Photos by Stacie Joy
Spring has Sprung!
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) April 1, 2022
Community gardens are the green gems of so many communities across the city.
That’s why I was thrilled to announce funding from the infrastructure law we passed that will support 260 community gardens across all five boroughs! pic.twitter.com/HStgZMJ2UL
19 comments:
What is this funding intended to do? Will it actually invest in making these community gardens instead of places the open sporadically for a few hours in select months and seen to be a bastion of the few?
Good news. Thanks for covering it, EVG.
The gardens need to have members sign up for time slots to be open, most have hours during week evenings as well as weekend days during spring/summer/fall, and are easy to join. If you want change, participate, show up for garden meetings.
The funding is for water hookup for NYC gardens that don't currently have it (many rely on kindly neighboring buildings for water, which is obviously kind of important for a garden!). The city has to pony up some small percentage -- I think it's like 10%. Not clear if Adams will do this, since he's been slashing every line item in the city budget except NYPD and does not appear to be making good on his promise to dedicate 1% of the city budget to Parks, which the gardens are overseen by.
There are some gardens that are frequently closed, but that garden is open most days, even in the cold months, and hosts tons of public events. The community gardens are really volunteer-run public parks, and they do need volunteers to be open and available to the community. Garden people need to be present during open hours to make sure people are safe, nobody's shooting dope, etc. Many have really good and dedicated groups of volunteers running them. A few are struggling with that. Maybe join one! It's a cool thing to be a part of and it really does a service for your neighbors to have these green spaces.
@12:47 it seems to me we'd all be better off if they were managed by the city instead of locals and volunteers. I'd rather they be upgraded, available to everyone, and open all of the time. Or turned into affordable housing.
Hi "Neighbor". We all know that "affordable housing" is standard code for "turn over to the real estate lobby" so are you a soon to be over leveraged techbro crony, real estate shill or someone who gets offended when a garden isn't open so you can look at your phone and leave your trash scattered? These are not mutually exclusive categories. You want access? Be a member, do some work.
By "upgraded" you mean? Less greenery? By the books safe kid areas per Tompkins Square? Parks has direct supervision of Tompkins, for instance, and the junkie and crime problems there are currently far worse than any of the gardens.
Over the years a few gardens have been hoarded as private parks but most are not. The slightly wild spaces are invaluable assets to the neighborhood. If the city / Green Thumb wants to enforce mandating minimum open hours that would cost money so get in touch with Rivera.
Cool ad hominem attack full of baseless assumptions @3:31. I can't believe I actually have someone arguing against affordable housing but here we are.
As far as I can tell, many of the green spaces are barely cared for and quasi private recreation areas. It seems to me it would be a much greater good for the community to have them improved and opened to the community writ large or turned into affordable housing. Slightly wild spaces are about the worst use I can see for a community resource. A number of them look like quasi junk yard.
Totally understand this and not suggesting to get rid of them all but I think some should be converted to other uses. We clearly do not have enough volunteers for all of them
This is great news and I'm going to go ahead and disagree with the fool who wants to turn them over to the city. These are of great cultural significance to neighborhood communities which you're ignoring. I and others LOVE the gardens in their current state and wish they remain intact. If you like we can convert the new empty luxury condos in the neighborhood to affordable housing, and no new builds would be needed. Think that would be great
Okay "Neighbor", when has an "affordable housing" project actually meant affordable housing in, say, the last twenty plus years? Be specific. If you really care about affordable housing einent domain old PS64 and severely limit income requirements. And what are the chances of that?
Far easier to evict community gardeners and create "mixed use", because that's the best we could hope for, which means a few apartments by lottery for the under 80k/yr set and, of course, mostly market rate.
Everyone has opinions about the "worst uses" of public space. Many despise the restaurant sheds. Others are negative about free parking for the minority who own cars. Once you've turned a garden over to a ground floor CVS it's not coming back as public space ever so which gardens should be "converted to other uses"? Be specific.
