green guerillas community gardens revitalize urban neigborhoods

8/9/2019 Green Guerillas Community Gardens Revitalize Urban Neigborhoods

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Green Guerillas: Community GardensRevitalize Urban Neigborhoods

Author: Steve Brooks Editorial contributions: Gerry Marten, Amanda Suutari, Ann Marten

In the financial crisis of the 1970s, large sections of New York City wereabandoned by landlords and city officials. Residents revitalized theirneighborhoods, reclaiming them from decay by turning vacant lots intocommunity gardens. More than 800 gardens tipped neighborhoods away fromcrime, toward community action, better diets and cleaner environments. Thegardens trained a generation of activists and spawned other environmentalprojects, in New York and overseas.

The thirty-year saga of New York Citys community gardens shows how an EcoTippingPoint can be an effective tool for urban renewal, at a fraction of the typical cost. Agarden can be more than just a place to stop and smell the roses. Its spin-off effectscan help to tip a neighborhood and an entire city out of a cycle of squalor.

As garden activist Donald Loggins sums it up, One person, at the right place at theright time, set a whole bunch of stuff in motion.

The right time was 1973 and the right person was an artist named Liz Christy. She hada studio near the corner of Bowery and East Houston, in the heart of Manhattans LowerEast Side.

DeclineThe Bowerys blight had been a long time coming close to 200 years. Back in the1600s, it had been an agricultural district south of the emerging downtown. The veryname bouwerie was the Dutch word for farm, and settlers had established farmsalong the Bowery Road. A lake called the Collect Pond was a favorite fishing spot, anda resort called Teawater Garden took its name from a freshwater spring, used to brew afavorite local beverage.

In 1748, Swedish botanist Peter Kalm wrote of the city, I found it exceedingly pleasantto walk in the town for it seemed quite like a garden; the trees which are planted for this

purpose are chiefly of two kinds, the Water Beech are the most numerous...and theLocust...Tree frogs are so loud it is difficult for a man to make himself heard.

By the end of the century, the slide had begun. Collect Pond became so polluted bybreweries and slaughterhouses that the city filled it in. The farms were covered over bycity streets, and the neighborhoods became launch pads for immigrants, first Irish, laterGerman and Italian. They decayed into slums as landlords cut up tenement apartmentsto squeeze in more renters, who worked in sweatshops at low wages. The streets
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became the stalking ground of gangs like the Bowery Boys. Theodore Roosevelt couldwrite, What infinite use Dante would have made of the Bowery!

It got worse in 1878, when the city built an elevated railroad along both sides of BoweryStreet. Before the El, the street had been a district of theatres and nightclubs.Afterwards, nobody wanted to live with trains rushing past their second-story windows.The theatres closed, and the buildings became saloons and flophouses, with names likeMcGurks Suicide Hall. Crime flourished in the shadows under the tracks. For most ofthe 20th Century, The Bowery became synonymous with Skid Row.

By the 1970s, in the wake of urban riots, the apartment buildings were falling down.Whole blocks went vacant as landlord after landlord quit maintaining their properties.The process accelerated as city government flirted with bankruptcy. In poorer parts oftown, the city closed police and fire stations. It became the not-so-proud owner ofthousands of repossessed vacant lots.

People were watching their neighborhoods decline, and it was killing to them, recallscommunity garden consultant Jane Weissman. A house would come down. Maybe itwas arson. Maybe it was abandoned. You would end up with land, end up with the citymaintaining it, end up with garbage, rats, drug dealing and chop shops.

Restoration

The vacant lot at the northeast corner of Bowery and East Houston was as notorious asany. In the winter of 1973, it was where two homeless men had frozen to death in acardboard box. But the block had also attracted Christy and a few other urbanhomesteaders. Christy painted landscapes, and she saw the run-down neighborhood asa living canvas. Shed already been tossing seed grenades into vacant lots: Christmas

ornaments and water balloons packed with seeds, compost and water. As the spheresburst, they scattered seeds, along with the resources they needed to germinate.

The corner approached an EcoTipping Point one evening, when Christy saw a youngboy playing in the garbage that littered the lot. The boy was about to climb into adiscarded refrigerator and pull the door shut behind him. The artist was horrified. Shepulled the boy out, dragged him to his mother and scolded her for letting him play in thetrash.

The mother didnt take kindly to the reprimand. She responded that she had a house fullof kids to watch. If Christy was so worried about the refrigerator, why didnt she get rid

of it?

In short order, Christy assembled some friends and some tools and started cleaning outthe dump. They hung a sheet on the fence and wrote, optimistically, Watch this plot ofland be turned into a garden in 24 hours.


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Community gardens werent new to the Big Apple. Two world wars and the GreatDepression had inspired city government to sponsor relief gardens and victorygardens on unused land. Each time, they were abandoned once the crisis had passed.

What was novel about this generation of green spaces was that they werent planned bycity hall. They were springing up, literally, from the streets. Desperate neighbors, fed upwith waiting for the citys help, had launched their own urban back-to-the-landmovement.

What we call the contemporary community garden movement really came out of theenergy from the antiwar movement, the beginning of Earth Day, says Weissmann, whoran Green Thumb from 1984 to 1998. People were beginning to take control of theirown environment, especially as cities began going into fiscal crises and were not able toprovide services to people.

The gardens offered an array of vital services that were no longer coming from citygovernment. Some were environmental, and some were social, but like vines climbing atrellis, they were closely intertwined.

In the concrete canyons of a big city, a chronic environmental need is open space, andNew Yorkers were starving for it. As of 2002, the city had only 4.5 acres of parkland forevery 1000 residents. By comparison, Philadelphia had 7.1 acres and Boston boasted9.3.

The gardens made up a mere 200 acres, a tiny fraction of the Big Apples 36,000 acresof parkland. But many were concentrated in areas where city parks were not. Fifty wereon the Lower East Side, where the ratio was only 0.6 acres of parkland per 1,000people.

The gardens werent just open spaces. They were green ones. Some called them thelungs of the city. They pumped oxygen into streets choking with car fumes. Theyoffered islands of shade and cooling in the long, hot Manhattan summers. A single acrecould absorb up to two tons of sulfur dioxide, the main ingredient in acid rain.

Recent studies in behavioral science suggest that green space can boost mental healthas well as physical. Children who moved to more pastoral surroundings improved theirattention spans. Healing gardens in hospitals have been found to speed the recoveryof patients, primarily by reducing measures of stress.

In the New York gardens, much of the greenery was edible. Low-income gardeners

were eating fresh produce in parts of town where there were no supermarkets orproduce stands. Green Thumb found that 75 percent of garden groups also gave foodaway, to food banks and to hungry neighbors.

Surveys in other cities have reported similar trends. Philadelphias urban gardeners atefresh produce from their gardens five months of the year. In Newark, NJ, the averagecommunity gardener invested $25 a year to harvest $504 worth of food.


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Immigrants to New Yorks Lower East Side (or, as they called it, Loisada) liked to sownative crops from Jamaica and Puerto Rico. Besides our beautiful flowers andvegetables there are many herb plants that we share with the neighborhood, wroteHarry Lebrun of the El Bohio Boricua garden in Brooklyn. Many of us who come fromPuerto Rico believe these herbs are medically useful for high blood pressure, heartdisease, earache, back pains and ulcers. Sunflowers are especially good for ulcers andthey bring good luck.

Plants werent all that flourished. The diversity of flora created habitats for a diversearray of birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

At Christys original garden (renamed the Liz Christy Memorial Garden after she died ofcancer and her ashes were spread over the soil), a manmade pond attracted frogs. Itwas stocked with fish, snakes and turtles, the latter rescued from being eaten inChinatown. John English, a beekeeper, introduced a beehive that still turns out 100pounds of honey a year. Once a year, he invites other gardeners to bring jars and stockup.

In less visible ways, the gardens performed other environmental services, like recycling.They were reusing urban land that had been abandoned as waste. Most employedsecondhand materials, from manure to scrap lumber an economic necessity as wellas an environmental one. Even much of the foliage was recycled. Rockefeller Centerdonated plants every month, after it changed exhibits.

The gardens reduced levels of toxic waste in the ground, though agronomists stillcautioned against eating vegetables like lettuce, which absorbed lead. Corn andtomatoes were safer.

By growing fruits and vegetable locally, the gardeners were also saving fuel and cutting

down air pollution. Nutritionist Joan Gussow calculates it takes 435 fossil fuel calories tofly a 5 calorie strawberry from California to New York.

