"If you live in an unrealistic world then you can say everything should be a community garden." Rudolph Giuliani, quoted in The New York Times, 16 February 2000.

Typically found in cities, "community gardens" are small patches of land that 1) are ostensibly owned by the local government but have actually been abandonned, and 2) have been cleared, planted and cultivated by groups of volunteers (usually people from the immediate neighborhood). Unlike "Victory Gardens" and other measures taken during emergencies (war or severe economic depression), community gardens are intended to reclaim public space as well as produce food.

Two on-line sources offer excellent advice on how to start a community garden: The Openlands Project and The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. When completed, a typical community garden includes flowers, plants and trees; places to sit; and places for children to play. Gardens can also include small bodies of water (ponds), small houses for storing equipment and materials, and art-work (sculpture, pottery and/or painted murals).

In New York City, the history of community gardening can be summarized as follows:

1965-1970: "race riots" break out in Los Angeles, Detroit, Newark, New York and dozens of other poor and over-populated American cities. Various think-tanks, commissions and institutes (some publicly announced, others top secret) study "the problem" and come up with ideas for suppressing the symptoms.
1970-1972: NYC government begins "spatial deconcentration" of over-populated neighborhoods by acting with "benign neglect": closing firehouses and police stations, refusing to discourage or prosecute banks/insurance companies that "redline" poor neighborhoods or building-owners who torch their own properties for the insurance money, letting ruined buildings collapse and/or become centers of criminal activity, etc.
1973: first community gardens in the Lower East Side (LES) -- Adam Purple's the Garden of Eden, and the Liz Christy's Bowery-Houston Community Farm and Garden, among them -- are cleared, designed and planted. The "Green Guerillas" group is founded.
1974: on 23 April, NYC's Housing and Preservation Department (HPD) official approves of the existence of the Bowery-Houston Community Farm and Garden on its property.
1975: on 21 March, Garden of Eden officially opens; no approval from HPD sought.
1976: La Plaza Cultural is cleared, designed and planted by Chino Garcia (of Charas/El Bohio), Slimma Williams and Liz Christy.
1977: when newly elected President Jimmy Carter visits the South Bronx (now become a burnt-out "slum"), there are over 25,000 abandonned lots in the city as a whole.
1978: at least four new gardens are cleared, designed and planted: Alecia Torres' El Jardin de Esperanza, East 7th Street between Avenues B and C; Olean For's All People's Garden, East 3rd Street between Avenues B and C; the 9th & C Garden, Ninth Street and Avenue C; and the Clinton Community Garden, West 48th Street between 9th and 10th Avenues.
1978, continued: to keep up with and maintain control over the burgeoning community-garden movement, the NYC government begins "Operation GreenThumb," which mandates that gardens can only exist (be given year-to-year "leases") if the gardeners declare that they know the property they are cultivating isn't theirs but the property of HPD, which can lawfully evict them with as little as 30 days' notice, and pay the City a nominal fee ($1 per year).
1979: 9th Street Community Garden & Park, at Avenue C, is cleared and planted.
1980: in June, NYC starts campaign to gain possession of, destroy and start building on the Garden of Eden, which never applied for a GreenThumb lease.
1981: Green Oasis Garden, East 8th Street between Avenues C and D, is cleared and planted.
1982: Tu Pueblo Batay, East 4th Street, cleared and planted.
1983: GreenThumb starts granting five- and ten-year-long leases to gardeners cultivating one-acre lots that, in themselves, aren't worth more than $20,000. 6B Garden, East 6th Street and Avenue B, is cleared and planted.
1984: 6B Garden is granted one-year lease by GreenThumb. Bello Amanecer Boroncano, 117-121 Avenue C, is cleared and planted by Carmen Pabon. On 16 November, the Clinton Community Garden becomes the first community garden to be transferred from HPD to the Parks Department and thus permanently protected. The Garden of Eden is written about and photographed for National Geographic and Der Spiegel.
1985: on 24 September, the Garden of Eden is partially destroyed, to "make room" for "affordable housing." The Neighborhood Open Space Coalition publishes Struggle for Space: the Greening of New York City 1970-1984.