@Neighbor- Nothing is "better" if managed by the City. The gardens should stay intact, be maintained, and open to the public as much as possible. One should not be a volunteer to visit the gardens. Should one prohibit tourists from Kansas or Berlin from visiting because they are not NYC volunteers? Unfortunately, NY being NY means they can't be open full time like public parks. Also they're obviously not a destination like the Highline so there's not a lot of foot traffic, except for locals. Not that the LES needs a massive influx of Highline tourists, but it seems if the gardens were better promoted and utilized it would help towards the cost of maintaining them with more open hours not dependent on the volunteers.
Did Giuliani join this thread? The second you give up open space to "the city" or to "affordable housing" or whatever, it's GONE. The gardens make this neighborhood valuable. Many of them don't look pretty at the moment because it's been WINTER.
There are over 35 gardens in the area. I recommend visiting them all to get an idea of the cultural diversity in this neighborhood. And learn the history of the gardens. Many, if not most, were started by residents and activists who took it upon themselves to beautify this neighborhood, which had been ABANDONED by the CITY.
👏👏👏👏
I really hope we keep those gardens how they are.
They are all unique and are what contribute to the charm and make the difference between our neighborhood compared to everything else that get uniformised.
I love their randomness and unique layout.
I really hope Carlina won't destroy them as she destroyed the East River Park.
Those gardens are our lungs.
They are partially why I moved to the East Village.
I hope the City will make, for once, the right choice.
And for whom don't like them, move to an other neighborhood, more square, less poetic.
There is something for everyone on this planet.
Thousands of EVers enjoy the neighborhood gardens, don’t agree they need to be replaced, sorry. As was said, if you want to enjoy them more, join one and help out. They are locally run, for us, the locals.
Most of the gardens do their best to be open as much as possible to the public, not just volunteers. If there is a volunteer in the garden, it's supposed to be open to the public as well. The Green Thumb (part of the city parks dep) requires that these gardens are open 20 hours a week, 10 hours of that posted, and 5 of those hours on the weekend in order to receive city support. It's a difficult thing to enforce, but most city policy works that way. Quite a few of these gardens are owned by a trust made up of a board of gardeners making them privately owned. It's simply not an option to "convert" them to being owned by the city. It's specifically written in the bylaws of these groups that the space be preserved as a garden forever. Gardens being leased from the city, are in a much more precarious place, for example, the Elizabeth street garden (a beautiful place often open to the public) is having trouble renewing the lease. Lots of people in that neighborhood are angry at the city and want to keep this garden alive. I'm very wary of anyone's suggested "improvements" that evolve destruction. Some of these gardens have trees that have been growing for over 50 years. These are spaces that are open for all kinds of people, you don't even have to be interested in gardening to help out.
"happy to support 260 gardens"
according to grownyc there's over 600 gardens.
So less than half will be included for this.
what of the others?
https://www.grownyc.org/gardens/manhattan
what ever happened with the license agreements Greenthumb offered the gardens in 2018 or 2019 that freaked a lot of people out?
Is the east river park situation the numbing agent for a trajectory of similar events to follow with gardens?
lookey here, we already have "neighbor" in this thread shaming anyone who is "against" affordable housing. (you know "affordable housing", just like the never ending construction site next door being built for single people earning + $100k
Looking forward to learn more about this Bipartisan Infrastructure thingie. It appears to be about highways.?
The gardens are there for all.
Consider that because they are not heavily marketed AT YOU, like EVERYTHING else trying to get you to part with your cash,
and, not marketing at you as a coddled consumer,
and, thus, maybe you've learned to accept that, and are suspect of something NOT actively trying to sell you something or convince you that YOU NEED THIS,
and, now,
perhaps you rely on that hard sell to make you feel like YOU are invited to participate...Perhaps?
The info about garden access is readily available.
Gardens are required to have open hours.
The gardens are not selling anything.
The gardens are a much needed space for community.
The gardens and the garden volunteers do a great service for communities.
The new luxury buildings are including outdoor space.
Publicized during the pandemic was how this became a highly sought-after feature.
So by default(thinking) that would make the gardens for those who don't have such amenities.
Some entities perhaps don't believe poor people should have the same privileges as as their well heeled Neighbors.
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