Cultivating Community

In the process of making spaces for the birds and the bees, the gardens created socialspaces for the block and the barrio. We call them outdoor community centers, saysRebecca Ferguson, associate director of the Green Guerillas, places where neighborsknow each other, where maybe there are no other opportunities for neighbors to walkout the front door and socialize. I also think they increase a level of safety and

accountability.

Several studies nationwide suggest that gardens and green space might help to lowercrime rates. In San Franciscos Mission District, crimes dropped 28 percent after acommunity garden led to the formation of a neighborhood watch group. In Chicago,professors Frances Kuo and William Sullivan compared crime rates among 98apartment buildings in a public housing project. They found buildings with high levels ofvegetation had 52 percent fewer crimes than buildings with low levels.


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The story of the Little Puerto Rico garden, at 10th St. and Avenue B, paints a vividpicture of how a humble garden can take a bite out of crime and other social ills.

After five tenements were knocked down, in 1977, their lots became home to a scrapdealer who stripped empty buildings. They also became a shooting gallery for junkiesand an open-air market for drug sales. After a decade of fear and frustration, neighborsdescended on the site. With hoes and baseball bats, they accomplished what city policehad not: They cleared the corner of drugs. They also cleared it of abandoned cars andtwelve dumpsters of garbage.

In its place they put in vegetable plots, a concrete patio and two Puerto Rican-stylecasitas or small houses, complete with a propane-fired stove and flush toilet. Among thegarden rows, and the clucks and snuffles of chickens and rabbits, they recreated a bit oftheir faraway homes in the big city.

It was a place for all people on our block to go and bond together, recalls SaraFerguson, who moved next door in 1994. People had weddings there and birthdaysthere. People came and cooked meals there. On Friday and Saturday nights, peoplewould all be out there eating together and playing drums. There was a huge Halloweenparty, when the casitas would become haunted houses.

She got to know her neighbors as they dug together in the dirt. The elderly Don Garciataught her how to mound a tomato plant, and which weeds were worth keeping forhome remedies. Lydia Cortes, a mother of five, watched over the garden while herhusband, Isais, fixed cars in the back.

Other gardens hosted more formal activities, from plays and dance to yoga and poetryreadings. Artists in the Gardens planted paintings and sculptures on walls andpathways, while the Youth Murals Project gave more than 2,000 teens an alternative to

grafitti.

Each plot was as individual as the people who created it. The Garden of Eden, onEldridge St., appeared in National Geographic. It was a painting in plantings, withmeticulous floral displays and 45 fruit and nut trees, surrounding a central yin-yangsymbol. On E. Ninth St., La Plaza Cultural featured an amphitheater and a geodesicdome designed by R. Buckminster Fuller.

El Rincon, in the Bronx, sat next door to a methadone clinic, and recovering addictswould stop by to pick apples. You would have to pay somebody grant money, citymoney, to do this stuff, says Ferguson. To provide community space for programs, to

reintegrate drug dealers. Youre always trying to find money for parks funding, andpeople are already doing this on a volunteer, ad hoc basis.

Putting Down Roots

As a grassroots development program, New Yorks gardens were a stunning success.But their very success became a threat to their existence. As they made their


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neighborhoods more desirable, they made the land underneath them more valuable. Asthe city recovered from its slump of the 1970s, its officials eyed the garden lots for usesother than flowerbeds.

The communities in which they are located have, in many cases, seen a dramaticresurgence, explained city council staffers in a 2002 memo, causing many of theseabandoned lots to now have value as sites for development, such as affordablehousing, or as locations to be auctioned for private development, at which point theywould return to the tax rolls.

In the late 1980s, the city started revoking leases and tearing out gardens. At the outset,only a handful went on the chopping block, to make way for low-income housing anddrug rehabilitation centers. The Garden of Eden was one of the first to fall, in 1986. Afull-scale plague of bulldozers descended after 1994, when Rudolph Giuliani becamemayor. Rather than housing for the poor, he put the land up for sale to conventional realestate developers.

Little Puerto Rico was flattened the day before New Years Eve, 1997. Residentscelebrated a pyrrhic victory, when the lead bulldozer sank headfirst into a sewagetrench. Within a year, though, four-story townhouses were rising from the rubble.

But the gardens had put down deep roots in the hearts of New Yorkers. By threateningthem all at once, Giuliani unwittingly galvanized gardeners from potting soil into politics.They organized the New York Garden Preservation Coalition, and the battle was on.

It was the first time in community garden history when gardeners were workingtogether to that degree, says Rebecca Ferguson. Before that, they worked in their ownlots and did their own thing.

Just as biodiversity makes an ecosystem stronger, the gardeners gained from adiversity of tactics. In July 1998, protesters released thousands of crickets into a realestate auction. When El Jardin de la Esperanza went down, nineteen months later, 31demonstrators were arrested while sitting in a shelter shaped like a coqui, a PuertoRican tree frog.

While some were taking to the streets, others were taking to the courtroom, with helpfrom state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. The day that El Jardin de la Esperanza wasdemolished, Spitzer persuaded an angry judge to put most of the auctions on hold.

In the end, Giulianis successor came to the negotiating table, and some 600 gardens

were saved. Two nonprofit groups bought 114 of them, including a $250,000contribution from New Yorker Bette Midler. Others were transferred to the parksdepartment. Some of the underlying lots could still be sold, but only after the city offeredgardeners a substitute piece of ground.

All our organizing and the media coverage we received for our events, rallies, letterwriting, and lawsuits, finally shifted the thinking from, The gardens are temporary, to,


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The gardens are permanent and should be preserved forever, says Felicia Young,director of Earth Celebrations.

Today, Earth Celebrations commemorates the fight to save the gardens in an annualritual. The Rites of Spring, a day-long parade, puppet and costume pageant, stops atforty Lower East Side gardens every May. A character named Gaia, named after theGreek earth goddess, is kidnapped, then rescued. At the final stop, her salvation ismarked by the release of 50 butterflies.

Meanwhile, many of the struggles veterans have moved into positions of authority, incity agencies and nonprofit groups. Theyre quietly working to turn the Big Apple into theGreen Apple.

We sort of infiltrated most places, says Tessa Huxley. Back in her Green Guerilladays, she accidentally broke through a subway roof, while digging a hole for a redwoodtree in the Liz Christy garden. Today, that tree is 65 feet tall, and shes managing theparks in Battery Park City, a city-within-a-city thats home to 25,000 people.

The parks are completely toxic-free, says Huxley. We dont use any herbicides,pesticides or fungicides. We do an enormous amount of composting. We take vegetablewaste from local groceries and Starbucks coffee grounds. We look at our soils as whatsgoing to make the plants healthy. We look at the chemical and biological components,and we develop the compost accordingly.

Her example helped inspire Battery Park City to set green standards for all newbuildings. Its first green residential high-rise opened in 2003, with features like solarpanels, recycled building materials, rainwater storage and vaporless paints. Theapartments leased out in six months, despite rents that started at $2,300.

Weissman still consults with gardeners, while she works on a book about communitymurals. Looking back, she says, The gardens were tipping points, tremendous trifles.People were always coming into your neighborhood, saying, Could you come into ourblock and show us how to do this. Our gardens inspired other gardens. There was atremendous ripple effect of other gardens happening.

Loggins has moved uptown, but in the summertime, he still stops by the Liz ChristyGarden three nights a week, to throw food on the grill and relax. Hes become itspublicist, maintaining a website and giving tours. Overseas visitors often stop in, someafter seeing the garden in the 1990 Gerard Depardieu movie Green Card.

Two years ago, people from France were coming in, says Loggins. They wanted tostart community gardens there. People from China were coming in, trying to learn howto start community gardens in China. People from Sweden, also. So, apparently, its stillspreading.

The Ecotipping Points Storyline


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EcoTipping Point stories share the same basic storyline. In Act One, the eco-socialsystem is working sustainably. In Act Two, a negative tip pushes it into decline. In ActThree is the positive tip. A catalytic action reverses the decline, and the system picks upmomentum on a course of restoration and sustainability.

On New Yorks Lower East Side, a series of negative tips began around 1800, whenwater sources were polluted and housing swallowed up farmland. The last straw camewith the fiscal crisis of the 1970s, when the area was sucked into a citywide spiral ofdecline. Starving the poorest precincts of city services set off a vicious cycle, in whichempty buildings and vacant lots bred crime. Residents moved away if they couldafford to leaving behind more empty buildings, more vacant lots and more crime.

