Since our last update, our group has made a great deal of progress in understanding our issue and also with actually engaging with the community and people involved in protecting Community Gardens. On Sunday, Sara, Oneeka, Lisa and Kelly went to visit the Melrose Commons development in the Bronx. We are able to walk around a small area of the neighborhood and in just a few blocks, found 4 different community garden spaces. It was great to be out and see a few of the spaces we have been studying throughout the semester. While in Melrose Commons we were able to meet up with Ray Figueroa again to find out more about the work he does in this particular community. Meeting with him a second time was very helpful, since we all have more information about the issue of protecting the gardens than we did the first time Ray met with us. Ray explained the role of Nos Quedamos (We Stay) in protecting the land the gardens sit on to preserve their role in the community. The garden he showed us was right across from a school, making it a prime target for developers. He also explained how having a garden benefits the children who go to the school, and the community as a whole by running different educational programs.

Ray also told us about the work he does at the Brook Park garden which he affectionately refers to as ‘his garden’. He clearly has put a lot of time and effort into the programs there and has amazing stories about the work he has done. It was interesting to see the two different sides of the issue, the first being the activism and policy work needed to protect the gardens, and the second being the actual amazing work that the gardens bring about in communities. Ray talked about the Youth Community Farm Project he organizes at Brook Park which works with young people coming through the court system and allows them to farm in the garden as an alternative to incarceration. Overall this meeting was very productive and gave us a lot more to think about. We were also able to formally interview Ray and record his answers to use as material for our video project.

As far as research, our group is still looking into the documents Ray has given us regarding possible policies to be implemented. He gave us a transcript of his testimony to city council for the gardens protection where he highlights the key issues we have discussed before. The more we learn about the issue, the more we see how vast and diverse the groups involved are. Green Thumb signs were posted around the gardens we saw in Melrose Commons so we investigated the group a little further.

In April 1974, the New York City’s first community garden was formed after the City Office of Housing Preservation and Development approved a lease for one dollar a month. It was called the “Bowery Houston Community Farm and Garden.” The city loved that these vacant lots were being beautified and used by willing community groups. This created useful, open space in poor neighborhoods. This led to the creation of the GreenThumb program in 1978 which provides organization and assistance.

As the GreenThumb program became more established, the one dollar token lease with the city changed into a licensing agreement. Despite the fact that there was no permanent agreement with the city, community gardens remained. They were resilient against pressures to build housing on these ‘vacant lots.’

Today, GreenThumb serves the largest amount of community gardens via materials and organization.

In 1984, they created the Garden Preservation Program and ten-year leases.

On January 8, 1986, the city destroyed Adam Purple’s famous Garden of Eden. This was the first major garden that was destroyed for subsidized housing.

In the mid-1990s, the city started recovering from the fiscal crisis, leading to pressure on community gardens to become development sites. The city moved the GreenThumb program from the Department of General Services to the Parks Department.

Community gardens faced great adversity when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani placed the city’s over 700 gardens up for disposition for private development. The situation was very similar to what we see today with Mayor Bill De Blasio. The change left many residents upset because there were approximately 11,000 empty lots to choose from for development.

Most of the gardens targeted by Giuliani were spared when two not-for-profit land trust groups offered to buy them. At that time, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer got a restraining order, preventing the city from touching a single flower on its remaining 600 gardens. This agreement lifts that restraining order, allowing the city to immediately build affordable housing on 38 gardens while protecting 400 others from future development or so it was believed.

From here, our next steps are to solidify our policy recommendation and make our white paper more concise. We also need to go to a few more garden sites and get more footage for our video which we plan to do in the upcoming weeks. Ray will be setting up a meeting with a gardener in Harlem for us to talk to and interview to get another perspective for our video and research. We are also planning to have a few group members go to the Gardens Under Threat Ride and BBQ and hopefully get video footage from that event as well. Our project seems to be progressing well, we have learned a lot and now we just need to channel that information into a concrete project instead of abstract information.

Research links:

http://www.nycgovparks.org/about/history/community-gardens/movement

http://www.lizchristygarden.us/

http://nyccgc.org/about/history/

http://www.grownyc.org/files/GrowNYC_CommunityGardenReport.pdf

http://www.wnyc.org/story/85574-city-settles-fate-of-community-gardens/