During the dark days of the 1970s, boarded-up houses and garbage- strewn lots were a common sight. But New Yorkers never gave up on their neighborhoods — and, with the assistance of the Parks Department, residents banded together and began turning abandoned properties and empty lots into community gardens.
Today, there are more than 600 gardens across the city — the largest such network in the country. Mayor Bloomberg strongly supports the gardens, which is why the Parks Department employs 15 full-time experts dedicated to helping community gardeners.
If you listen to protesters, however, it may seem that the city is seeking to do away with community gardens and turn the land over to developers. Nothing could be further from the truth — as most gardeners understand.
It’s time to set the record straight, by stating plainly what the rules do, and don’t do.
First, some background.
Until 2002, the gardens existed without legal protections, which gave rise to litigation and uncertainty. That year, the city signed an agreement with the state Attorney General to govern the status and treatment of the gardens — creating a framework both for preserving gardens and for finding alternate sites, when development of a lot is necessary.
Since then, not a single active Parks garden has been lost. Some have been relocated — but only with new sites provided.
But that agreement expires next month, leaving the future of the gardens in doubt. So the Parks Department has been working with the Community Garden Coalition, community boards and the City Council to develop permanent rules that formalize — and improve — the protections in the 2002 agreement.
Our proposed rules offer more opportunities for gardeners to have a voice, and more options for alternate sites, in the rare case that a garden needs to be relocated. What these won’t do — and what the 2002 agreement didn’t do — is make the community gardens parkland.
We can’t and won’t do that, for two reasons:
First, there’s the fact that community members are primarily responsible for the gardens’ upkeep and maintenance, not city taxpayers.
Second, as we have seen a number of times since 2002, it can be necessary to move a garden to another location to allow for new development that will bring jobs or housing, or both.
Again, our proposed rules give community members a bigger role in the garden-relocation process. And of course we’re open to suggestions from gardeners and the public on how to further improve the rules; we held a public hearing to solicit ideas just yesterday.
The ideas we heard yesterday were very constructive, and they’ll help us shape final rules that reflect our goal: to preserve, protect and promote gardens — but in a way that makes sense for the community and city as a whole.
The city is committed to more robust protections for community gardens because we believe they are an integral part of so many neighborhoods, from the South Bronx to Bedford-Stuyvesant. The greenery itself is healthy, and the gardens can also provide a source of fresh, healthy and economical vegetables and fruit. Schoolchildren also benefit in a variety of ways by having access to these gardens — they learn about both gardening and nutrition through first-hand participation in these sites.
It’s time for advocates to stop pretending that the proposed rules are weaker than the current ones — in fact, they’re stronger.
By working together, the city and gardeners can move beyond the misinformation and create a permanent framework that will allow these green spaces to continue blooming.
Adrian Benepe is the city parks commis sioner.