The Green Guerillas interrupted the cycle. They took one part of the eco-social system a vacant lot and changed it from an eyesore to an oasis. A virtuous cycle began. Bycleaning out the lot, the gardeners removed a habitat for criminals. As their streetsbecame safer, residents spent more time on them, reducing crime further.

As gardening strengthened the social bonds among neighbors, the neighborhoodbecame safer still. Instead of moving out, people started moving in. Empty buildingsbecame occupied. As the virtuous cycle gained momentum, the quality of life went up,and the former slum attracted more and more residents.

The rise of one neighborhood set off geographic feedback loops in others. Guerillagardens sprang up like dandelions, as the rebirth of The Bowery was replayed in localesaround the city. In concert with larger social and economic forces, those neighborhoodsbegan to tip the city towards a more livable condition. At a time when metro areas wereconsuming ever more farmland and fossil fuels to feed themselves, inner-city NewYorkers were becoming cleaner, greener, and more self-sufficient.

The positive tip eventually created new problems, which threatened to tip the gardeningmovement the other way. But the process had generated enough momentum to pushback. Most of the gardens survived, and their influence is flowering still, propagating intomore and more aspects of city life.

References

Green Guerillas Liz Christy Bowery Houston Community Garden Sara Ferguson, A Brief History of Grassroots Greening in New York City (Videos

and stories from gardeners). Online link Green Thumb (NYC parks department resources for community gardens)

The Community Gardening Movement in New YorkCity: The First Decade
http://www.greenguerillas.org/http://www.lizchristygarden.org/http://www.interactivist.net/gardens/h_1.htmlhttp://www.greenthumbnyc.org/http://www.greenguerillas.org/http://www.lizchristygarden.org/http://www.interactivist.net/gardens/h_1.htmlhttp://www.greenthumbnyc.org/


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companies refused to give loans or policies to would-be business owners in blightedneighborhoods.

These neighborhoods became increasingly populated by African-American andHispanic communities as well as students. They lived in neglected neighborhoods full ofabandoned or repossessed vacant lots, many of whose buildings had been deliberatelyburnt down by owners desperate for insurance money. In NYC in the 1970s, it wasestimated that the city contained over 25,000 abandoned lots. In the 1970s and early1980s, landlords abandoned up to a quarter of the Lower East Sides housing stock.

These vacant lots were the vortices that drove the vicious cycles of neglect, violence,out-migration, increasing poverty, increasing crime, and decreasing interaction betweenneighbors. The lots became de facto dumps and attracted rats, gangs and criminalactivity such as prostitution, drug dealing, and sales of stolen car parts. This was adisincentive for residents to be out on the streets which in turn further undermined thesafety of the neighborhoods.

Modern community gardening arose in the wake of the political activism of the 1960s,which saw student anti-war protests, the civil rights and gender equality movements, anemerging environmental ethic, and the back-to-the-land movement. The first Earth Dayhad been created in 1970, which lent higher visibility to the environment. There wasalso a movement of self-help housing, where urban homesteaders or squatters wouldmove into abandoned or condemned apartment buildings, and mobilize as a communityto make them as livable as possible. Often urban gardening was an integral part ofthese activities. The 1973 oil crisis caused food prices to rise which served as an evengreater incentive to grow food.

This grassroots political energy is what gave birth to, and sustained, the communitygardening movement. In other words, the timing was right because of its ability to

address a range of issues. The movement that began in NYC was known as GuerillaGardening.

Guerilla gardening is a political act that ties into environmental and social issues (suchas land and squatters rights described above) and means taking over and creating agarden on an abandoned or underused piece of urban land not owned by the gardener.Other guerrilla gardening activities involve making seed bombs which is mixingfertilizer with seeds into makeshift balls, which were thrown over fences or other off-limits areas to sow wildflowers or add greenery to vacant lots.

The Early GardensLiz Christy and the Green Guerillas

The best-known narrative of the NYC community gardening movement originates withLiz Christy, the first director of the Green Guerillas who later became the first director ofthe Open Space Greening program for the Council on the Environment of New YorkCity.


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Liz Christy had been politically active since the1960s, particularly with the anti-war andcivil rights movements, where she learned the skills of community organizing, such asrent strikes, block strikes, and street basketball. She also ran an underground localmonthly publication called Bleecker Times.

Near the Bowery-Houston garden, Christy rented a space where she painted in oils oncanvas, and where for eight years she ran a one-room school, teaching local kidsgeography and gardening, with a garden on the rooftop which grew herbs, fruiting cropsand flowers.

By the early 1970s, she was writing and giving workshops on gardening. Meanwhile,she was supporting herself in a variety of jobs at a trade publication, a law firm andpublic relations agency, where she learned other valuable skills she would put to use asa guerilla gardener.

Christy brought her diverse skills and activist experience towards community organizing.Among her skills:

Noticing the needs and the resources (financial or otherwise), and findingcreative ways to link them.

She had the commitment to working hard (attending meetings, giving lecturesand workshops, organizing work parties, tracking down resources, etc.)

As an artist, she brought her skills with design and composition to work withcommunities to create their own gardens through Green Guerillas and the OpenSpace Greening Programs Plant-A-Lot project.

Her background in public relations gave the early movement the visibility itneeded.

Christy had a studio in the neighborhood in the heart of the Lower East side. Walking

through the neighborhood one day, she saw a boy playing inside an old refrigeratorwhich had been dumped there. She dragged the boy out and took him to his mother,who reacted defensively, saying that she should do something about the state of thevacant lot.

Christy assembled a group of friends and spent six to seven months organizing the timeand labor needed to haul out the trash and clear out gravel from the lot. When theyfinally got to ground level, they found the dirt to be unusable. They collected horsemanure from the nearby police station to supplement the soil, and planted seedlings inraised beds.

After a year or so, the newly-created garden caught the eye of the city. Worried aboutliability issues, it threatened to bulldoze the garden. However, Christy was equippedwith media savvy and contacts at local media organizations. She sent out pressreleases calling for a press conference, to which reporters from a variety of localnewspapers attended. The story was a public relations dream, and she really knewhow to deal with the media, says Donald Loggins, one of the original Green Guerillamembers.


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Green Guerillas actions caused the city to back down and grant them a permit in 1974.It also, according to Loggins, helped to launch a movement. If Liz hadnt been there,this story would have been a little blip on the screen and that would be it, Logginsspeculates. She was in the right place at the right time, and she knew what to do.

Finally in April of 1974, NYCs office of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD)granted approval to the group to rent it as the Bowery-Houston Community Farm andGarden for $1 a month. Sixty raised beds were planted with vegetables, and later treeswere added. In its second year, the garden, which was later to be called the Liz ChristyCommunity Garden following her death in 1984, won a neighborhood beautificationcontest sponsored by dress designer Mollie Parnis which also attracted the attention ofother groups interested in transforming lots into green spaces.

Another iconic garden that emerged in 1974 in the Lower East side was the Garden ofEden initiated by artist and activist Adam Purple. Bulldozed in 1986 during the Cityscampaign to reclaim and develop the lots, the garden featured concentric layers ofplants surrounding a yin-yang symbol, many aerial photos of which can be seen onvarious urban greening/design websites. (The widespread outrage among gardenactivists following its destruction helped in the building of coalitions to secure thelongevity of other gardens, more of which appears later in this report.)

Following the media attention on the Bowery-Houston garden, groups from around thecity were initiating their own guerrilla-style gardens on vacant lots. In 1974, Liz Christyand her collaborators formed the Green Guerillas (which formally became a non-profit in1978), and they began sharing their labour, expertise, and cheerleading support withgroups interested in following suit. Public radio was just getting started in NYC, and itwas a new information venue that emerged alongside the grassroots environmentalmovement. Christys program on public radio station WBAI about urban gardening,called Grow Your Own was instrumental in sharing resources and knowledge about

urban gardening.

The gardens which arose at this time were rooted in the energy of urban self-sufficiencyof the 1970s. The typical scenario began when interested community members cametogether, gathered resources, and undertook the labour-intensive tasks of clearing out achosen site of its garbage, abandoned cars, and debris, and then removing asphalt andtrucking in topsoil. Members caring for new gardens had to stay vigilant to prevent moretrash dumping or other criminal activities which sometimes continued even aftergardens were created.

