Our community partnerships desk criss-crossed the five boroughs to meet some of the volunteers committed to making sure NYC's 550 community gardens flourish for years to come.
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2023.Community gardens are oases from the hustle and bustle of New York City, but their histories are rooted in the city’s darker past. Many gardens grew out of urban decay due to the hard work of volunteers, who reclaimed abandoned trash-strewn lots in their neighborhoods over the years.
Ferraro said her journey to cultivate a community garden began with doing research on available plots of land that the city’s GreenThumb program provided. It’s far from a simple process, but GreenThumb has athat provides information on policies, guidelines and protocols for establishing a community garden.
Ferraro says gardening is “second nature” to her. She is a Queens native, but comes from a “farming family” from the Caribbean island of Jamaica. She said her childhood is filled with memories of visiting the farm, as well as gardening with her parents in New York. Ferraro said the garden is a vital resource for what she described as an “economically disadvantaged” neighborhood, and not only because it provides a space for people to grow their own food. The garden also holds workshops on topics that have nothing to do with fruits and vegetables to help low-income members of the community, like how to repair your own front door.
McPherson said the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development owned the lot on which Tranquility Farm sits. That lot remained underutilized for years, until she and her gardening colleagues worked with GreenThumb to gain access and utilize it. His daughter said, “Daddy, you should go help her,” which prompted Young, who worked in construction, to offer a hand. That small interaction, Young said, set off a domino effect that sparked a neighborhood-wide effort to cultivate the trash-strewn lot into an oasis.
Young and others in Mott Haven use the space as a focal point for community gatherings. Young said the garden has hosted three weddings and“I love that, making a place right here in the garden where we can all get together for meetings, and to talk to each other and formulate things that need to be done with our community,” Young said.
It is a mantra that reverberates in their personal lives, but also in the history of the garden itself, according to Alexis. St. Nicholas Miracle Garden predates the GreenThumb program, as it was first created in the 1950s by students who saw an opportunity to transform a garbage-filled abandoned space across the street from their elementary school to grow vegetables. The property was then abandoned on and off again for years, Alexis said.
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