Community Gardeners Beware

Community Gardening in all of it’s manifestations is a proving ground for experiments in social and ecological sustainability. Read How. Today is December 31st, 2016. Often a time for people to reflect about the year that just passed. I’m not going to do that but rather remember that in past years, New York City mayors and city agencies would use the last few days of the year to bulldoze gardens or to announce plans to do so when they thought no one was paying attention.

On Dec. 30th, 1997, four gardens on the Lower East Side of Manhattan were bulldozed on the same day. This happened a mere hours before NY State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer filed a motion creating a temporary injunction halting the city from bulldozing any other gardens. It took years for that court case to be settled.

On December 28th, 2013, the Boardwalk Community Garden in Coney Island was bulldozed. There is now a concert venue on the site despite a series of lawsuits heard by a series of judges (who were replaced until a judge friendly to the developers was found). The courts ignored evidence that the site was Parkland and thus required ‘alienation’. There are still lawsuits winding there way through the courts but the damage has been done.

On December 30th, 2015, City officials met with community gardeners to announce plans for the NYC Housing Preservation and Development agency to convey 34 gardens to the Parks Department while developing housing on 9 gardens sites. The gardeners are pushing the developers to include community gardens in the final development plans. While this might sound like a victory as more gardens were saved than slated for development, the city still chose this date to announce gardens would be lost. At least in this case, the community gardens were not physically destroyed.

So you can see why I always watch the news and the on-line community gardener groups these last days of the year. So far, so good, this day with only a few hours of 2016 left. Of course I am not looking forward to the changes in the federal government in 2017 and what that might mean for community gardening. Let the community gardeners be prepared.