The emphasis with these early gardens was on creative optimization of resources, from

garden-center surplus seedlings to horse manure from police stations. There was astrong DIY (do-it-yourself) ethic to these early gardens where in-kind donations orsalvaged objects made their way into the garden design. A certain aesthetic began toemerge; for example, bathtubs or barrels as planting containers, forklift pallets forfencing and compost bins, bed springs as garden gates, wire spools as tables, and tiresfor retaining walls. Murals were often painted where gardens backed onto blank walls.


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The early community gardening movement was focused mainly on building communitysolidarity in neglected neighborhoods on the Lower East Side, and transforming theseemingly limitless supply of derelict land into usable open spaces. Because disusedland was so abundant, and because groups were so busy with the organizational andlogistical challenges of transforming vacant lots into gardens, their long-term

preservation was not on the movements collective radar (though a few groups like Trustfor Public Land was committed to the concept from the beginning). There was moreland than anyone knew what to do with, says Donald Loggins, one of the originalmembers of the Green Guerillas. We couldnt put gardens in fast enough.

At the very beginning, Green Guerillas was self-funded, and resources were borrowed,donated, or otherwise negotiated. They borrowed tools, brought in their own seeds, gotmanure from the police stations, and convinced the nurseries, at the end of the season,to give their leftover plants. Green Guerillas also distributed free trees, shrubs and otherplant materials.

One of the other early activities of the Green Guerillas was not just creating gardens butsimpler ways of adding greenery and color to vacant lots. They planted window boxesand gave workshops on making seed grenades or Seed Green-Aids made withseeds, peat moss and fertilizer inside balloons or old Christmas ornaments which wouldbe tossed into vacant lots that were wired off or otherwise inaccessible.

The role of Green Guerillas, in these early years, was strongly rooted in the ethos of the1970s. While informal and not highly organized (unlike the Green Guerillas of today),they saw themselves as a democratic grassroots movement who collectively contributedtheir unique skills to creating gardens. They embodied the idealism of the era which washard to sustain as the movement matured, and Green Guerillas today has evolved toreflect this natural evolution. They acted as a source of volunteer labour to groups whowanted to convert vacant lots into gardens, a community resource for the nuts-and-

bolts, and as cheerleader. Also, by looking at the diversity of gardens they wereinvolved with in the early years, it is evident that Green Guerillas vision was to helpothers realize their vision, and simply provided the skills and volunteers or sweatequity to support them in doing so. They were also instrumental in community-building by putting an emphasis on celebration. For example, after quarterly meetings orwork days they would have a potluck. In addition to building community, it was a goodway to promote gardening.

Today, the Green Guerillas continue to work with gardening groups around the city notonly with technical assistance but with effective organizing capacity building, conductingevents, and coordinating services. They are also involved with advocacy, youth

programs, and promoting urban food security through food-growing programs.

Increase in the number of gardens

In the early and mid-1970s, gardens began to spread through the Lower East Side viaword of mouth, the spin-off effect (where groups were inspired to put in a garden intheir neighborhood after seeing one nearby), stories in the media of other gardens in the


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city and around the country, and through alternative media such as Christys radioprogram. The main activities among new gardeners during this phase were gatheringtogether enough volunteers for work parties to do the labour-intensive work ofpreparing lots (clearing out trash and trucking in soil). With the challenges of acquiringhorticulture skills, enlisting volunteers, and navigating municipal laws and liability issues,garden groups were on a steep learning curve. The need for information, technicalexpertise and outside support led to the emergence of garden support organizations,both non-governmental and governmental, which began to act as important hubs ongrowing networks.

While various support organizations that emerged during this time had overlappingfunctions, each had its own unique strengths and roles. Groups that were interested inputting in gardens ranged from ad hoc collections of neighbors, to more formallyorganized groups such as neighborhood or block associations, church groups, orschools. There were also a lot of spin-off gardens where one group would want to putin a garden after seeing a garden in a nearby neighborhood. Sometimes gardenerswould expand gardens into newly-created vacant lots adjacent to them when thebuildings occupying them were torn down.

Casita gardens

Many of NYCs community gardens in the Lower East Side, Spanish Harlem, and theSouth Bronx contained small structures called casitas. The term casita (little house) isadapted from shanty houses constructed in the countryside of Puerto Rico, when manyinhabitants were forced off their land as a result of the mass enclosure of the commonsby large sugar companies soon after the island was colonized by the US in 1898.

Although it was illegal to build the structures, there was also a law stating that if it was

completed, it could not be destroyed. True to the spirit of the early community gardens,casitas tended to be constructed of scrap and salvaged materials, painted in vibrantcolors, and were easy to take down, if necessary. The casitas themselves served eitheras tool-sheds or as indoor shelters for kids to play safely or for older people to gather forconversation or games.

Jane Weissman, former director of Green Thumb, is credited for her advocacy ofcasitagardens and her instrumental role in protecting the gardens whose members followedher advice to adapt the structures to meet both building code and Green Thumbrequirements.

The approximately 500 casitas in gardens were a nostalgic symbol of cultural identityand self-sufficiency, and affirmations of community solidarity and a sense of belonging.Cultural or religious events, weddings, and festivals were held in these gardens. Allgarden members owned the casitas, despite the strong association ofcasitas with thePuerto Rican and Dominican communities.

Emergence of Institutional Support


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The gardening support organizations which began to emerge in the mid-to late-1970scan be divided into roughly three categories:

Governmental (Parks Department, Green Thumb); Non-governmental (Council for the Environment of New York City, Trust for

Public Land, New York Restoration Project); Coalition and activist groups (Green Guerillas, More Gardens!, Neighborhood

Open Space Coalition).

Organizations provided a range of services, from technical or material assistance, siteand materials acquisitions, organizational assistance and networking, and advocacy(working to put a green space agenda at the forefront of city issues). They acted asbroker between the group and relevant city agency, to help navigate through red tape orbureaucratic hoops for which gardeners didnt have the knowledge or resources. Theywere a centralizing agent for coordinating trash pickups, distribution of surplusequipment, or deliveries of manure or other materials. They were able to coordinatevarious groups in the creation of citywide gardening events, celebrations, or gardentours. Networking strengthened collaboration among organizations and over the nexttwo decades led to the formation of coalitions such as the Neighborhood Open SpaceCoalition and New York Restoration Project to protect gardens from development.

The Council on the Environment of New York City (CENYC), founded in 1970, is aprivately-funded citizens organization in the Office of the Mayor. It is a non-profitorganization whose mission is to improve NYCs environment in the areas of greeningneighborhoods, supporting youth to become environmental leaders, and promotingwaste reduction and recycling.

In 1975, the CENYC created the Open Space Greening Program (OSGP), and LizChristy was appointed as its first director. This allowed Christy to be paid to do full-time

what she had been doing with Green Guerillas as a volunteer. The extra capacity andfunding helped to leverage growth of new gardens.

The OSGP provided on-site technical assistance to groups in all five boroughs. It alsopublished practical, how-to information about leasing, site evaluation, composting, andimproving the fertility of alkaline urban soils. It facilitated participatory design workshops,put up exhibits, and distributed seedlings when available. With participatory sitedesign, the emphasis was about supporting communities to create open spaces thatmatched their needs and required their involvement. This is contrasted with othergovernmental programs (see in Elements of Success section) which did not involve thecommunity and as a result became abandoned after the site was created.

After its formation, the OSGP added a Grow Truck Program. The Grow Truck is amobile service which loans tools, donates seedlings and other garden supplies, offersgardening advice, and at the time of its creation, held a horticultural book library(although the book is now in the offices). The OSGP also created and distributed CityLot Fact Sheets about gardening, offered workshops and worked with other greeninggroups and city agencies on garden preservation issues.


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The OSGP got a boost through the support of a former investment bankers familyfoundation. He had often noticed the vacant lots from the train on his way intoManhattan from Scarsdale, and began making inquiries into the possibility oftransforming these derelict lots into green spaces. He came into contact with CENYCand Liz Christy, who at the time was director of the OSG program. With the additionalfunds from the Abrons Foundation, OSG created the Plant-A-Lot program in 1978.

From 1981-4, Annual Reports list between 2 and 4 full-time staff and 3 or 4 part-timestaff/consultants, who were mainly seasonal summer workers or specialists such aslandscape architects or designers. In 1986, there were 17 gardens that were listed asPlant-A-Lot sites that CENYC had assisted with significant material and technicalassistance, and had made a 3-5 year commitment to assist with maintenance andprogramming. Most of the sites were park-like in the sense that there was no foodproduction, mostly because of concerns of presence of lead in the soil.