1986: on 8 January, remainder of the Garden of Eden is destroyed.
1990: NYC law mandates that every neighborhood should have at least 2.5 acres of open space per 1,000 people. Estimates of number of community gardens in the LES range from 40 to 80.
1994: newly elected Mayor Rudolph Giuliani directs HPD to identify "abandonned lots" (community gardens) that should be sold at auction to help the City pay its bills. In November, community gardeners in the LES form the "Garden Preservation Coalition."
1995: La Plaza Cultural receives lease from GreenThumb. Study finds that, five years after after start of initiative, two-thirds of NYC neighborhoods have less than 2.5 acres of open space per 1,000 people; in the LES, there's only 0.7 acres per thousand people.
1996: on 17 January, the ABC Garden on East Eight Street, founded in 1990, is destroyed. Thanks to the Trust for Public Land, 6B Garden becomes the first garden to be transferred to the Parks Department and thus permanently protected.
1997: on 31 December, several gardens in the LES, most notably the Chico Mendez Mural Garden, are destroyed.
1998: on 1 January, Giuliani's re-inauguration ceremony is disrupted by protesters. On 5 January, protesters block traffic in front of the offices of the New York City Partnership. In March, three gardens in gardens in the LES (Umbrella, Holy Mary Mother of God, and the Seventh Street Garden) are auctioned off, despite protests. On April 24, Giuliani Administration transfers 741 Green Thumb gardens to HPD, which will record them as "vacant lots" and auction them off to pay for "affordable housing." According to the city's own records, there are more than 11,000 truly vacant lots that could be built upon instead. On 20 July, four more gardens and two community centers (one of them the Charas El Bohio Community Center on East 9th Street) are auctioned off, despite lengthy delays caused by protesters, who release thousands of crickets (!) into the auction hall at One Police Plaza. In November, the Children's Garden of Love in Harlem is bulldozed.
1999: on 10 January, HPD announces auction of 112 community gardens will take place on 12 May. In January, during one of his weekly radio shows on WABC, Giuliani tells critics of his garden polices, "This is a free-market economy. The era of communism is over." On 24 February, 31 people arrested at City Hall in protest of Giuliani's garden policies. On 11 April, a "Reclaim the Streets" protest on Avenue A blocks traffic for hours. On 5 May, 62 people arrested during civil disobedience at Chambers Street and the West Side Highway. On 11 May, one day before the gardens are to be sold off, two organizations committed to preserving the gardens (the Trust for Public Land and Bette Midler's New York Restoration Project) make a deal with Giuliani to buy them for $4 million. In June, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sues New York City to prevent any more auctions.
2000: on 15 February, El Jardin de Esperanza on East 7th Street is bulldozed; 31 protesters are arrested.
2001: on 30 November, NOT BORED! proposes that a new "Garden of Eden" should be planted and cultivated on the ruins of the World Trade Center, destroyed on 11 September.
2002: on 17 September, Spitzer announces the settlement of the suit against NYC, and the transfer of many GreenThumb gardens to the NYC Parks Department.

In the summer of 1997, I started taking pictures of a few of New York City's many community gardens. I concentrated on the gardens in Manhattan because, though it had fewer gardens than Brooklyn (189 compared to 358), this particular borough of the city was where gardens were being sold off and bulldozed at an alarming rate. I concentrated on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, rather than on Harlem, for the same reason and because in the LES there were a great many gardens packed into a very small area. And, finally, I concentrated on those LES gardens that included murals (painted walls) because they tended to be culturally rich and much easier to photograph than flowers, plants and trees.

Here's what I came up with:

Chico Mendez Mural Garden, 11th Street, between Avenues A and B: extensive coverage
Children's Garden, 12th Street between Avenues A and B: rain and flowers
Earth People/8th Street Casita Garden, 8th Street between Avenues B and C: the tribunal, the tribunal, tribunal in the sun, the accused, sculpture, A Lucha Continua, A Luta Continua
El Bello Amanecer Borinqueno, Avenue C between 7th and 8th Streets: mural
La Plaza Cultural, 9th Street between Avenues B and C: pig who controls the world; the struggle continues and La Lucha Continua.

-- Bill Not Bored.

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