sunbathe, picnic, or simply appreciate their surroundings.
Some gardens have a more arty bent that’s very East Village with whacky art decorating their fences, and sculptures scattered about the place, while others are like community farms, crammed with individual plots of healthy vegetables, fragrant herbs, and pagodas shaped with grape vines.
Who needs to go to Central Park when there are these wonderful spots?
We wondered how the gardens came into being, who tended them, and as visitors to the East Village, whether we could use them. We decided to do a little digging…
Liz Christy Garden – the First Community Garden
We meet gardener Donald Loggins at the Liz Christy Gardens, one of the first community gardens, started by artist Liz Christy. As we wander along the meandering path running through this little bit of heaven at the busy intersection of the Bowery and Houston Street, Donald points out fish ponds, a turtle crossing a path, thriving tomatoes, apricots and grapes, woodpeckers and hummingbirds, the tallest redwood in New York City, and a community BBQ.
Donald tells us how in 1973 Christy gathered her friends and neighbours together to clean up an abandoned, derelict lot and plant a garden. In doing so, she set up the Green Guerillas, an organization responsible for the ‘greening’ of what was a blighted urban wasteland, by turning unused blocks, most devastated by arson, into lush community gardens. (We love their motto: “It’s your city, dig it!”)
Green Guerilla volunteers continue to provide inspiration, encouragement, training, technical assistance, and support to volunteer gardeners across the city. How can visitors to New York help, we ask Donald. “This is how to do it!” he assures us. “Get in touch, visit a garden, chat to the locals, join us for a barbecue. Everybody’s welcome!”
Alphabet City Gardens – A Flowering of Resistance
Our guides on a walking tour around our neighbourhood gardens in Alphabet City are Elissa Sampson and Howard Brandstein. Elissa has written ‘A Flowering of Resistance’, a history of the community gardens and created self-directed walking tours, maps, garden highlight slideshows. Howard is one of the original community gardeners and director of the 6th Street Community Centre, from where a healthy gardening movement sprouted. He was also one of the original East Village ‘homesteaders’, squatters who were sold the devastated buildings they had lived in, repaired and renovated so that they met building codes, and then went and helped others do the same.
“Many of these plots began life as neglected, vacant, burnt-out lots that were renovated by volunteers who rescued this neighbourhood,” Elissa says “They are now green havens, tended on a volunteer basis by local residents. The gardens are located mostly in economically disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and many are now funded by NYC’s Green Thumb program.”
“Politicians and developers see the gardens as a luxury, but they’re not. They are a necessity in neighbourhoods such as these, where a large percentage of the population is poor – the median income here is half that of the median income of Manhattan! These are the only green spaces these people have access to. They unite the community. They provide places to bring people together – people who otherwise might not mix.”
New York’s Community Gardens Under Threat
Sadly, since we met Donald, Elissa and Howard, the situation has changed. Despite a court order preventing demolition of the gardens (after Mayor Guiliani refused to renew the Green Thumb leases in the 1990s and sent bulldozers in with the goal of auctioning off the land to developers) and a 2002 agreement aimed at protecting community gardens from private developers, new rules have overturned those assurances, placing gardens once again under threat of demolition and redevelopment. If you prefer to see the East Village dotted with gardens rather than luxury condominiums and you’re in New York and see a petition, sign it. You could also send a letter of protest or if you’re in New York attend a public meeting on 10 August. See www.treehugger.com for more details.
Recent Comments