The CENYC Plant-a-Lot program generally made significant capital improvementsneeded to take a moderate number of gardens who apply and are accepted, to the nextlevel. It would facilitate a community design process, support them in raising the moneyto implement the design, and essentially break through the resource barrier (financesand expertise). One of the distinguishing qualities of OSGP was its emphasis onparticipatory design and the aesthetic value of the gardens. It also gave importance toinvesting in better quality materials (such as wrought iron) for fencing, which lentgardens an air of credibility and permanence (in contrast with the standard chicken wire-and wood- fencing, which left gardens vulnerable to vandalism and gave them an air oftransience).

Today the OSGP has a full-time staff of five, continues to assist new gardens, andremains committed to existing Plant-A-Lot sites. As well, they have established amapping project that maps gardens and trees, rainwater harvesting in community

gardens, plant sales every spring, the Grow Truck service, and horticultural and gardenconstruction advice to gardeners.

Green Thumb

By 1978, community gardens were starting to spread in low-income neighborhoodsaround the city and attracting attention from the media, but the groups lacked a sense oflegitimacy. Few had permission to use the vacant land they occupied, and so were stillde facto squatters. Up until then, the government resisted offering them protectionbecause of liability issues. Operation Green Thumb was set up in 1978 by the

Department of General Services. The largest community gardening program in thecountry, it is now under the NYC Parks Department and known simply as Green Thumb.

By granting one-year permits to gardeners for $1, Green Thumb raised the gardenersstatus from squatter to tenant. However, from its inception, Green Thumb was explicitabout the fact that leases could only be granted on a temporary basis and the landcould be made available at any time for demolition and development. Though theprogram gave them the recognition that gardeners needed, this allowed the City to


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evacuate them within as little as thirty days in order to develop the land. This wouldforeshadow the battles that ensued throughout the 1990s to preserve many of thesegardens.

In its first year, Green Thumb was staffed by one part-time employee who issuedleases. Permission to create a garden on the land was given by a city-wide land usecommittee that determined the disposition of city-owned land (i.e., auctioned off,selected for housing/commercial development, or assigned to other agencies for openspace, parking or other development). Leases were granted at a nominal fee ($1 peryear) to community gardeners who requested land which had no immediate use.

In the following year (1979), Green Thumb applied for, and received, its first federalCommunity Development Block Grant, which it still receives to this day. The CommunityDevelopment Block Grant is from the US Department of Housing and UrbanDevelopment, which funds local community development activities such as affordablehousing infrastructure and anti-poverty programs that have an emphasis on localparticipation. The funding allowed the program to hire more staff and provide gardenerswith materials to develop gardens such as fencing tools, lumber, outdoor furniture,soil, seeds, shrubs and bulbs. As well, it had the capacity to provide technical support indesigning, building and planting gardens. Technical support was done in closecollaboration with the Cornell University Cooperative Extension Program (see sectionon this program below).

Green Thumb is available only to registered Green Thumb gardens with well-established structure and enforces basic guidelines which include public access,opening hours, events and programming, membership lists, ongoing maintenance, andkeys. These guidelines were created so gardens would serve as community resources,accessible to anyone in the community who wanted to participate.

For the first fifteen years of Green Thumbs existence, there was little commercialdevelopment of vacant lots in NYC. By 1983, gardening groups began to see the needto actively preserve the long-term status of their gardens, and Green Thumb startedgranting five- and ten-year long leases to gardeners cultivating one-acre lots that wereassessed at less than $20,000. In 1994, the City stopped approving new requests forGreen Thumb gardens, and in 1996 it moved to sell off its entire disposable landinventory. Then in 1998, it began a policy of non-renewal of Green Thumb licenses andbegan auctioning off garden land. Garden groups had to shift gears from developingtheir gardens to fighting to protect them, and the struggle to save community gardensfrom being bulldozed has been well-documented. This phase of the movement isbeyond the scope of this report, though more about this can be seen in the Elements of

Success section at the end.

Cornell University Cooperative Extension New YorkCity (CUCE-NYC)

Established in 1948, the Cornell University Cooperative Extension program in NYC is aresearch-based educational organization. The program is a part of the universitys


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outreach and a manifestation of its status as New Yorks Land Grant University. (TheLand-Grant Act of 1862 was a piece of legislation which granted to each state somepublic land. Proceeds from the sales of these lands would be invested in a perpetualendowment fund to provide support for colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts ineach of the states).

In 1976, Cornell University Cooperative Extension was chosen by the US Departmentof Agriculture (USDA) to start a pilot Urban Agricultural Program. This was initiated byCongressman Fred Richmond, a Democrat from Brooklyn, who wanted to see supportfor existing gardens.

The goal of the pilot project was to provide technical support to NYCs backyard andcommunity gardeners. The person put in charge of this was John Ameroso, a graduateof agronomy and agriculture who had recently returned from time spent overseas onrural development projects with small farmers in Southeast Asia. Ameroso was chosenas head of the program in Brooklyn, and the only hands-on staff member during the pilotphase of the project. His job was to assist groups who wanted to put in gardens,through workshops, outreach and technical support. Some of the land grant moneywent into supplies such as seeds, soil, or inexpensive fencing materials.

The pilot projects success led to the formal launch of the program in 1977, with $1.5million initially provided to set up urban offices and garden projects in six cities, one ofwhich was NYC. In NYC, one staff member was assigned to each of the five boroughs.In 1978, the funding was expanded to $3 million. The programs success led to itsspread to 23 cities at its peak, with programs in other cities varying in their type ofprogramming and level of involvement.

USDA funds had to go through a land-grant educational institution, which in this casewas Cornell University. Staff members of this Urban Garden program were not

necessarily associated with the university as faculty, students or alumni, though therewere connections and information sharing among them and the university itself. As aresult, Cornell Universitys College of Agriculture and Life Sciences established theUrban Horticulture Institute in 1980, whose mission was to research ways to enhanceplant functions within urban ecosystems.

The start of the CUCE Urban Gardening program, along with the work of GreenThumb, Green Guerillas, and CENYC, had a strong role in the early expansion ofgardens. A social network began to form among the CUCE Urban Garden staffmembers as well as staff of other support organizations. A regular social gatheringcalled green drinks brought people together to socialize, celebrate, and share

information. This played a large role in the strengthening of the community gardeningnetwork in NYC.

The work of CUCE was primarily horticultural and technical support, outreach, andcheerleading. A lot of the early work between CUCE and Green Thumb involved sitevisits, coordinating workshops on-site, or attending community meetings in anadvisory/consulting role where a garden was being planned or in progress (for exampleduring work parties). They would also go to places as support staff where a community


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was out in the garden on a work party. They attended youth programs in the summer,and offered assistance at school programs where schools had gardens. They also didteacher training, or were otherwise involved with the youth component of some gardenswhich had one. Unlike OSGP and Green Thumb, their emphasis was on gardens oncethey were in place. The focus was more on plants, soil and seeds and less onparticipatory site design.

CUCE Urban Garden program also did horticulture education through fact sheets anda newsletter called Gotham Gardener which had, among other valuable tips andinformation, a calendar for choosing different crops suitable for local conditions atdifferent times of the year. This calendar was enduring and comprehensive and hascontinued to be used in various other organizations outreach and educational literature.

CUCE collaborated closely with Green Thumb in various ways described above, as wellas co-organizing two successful events. The Grow Together conferences are annualone-day events which began in 1983, where gardeners from around the city attendworkshops held by experts from various support organizations on topics ranging fromcommunity organizing to horticultural practices. Harvest Fairs, or Harvest Festivals,were popular one-day events held at the end of summer. They featured multi-categoryfruit/vegetable competitions, cooking competitions, live music and other events.

As the number of Urban Garden Programs spread to other cities, CooperativeExtension staff members would hold meetings around the country to share resourcesand information. Meetings like these helped to lead to the formation of the AmericanCommunity Gardening Association, described later in this report.

Though there were hopes to expand the Cooperative Extension Urban Garden programto all fifty states, political support for it was weak, and a cap of $3.6 million was placedon the budget even as the number of cities served was increasing, which meant funds

were stretched increasingly thin over the years. It was not in CUCEs mandate to raisefunds, and funding dried up 1994. CUCE was then reorganized, with some existing staffmembers absorbed into other programs in a similar capacity.

