Gregory Heller

The Rise of Community Gardening
In its modern form New York City community gardening rose out of the rampant real estate abandonment of the 1970s. New Yorkers around the city, fed up with trash-strewn, rat-infested vacant lots, cleared the rubble and began to plant gardens (Ramirez, 1997; Schmelzkopf, p. 371-372). Although this most recent period of community gardening dates back to the early 1970s, the idea of community gardens is much older. There has always been a concern over the creation and preservation of open space in New York City. Frederick Law Olmstead, the creator of Manhattan’s Central Park, wrote on the subject of smaller parks. It seems that he may have envisioned the community gardens of a century later when he wrote in 1870 that the benefits of “numerous small grounds so distributed through a large town that some one of them could be easily reached by a short walk from every house, would be more desirable than a single area of great extent however rich in landscape attractions it might be� (1996, p. 341). Even Robert Moses, whose construction projects decimated many neighborhoods in the 1950s, envisioned a place for small parks. Residents often viewed Moses’ “Vest Pocket Parks� as failures (Francis, Cashdan and Paxon, 1984, p. 135), but they may have helped to pave the way for the community gardening movement (Alpern, 1973, p. 412).
The benefits of such “scattered oases� are many. Moses’s Vest Pocket Parks utilized the awkward plots of land left over after construction of the new highways. Residents of the communities he ravaged, however, viewed them as a token offerings that did not mitigate the adverse impact of the highways. Olmstead, on the other hand, clearly recognized the environmental benefits of such spaces, often referring to parks as the “lungs of the city.� Gardens also work towards the goal of creating a more civil society providing city youth with an alternative to street life and vice (LeGates and Stout, 1996, p. 335). The Regional Plan Association (RPA) observed that many playgrounds, intended for this purpose, were underutilized. Its 1928 report read:

The lure of the street is a strong competitor [to the play ground]… It must be a well administered playground to compete successfully with the streets, teeming with life and adventure. The ability to make the playground activity so compellingly attractive as to draw children from the streets and hold their interest from day to day is a rare faculty in play leadership, combining personality and technical skill of a high order (Jacobs, p. 84-5).

Community gardens are this type of dynamic playground. Children can participate in various educational activities from gardening to social, cultural, and political activities. The efforts of community gardeners can lead to the cultivation of lively community spaces playing host to a multitude of activities. People of all ages use gardens, and the inter-generational contact acts as a draw for many children, adolescents, and elders. In the gardens, children find teachers, mentors, friends, and role models. In this way, community gardening acts as stabilizing activity by creating common goals with recognizable rewards for neighborhood residents working together (Naimark, 1982, p.9; PC Perin; PC Jeffery Wright, Nov 6, 1998; Schmelzkopf, p. 373-4).
Community Gardens also help mitigate the lack of open space citywide. The Trust For Public Land and other open space groups have labeled New York as the worst American city in terms of public open space with a city-wide average of roughly 1.5 acres per 1,000 persons. The LES has an even lower ratio of 0.72 (Conserving Open Space, 1996, p. 73). Additionally, there is very little informal (un-regulated) public space available in which groups can meet. The high cost of real estate certainly is a factor in the scarcity of such space. Community gardens provide a “free space� for political and social interaction as well as the enjoyment of nature. Public parks like Tompkins Square are no longer the venues for lively political activism they once were. The city has set rules of conduct that all but ban political activities in these spaces through lengthy and overly restrictive permitting processes. Gardens also serve as outlets of expression and self determination shaped by the people who use them. This self-determination vests gardeners with feelings of ownership and control (PC Wright; PC Morales; PC Perin; PC Margarita Lopez, Nov 30, 1998; PC Sarah Ferguson, Oct 27, 1998; Schmelzkopf). Furthermore, gardens make city streets more livable by providing an escape from the built environment (Jacobs and Appleyard, 1996, p. 169-175).
During New York City’s fiscal crisis of the 1970s, the LES was in dire need of the benefits that community gardens offer. Real estate abandonment, neighborhood disinvestment, and arson left gaps in the tenement lined blocks of the historically slum neighborhood. Empty lots where buildings once stood became de-facto garbage dumps and illicit drug bazaars. Community residents, frustrated with the degraded quality of life that existed and the city’s lack of action and services, took matters into their own hands. Loose knit groups of neighbors began to clear lots and plant gardens in an effort to make their neighborhood safer and more livable (Martin, 1998; Raver, 1997; PC Wright; PC Lopez; PC Morales).
Crime and abandonment make tenants prisoners in their own homes, further compounding the problem of street crime. Community gardens bring residents out of their homes and onto the street. Jacobs’ “eyes on the street� theory recognizes the positive impact that the presence of law abiding citizens has on reducing crime. As she wrote:

You can’t make people use streets they have no reason to use. You can’t make people watch streets they do not want to watch. Safety on the streets by surveillance and mutual policing of one another sounds grim, but in real life it is not grim. The safety of the street works best, most casually, and with least frequent taint of hostility or suspicion precisely where people are using and most enjoying the city streets voluntarily and are less conscious, normally, that they are policing.The basic requisite for such surveillance is a substantial quantity of stores and other public places sprinkled along the sidewalks of the district. (p. 36)

Gardeners have a vested interest in the reduction of crime as residents and as “owners� of a garden. Instead of spending their leisure time in their apartments, gardeners spend it in their gardens in view of the street. This public display has a compound effect. Not only does it lead to mutual-policing, but as Jacobs observes, “The site of people attracts still more people� (p. 37). The more people, the more eyes and the safer the neighborhood. She continues, “[This] is something that the city planners and city architectural designers seem to find incomprehensible.� Jacobs suggests that the secluded courtyards of public housing projects often become dangerous havens for vice because there is nothing to see, and it is difficult to be seen. Residents often abandon these bland courtyards for the street corner with its parade of foot and vehicular traffic. The other pitfall of such courts is the lack of “ownership� felt by tenants whose housing conditions are not self-determined but rather dictated by the government. By comparison, the community gardens are interesting to the eye because of their design and the activity surrounding them. Gardeners feel and exude a sense of empowerment and ownership that draws them and other local residents to the gardens. The vest-pocket parks and a later HPD program to build gardens on vacant lots were not as well received or successful as the self-help community gardens because of the self-determination factor involved with the latter (Schmelzkopf, p. 375; Francis, et al).