Trust for Public Land (TPL)

Founded in 1972, the Trust for Public Land is a national organization with nearly adozen regional offices around the country. It is the only national non-profit organizationwhose entire focus is to acquire and protect land for public access. To do this, it oftenuses innovative models from private business that it then passes on to its private

partners or local land trusts. TPL does not own land, but acts as a third party inindependent public negotiations to secure land. Its emphasis is on land in or aroundurban areas where fluctuating prices and encroaching development makes theprotection and acquisition of public land the most challenging.

TPLs Parks for People project started In NYC with the goal of maintaining access toopen space for its inhabitants. Even though TPL is more associated with savingNYCsgardens than creatingthem, they played an important role as early as the late 1970s. It


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had started out helping some neighborhood groups in Berkeley secure derelict land andthen decide as a community what to do with it. In 1978, they came to NYC, and for thenext four years, they helped a dozen groups legally acquire land as single site landtrusts or other strategies to secure long-term control. They also began trying toinfluence municipal policy in favor of securing surplus city-owned land for local open-space access, and helped about a dozen groups secure land from the city for localopen-space use.

But TPL really became a major player in the community gardening movement with theinnovative agreement to protect Clinton Community Garden in 1983. Located in HellsKitchen in Manhattan, the city put Clinton Community Garden on restricted sale with astarting bid of $900,000. In response, TPL joined forces with Green Guerillas, HousingConservation Coordinators and the gardeners themselves to sell $5.00 parcels of land.Though they were only able to raise $125,000, the activity brought the public spotlighton the story, and as a result, the city finally agreed to preserve the lot by transferring itto the Parks Department. TPL organized a land trust called the Clinton CommunityGarden, Inc., which signed a long-term agreement with the Parks Department, and the$125,000 that went into an endowment fund to cover future expenses. This innovative

move by TPL was an oft-cited precedent, and marked the beginning of moreconcentrated efforts by TPL in the 1990s to protect gardens from demolition.

In total, TPL has invested in more than $200 million in land purchases and in thedesign, construction and stewardship of these green spaces. It owns 64 communitygardens throughout NYC, which were saved from a city auction and destruction fordevelopment. To do this, it worked alongside community gardeners to transform vacantlots into green spaces. It has purchased land to permanently protect it, and thenprovided design and development assistance (including physical improvements, suchas watering systems, fences, and gathering spaces), organizing assistance,stewardship services, grant writing, environmental education and programming. It works

at the level ofcommunity organizing, building self-management capabilities of localgardeners and helping to connect them with other local institutions (schools orchurches) to broaden public use and create partnerships. It also assists withpropertymanagement, addressing basic issues of ownership, such as maintenance,encroachment, legal actions, insurance, and consolidation of ownership of in-holdingsor adjacent lots.It also has children and community programs, helping to bring schoolchildren into gardens for field trips or green education, as well as developing arts orscience summer programs for children. It provides small grants and technicalassistance to introduce music and art programs to engage children and the largercommunity they are connected to.

In 2004, TPL set up three new non-profit organizations to ultimately own and managethe gardens: The Manhattan, The Bronx, and The Brooklyn-Queens Land Trusts. Thesethree combined make up the countrys largest land trust protecting community gardens.

TPL played an important role in the early days of the community gardening movementin NYC because it was the only organization focused on longevityof the gardens at thedesign and creation phase. This proactive approach was rare at a time when gardengroups in the 1970s had their hands full with the immediate organizational and logistical


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in various cities. These conferences also helped to create a foundation for a nationalnetwork of urban gardening organizations. It was at this first conference that creating anational community garden organization was suggested, and a small group oforganizers volunteered to focus on developing the idea.

Chicago hosted a second conference in 1979, where the American CommunityGardening Association was officially founded. The mission of the organization was topromote community gardening, to provide networking opportunities between gardenorganizations, to create an information clearinghouse, and to support new programsbeing established. The forty-nine charter members from twenty-two states representedgarden organizations, cooperative extension programs, public agencies, horticulturalsocieties, and universities. By 1983, the ACGA had 150 members both organizationsand individuals comprising a network of 1,200 community garden organizers who inturn represented many more gardeners.

The American Community Gardening Association has supported community gardendevelopment in North America in various ways:

facilitating the creation and expansion of state and regional networks; setting up an information clearinghouse on programs at its website, a list-serve,

resources and toolkits for gardeners; convening workshops and conferences for program coordinators.

By the end of 1982, ACGA gained status as a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization with agrant from the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society in Philadelphia. It has a 16-memberboard of regional directors established to provide more locally-appropriate contactpoints around the country.

Through its annual conference, the ACGA has been a venue for garden activists across

the country to share information and build relationships. Conference presentation topicsare diverse and range from themes such as site location and preparation, gardendesign, childrens gardens, food delivery systems, and plant therapy. The ACGA alsostarted a quarterly journal in 1982 called Community Greening Review, whichcontinues to be a major source of information. In response to requests at the annualconferences, the first four issues surprisingly addressed not horticulture, but funding,land acquisition, special population groups and community development.

In part, the formation of the ACGA is a logical progression from annual meetings amongcooperative extension staff members from around the country and represents anupward shift in scale from local to regional to national and beyond. The ACGA has

members in Canada as well.

Down to Earth

Organizational/administrative activities within each garden


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The management and organizational structures of gardens vary from site to site,depending on the needs, demographics and the size and resources of the membership.While starting a communal urban garden may seem simple, as described above, thereare various logistical, horticultural, legal and organizational issues to consider.

Some gardens were started by established organizations, such as schools, churches,tenants associations, universities, gardening clubs, service organizations, and otherinstitutions. The value of this was that the garden could plug into existing socialinfrastructure and could provide a venue for existing members to emerge as leaders.

Gardens are generally self-managed, with participants working together to addressongoing matters such as plot assignment, paying for water and liability insurance, andmaking sure the site and tools were in good condition. In some cases, everyone wantedto be involved, which meant regular meetings to assign tasks; in other cases, gardeners

just wanted a site to garden. In any case, they needed some system of communicationamong them. Bulletin boards, newsletters or mailboxes at each plot were common waysto do so.

As the garden became more established, policies on fees, maintenance standards forindividual plots, care of communal spaces, compost management, acceptablegardening practices (some groups required organic gardening practices in all plots,while others took a more hands-off approach), and codes of behavior had to bedetermined. Most programs collected nominal fees for plots, to cover insurance, water,and shared materials. Many groups created rules on maintenance of shared paths,watering, and mandatory plot cleanup after the final fall harvest. Because many gardenshad waiting lists of prospective gardeners, most groups also developed procedures toreassign neglected plots after a grace period had passed.

Management included regular meetings, elections, garden rules, a bank account,

bylaws, a Board of Directors, officers, multiple leaders, committees, and (for somegardens) non-profit 501(c)3 status. There were also activities in the gardens thatrequired administration, such as hosting festivals, fundraisers or cultural events, as wellas educational, cultural, or youth programs. These usually began to develop after thegarden had become established and a solid local organizational structure was in placeto administer them.

A place for members to meet is important, especially in the beginning of a project. Manygroups have community rooms where residents can hold meetings to plan the project inits initial stages. Once the garden is in development, safe and accessible storagespaces for tools becomes important. For community gardeners interested in publicizing

garden events or programs, they need access to office equipment such as copiers, faxmachines and computers.

Interviews with Mary Jones and Karen Washington(two leaders involved with the original creation ofgardens in their communities)


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Mary Jones of the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust and former founding member of theCentral Bainbridge Street Community Garden

At the beginning, in approximately 1978, there were about seven women who gottogether to transform a vacant lot on Bainbridge Street into a community garden. It wasa vacant lot surrounded by buildings in poor condition which have since beenrebuilt/renovated. There were no men to help us, explains Mary Jones. About fourpeople were first involved, and they were members of the Central Bainbridge BlockAssociation. At the time, the block association was involved with attending communitymeetings and pursuing issues of safety and accountability related to uses of theapartment buildings. One of them asked Mary to join in creating the garden, and shedid. When they got serious about putting in a garden, they had to get on the case ofthe sanitation department to clear out the trash.

They went to work on the garden using their own materials. They leveled it off and thenput in 8 by 4 foot boxes which they later rented out for $10 a year. Then they becameleaseholders of the land through Green Thumb, who gave them soil and other materials,such as gloves, tools, and other supplies. The first fence they had was turkey wire givento them by Green Thumb. It was promptly stolen, and Green Thumb gave them a chain-link fence, which remained there until 2000 when Trust for Public Land got involved andgave them a major boost in capacity.

The garden began to attract people and interest when they put in the boxes to housegarden beds. The presence of the block association ensured that some of the gardenmembers would always have regular contact with each other. In the early days, work onthe garden was decided informally. Work parties were arranged informally whenenough of a group of people were working in the garden.

As time passed, they began to hold more formal meetings in the garden, where people

had brought old couches. They usually met during the growing season, but if there wasreason to meet in the winter, or on hot days, they would go to a nearby fast food placeinstead. The block association acted as their treasurer, bank account, and channel forgrant proposals because it already had non-profit status and could receive the money(the garden became incorporated much later).

The presence of the garden and the eyes on the street helped to bring moreaccountability to criminal activity and made it safer for children. Green Thumb gavethem the most support in the early years. In 1999, the garden became subsumed intothe Brooklyn-Queens Land Trust and got a major boost in support and capacity fromTrust for Public Land. For example, with TPLs assistance, they were able to dig deeper

into the soil to make sure there were no contaminants, hauled out the old soil, andtrucked in fresh soil. The garden received one of the first gazebos from TPL. Now theyhave to go through the Board of Directors of the BQLT for any major issues ordecisions. Operations at the garden have become much more organized and improvedas a result.


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They have various social events in the garden. For example, they show films (usingelectricity from a neighbors house), and they have cook-outs, fish fries, and live bandsas well.

Karen Washington, physiotherapist and co-founder of garden coalition La Familia Verde

In the 1970s, the middle classes, which included the more established immigrantcommunities such as Jewish, Irish, and Italians, were leaving the Lower East Side, theBronx, and Harlem for the suburbs. This was especially true when heroin began tospread through the inner city neighborhoods. But not everybody had the resources orthe opportunities to move out. At the same time, Puerto Rican and African-Americansfrom the South were moving into these neighborhoods. But the out-migration was muchlarger than the in-migration, and there were pockets of abandoned lots throughout theseareas of the city. The place looked like a war zone, says Karen Washington. So in the1970s, people began to say, We cant leave, so lets take something thats negativeand turn it into something positive.

Washington has been involved with the Garden of Happiness since its creation 23 yearsago. Three years earlier, in 1985, she had moved into a house in the South Bronx withher two children. Across the street was an empty lot full of abandoned car parts,rubbish, old mattresses, and weeds. When people see garbage in your neighborhood,they also see it as a reflection of you, she says.

One day, I looked out the window and saw a guy, Jesse Lugo, with a pick and shovel. Iasked him what he was doing, and he said he was going to start a garden in the vacantlot. I asked if I could help and he said yes. So I got involved, and we also startedtalking about it to the neighbors. They were keen to help they didnt want to see [thetrash filled lot] either. It was easy enough to get a group of men together to do someheavy lifting or other manual work.

At first, they arranged to have the Department of Sanitation come and clear out thetrash. Sanitation needed a dump truck and other heavy machinery to clear it out andlevel the ground. At that time, the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens Bronx Green-Upprogram had just been set up to support garden organizations. They were very helpfulto these early Garden of Happiness members, as was Green Thumb. When the lot wasleveled, Green Thumb came in with soil and lumber to make boxes for garden beds.Bronx Green-Up brought in trees from the Botanic Gardens.

Roles for the operational management of this garden began soon after its creation. JoseLugo became the de facto person-in-charge of the garden and Washington acted as his

assistant. Together, they felt their way around the first year, coordinating the work ofclearing out trash and bringing in soil. As well, they began basic administrative dutiessuch as securing the lease from Green Thumb, getting the contact information of peoplewho wanted to rent plots, keeping track of keys to the garden, and taking membersmoney for the plot rentals.

Towards the end of the first year, Lugo was the gardens first official president for thefirst two or three years, and after that Washington took over as president. In the first few


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years, they started out with two roles: president (who would assign plots and takemembers money) and a treasurer (who would hold the money in a bank account). Astime passed, the role of foreman was created. Today, two foremen are part of thegarden operations. They take soil deliveries, care for the gardens resident chickens,and do general maintenance, such as lawn mowing or pruning. All other members arerequired to share certain duties in the garden, such as turning the compost, watering orother maintenance duties. Today, Washington is no longer involved with day-to-dayoperations in the garden, though she acts as the garden spokesperson, writes grantproposals and sometimes gets involved with conflict resolution.

The garden holds monthly meetings during the growing season. The most importantmeeting is the one held at the very beginning of the growing season to determine whichmembers who had plots in previous years will be returning for the coming year. Plots ofprevious members who have not renewed their claim by Mothers Day will have theirplot opened up to newcomers. Plots started out at $10 per year, and today plots are $30a year, with money going to maintaining the gardens portable toilet as well as foradministrative expenses and events.

In terms of capacity building and technical support, the garden has received help fromother support organizations besides Green Thumb and Bronx Green-Up. Washingtoncites Trust for Public Land as particularly instrumental in helping them deal with conflictsamong members. At this garden (and possibly others), common types of conflict includethe occasional members reluctance to allow outsiders, such as non-members, accessto the garden. Other conflicts might arise over differing standards of acceptablebehavior in the garden (such as drinking or stealing produce). Trust for Public Landassisted the group to deal with the conflict as a group. In other words, even if the issueinvolved certain individuals, it would be brought to the level of the entire gardenmembership and decisions about it made as a group.

The demographics at the Garden of Happiness have shifted significantly since thegardens inception. Each new wave of immigrants has been able to plug into theestablished structure of the garden. At first, the majority of the residents were southernAfrican American who raised collard and mustard greens, kale, cucumber, potatoes andstring beans. Then many Puerto Ricans and Dominicans moved into the neighborhood,growing pumpkin, hot peppers, and cilantro. By the late 1990s, many Mexicans werearriving, and they grew corn, cilantro, tomatillos, andpopallo (a Mexican herb). Overtime, the garden also developed other stewardship activities such as keeping chickensand harvesting rainwater.

The year after the garden was created, they held their first block party. Since then,

individually or through collaboration with other support organizations, the garden hashosted various programs and events whether related directly to gardening or not. Thereare biannual block parties, drives for the homeless, voter registration drives, childrensprograms, workshops on immigration rights, food drives for the homeless, toy drives forneighborhood children, workshops on gardening techniques, soil testing, weddings, andbirthday parties. The great thing about NYC is even though support organizations areso different, they always work together.


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The 1999 Auction was a blessing in disguise for building social networks because ofthe increased political and social organizing work done by gardeners and theirsupporters in response to this crisis. Gardeners began to solicit letters of support fromcommunity-based organizations, were setting up meetings with their local politicians,and were forming garden coalitions with other community gardens in their district,borough, and city-wide. All the 10 garden sites are part of the South Bronx UnitedGardens coalition. This represents a social network that serves multiple purposes from technical, material, and labor exchanges to a space where members of thecommunity can discuss any issue at hand.

Social organizing and networking were as important as gardening skills. Whilemany staff members in the garden organizations of the early 1970s and 1980s came tocommunity gardening through horticulture, they soon learned that gardening knowledgewas secondary to skills in building relationships and social organizing. While the workrequired competency in gardening, it also called for an ability to work closely withdiverse groups in diverse urban settings. It meant taking the time to build relationships,to have celebrations and other social events where those effective working relationshipswould develop.

The importance of leadership succession. Garden group members vary in their levelof involvement, but all groups are held together by core members who can be brokendown into core leaders and supporting leaders. In a study conducted during aninternship with Green Thumb, Marguerita Fernandez found that gardens most able tosustain themselves in the long term were organizations which had more than one coreleader. She writes: The existence of multiple leaders is a key element to ensureleadership succession. Several core leaders and supporting leaders would give theresilience to withstand changing circumstances where supporting leaders would stepinto core leadership positions.

The ineffectiveness of creating gardens that did not involve local communityparticipation (see also EcoTipping Point ingredients below).For example, as LauraLawson writes in City Bountiful: A century of community gardening in America:

Local involvement was essential for [a gardens] survival. Hard lessons were learnedby city agencies and others who jumped on the community garden bandwagon withoutlocal support or commitment to follow through on maintenance. Likewise, advocatesvoiced concern about the heavy-handedness of some public agencies andbureaucracies that formed around community gardening. Handed over gardens,although developed with the best of intentions, were often abandoned because thecommunities were not involved in their development.

She also writes:

Many garden organizations focused as much on community development as on gardendevelopment. Typically they required that the resident group reach a certain level ofinternal organizationand be able to define its needs before proceeding with the garden.The sponsoring organization might provide materials and possibly trained design and


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work crews, but control and decision-making rested ultimately with the communitygroup.

One example which highlights this was the establishment of the HUD (Housing andUrban Development) garden program between 1976 and 1982 at a cost of $3.6 millionunder a Community Block grant (which also supports Green Thumb). Sites wereidentified, designed and created by agency staff without involvement of locals, despitethe assumption that they would take over maintenance of the sites once they werecompleted. However, many sites simply went into disrepair and the program was laterrevised to plug into existing organizations with those neighborhood connections in orderto encourage a more sustained level of participation.

Another lesson came out of a project created through a federal funding initiative byPresident Jimmy Carter, who had visited the burned-out neighborhoods of the SouthBronx. The money went into the creation of approximately fifteen gardens and the SouthBronx Open Space Task Force was created to coordinate the efforts of federal, stateand city agencies, non-profits, and citizens involved. The results of the program weremixed, and seemed due to the attempts to mix grassroots activism with the complexityof bureaucracy.

In her study Cultivating Food, Community and Empowerment: Urban Gardens in NewYork City, Marguerita Fernandez writes:

An experience I had working as a community organizer for Green Guerillasdemonstrates that participation by community members in the creation of a communitygarden is essential to the emergence of core leaders that will in turn develop amanagement system that fits with those garden members. It was always a concernamong our staff to make sure the services we provided, whether community organizingassistance or horticulture assistance, involved true participation and representation. The

decision-making process and leadership had to emerge from the community members.Our role as community organizers was to instil motivation and provide support but notbe central to the process.

EcoTipping Point Ingredients

The central role of local community. The gardens belonged to the communities thatcreated, developed, and tended them. Creating gardens inspired communities to seekout more tipping points to provide even better services from their social and ecologicalsystems. The sense of ownership and communal investment in a garden gave

community members opportunities to discover leadership potential as individuals, andmotivated them to address other issues affecting their blighted neighborhoods. Successbreeds success. Their involvement and success with the garden allowed them to ask:What else can we do? The corollary of this is the failure of projects which wereimposed on the community without local participation.

Reclaiming the commons by generating symbols that reinforce the positive tip.As with other EcoTipping Point cases, the physical spaces into which labor is invested


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become important symbols of the communitys success. In the casita gardens, thephysical structures, which symbolized rural self-sufficiency among Puerto Ricans andDominicans in their countries of origin was transplanted into a new context with similarsymbolic power: self-determination and self-sufficiency in the face of official neglect. A2002 Enterprise Foundation report quotes the director of a community developmentcorporation in the Bronx: We've been able to use the garden as one of the strengths ofthe community. It's enhanced our application for other projects. The garden has becomea centerpiece of the community, a source of pride.

These symbols create community spaces, shared community stories, or other meansthat symbolize the tip and mobilize community action to carry it forward. Just as vacantlots symbolized decay, neglect, and crime, the gardens became symbols of self-sufficiency and community pride. Gardens were sacred public spaces, where it wouldhave been considered taboo to dump trash or otherwise violate the gardens.

EcoTipping Points draw on social and ecological memory as a resource. Whengardens were first being put into vacant lots in the 1970s and 1980s, the dominantcultures of these low-income neighborhoods were Puerto Rican, Dominican, AfricanAmericans from the South, and Caucasian artists and activists. Many of the oldergardens reflect these cultural heritages, contrasted with those of native New Yorkerswho would have had less exposure to growing food. Gardens were also symbols ofcommunity pride and self-sufficiency among communities that were marginalized in theircountries of origin as well as their new homes. The casita gardens are a good exampleof the Hispanic cultures of growing food, family, community, festivals and celebration. InTales From the Field (see Sources below) one Puerto Rican gardener writes: Mygarden is actually a piece of Puerto Rico, but in New York. Another writes: With thisgarden we bring back to Hispanic people that feeling of Puerto Rico, the working hardfeeling working in the soil again. This social memory was a valuable resource becauseurban dwellers who lived in the city were not likely to have these skills and would have

to seek them out from support organizations. The gardens were an opportunity for thesenew New Yorkers to plug their skills and knowledge into a new context, and createthriving gardens rich with cultural diversity. By bringing their horticultural skills andknowledge from the outside, this social memory is a source of diversity that enrichedthe urban ecosystem and served as a powerful resource for NYCs communitygardening movement.

Ecological and social diversity provide greater functionality. The gardens were asource ofbiodiversityin the urban ecosystem, providing valuable services andstimulating a commitment to continuing them and developing them further. Birdsattracted and supported by the gardens fostered a sense of wellbeing (biophilia), and

insects from the gardens, such as butterflies and bees, served as pollinators for plantsthroughout the neighborhoods. Diversity of food production from the gardens provided adiversity of nutrition for the gardeners. NYCs community gardens are well known fortheirsocial diversity a vast range of cultural and educational activities, from sculptureexhibits and dance or theatre performances to events such as weddings, youthmentorship programs, and many other innovative projects. The gardens which venturedbeyond horticultural activities created more points of entry to attract diverse people ofdifferent ages, different educational levels, and different interests. This fostered


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inclusion and opportunities for individual expression, and was part of the long-termsuccess of a garden.

EcoTipping Points enhance resilience, to lock in the gains and withstandunexpected perils. When the gardens began to add value to previously unwanted land,they also helped to push up property values, which attracted developersand the threatof demolition. However, groups had invested their time, sweat, and love into theirgarden, developing vision, leadership and organizational skills along the way. As aresult, they were much more able to mobilize the legal actions to protect them. Althoughthese contentious and protracted battles resulted in the demolition of some 300gardens, for many more it led to their long-term tenure. After putting so much ofthemselves into these common spaces, groups developed the confidence to take actionnot only on the gardens but on other issues affecting their neighborhoods. In this way,residents were creating neighborhood in which gardens were an integral part, andwhere not having one was unimaginable.EcoTipping Points lead to small, early successes, which stimulate further effortstowards success. Early results are powerful reinforcers, and are necessary to sustainmomentum and inspire people to invest even more time and energy towards the project.

After the task of clearing out trash and laying down soil was complete, one growingseason was enough to have an impact. The visual impression created by seeing afunctioning garden where a few months ago was a vacant lot full of crumbling concrete,weeds, and trash would inspire, encourage, and motivate residents towards furthersuccess.

The demonstration effect: Ecotipping Points scale-up by replicating localsuccess. Nothing creates a visual impact quite like the sight of a green oasis in themiddle of crumbling concrete where a junk-filled lot used to be. The Lower East Side isfull of spin-off gardens, which were created after being inspired by neighboringexamples. People would not have started the gardens if they had not first seen another

garden and realized that such a feat was both viable and feasible. After mobilizing thelabor to create and maintain them, newly protective neighbors made sure that gardenswould not promptly fill up with trash again, or continue to attract vandalism or othercriminal activity.

The replication spread. People who saw gardens in other neighborhoods or readstories in the media began the process of conversation, inquiry and experimentationthat led to similar creations in their own neighborhoods. This led to demand for supportorganizations that would offer expertise and resources, which led to growing networksthat scaled up to citywide, statewide and finally nationwide scale with the formation andexpansion of the American Community Gardening Network and the Sixteen Cities

Cooperative Extension programs.

EcoTipping Points are efficient because they frequently transform waste (suchas degraded/abandoned land or buildings, sewage, garbage, or marginalizedpopulations) into valued material and social capital. Not onlywere gardensbuilt onderelict land, gardeners often made creative use of donated or salvage waste materialssuch as old tires, scrap wood, horse manure, or nursery surpluses. Gardens flourishedin low-income neighborhoods with high unemployment rates and engaged at-risk youth,


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the elderly, and new immigrants. They harnessed the frequently-overlooked energiesand talents of local tenants and residents, and created conditions for the emergence oflocal leaders.

EcoTipping Points are efficient because they mobilize nature and natural socialprocesses to do the work. While it was initially a labor-intensive job to mobilize peopleto clear out trash and put in soil, it set in motion a broad range of consequences. Thegarden became the focal point around which the community could rally. By focusingtheir energies on a project that addressed a variety of local issues, they were able toachieve results that exceeded results attained by micromanagement or moreconventional, costlier approaches,

green guerillas community gardens revitalize urban neigborhoods

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