free digger

Our Gardens, Our Future

Haja Worley and Karen Washington from the New York City Community Garden Coalition. Click here for more photographs of the Our Gardens, Our Future meeting.

I went to the the Our Gardens, Our Futures meeting last Saturday, April 2. The meeting was organized by an ad hoc group called the Forum Planning Committee, which included folks from the New York City Community Garden Coalition, More Gardens!, the Green Guerillas, and at least one fellow Garden Kvetch (Hi Jon!). According to the flyer for the event, this was a citywide meeting for community gardeners to “help decide the next steps gardeners should take to meet our biggest challenges.”

Edie Stone, the director of GreenThumb, the city agency that administers the community garden program, said it most succinctly, “How do you translate a grassroots, anarchistic, rebellious movement into an institution--and still keep what’s vital about it?” She was referring to her own organization, but I think it is a challenge that we all face.

1. Mark,

   The only correx I have, is that the gardeners year after year had to pay $250.  This year it was $425.00. Hopefully, with the help of friends and strangers, it will go back down and never hit $500.00.

   Posted by Toby Joan Brandt  on  04/04  at  09:51 AM

2. Thanks, Toby, for looking this over and letting me know. I’ll make the correction.

   Cheers,

   Mark

   Posted by  on  04/04  at  10:02 AM

3. [Reposted from the CyberGardens list]

   Friends,

   We all owe Mark Leger a big hand for creating his garden blog - http://www.freedigger.com/. which will share the visions of many of NYC’s community gardeners and serve as a forum for updates on the evolving relationship between the paid, always well meaning and sometimes professional garden managers and facilitators - NY Parks/Green Thumb, NY Restoration, The Trust for Public Land, Green Guerillas, and the grass roots gardeners who do the work, creating and maintaining NYC’s Community Gardens.

   Alas, I had to work, so I could not be at Saturday’s convocation, but Mark’s Blog will serve as an honest forum for the evolution of a movement with permanent gardens. Thanks Mark!

   A quote from the conference -

   “Edie Stone, the director of GreenThumb <http://www.greenthumbnyc.org> , the city agency that administers the community garden program, said it most succinctly, “How do you translate a grassroots, anarchistic, rebellious movement into an institution--and still keep what’s vital about it?” She was referring to her own organization, but I think it is a challenge that we all face.”

   I posit that while some gardeners have been anarchistic and rebellious, and draw the wellsprings of their inspiration from political movements, that there are others who use the political process to create and maintain volunteer community gardens as valid, self-sustaining community gardens. In other words, politics as a means, not the end, the political act, dealing with whomever “Caesar,” happens to be, towards the creation and sustainance of community gardens.

   I believe that more than anything else, community gardening is not an entitlement program but an opportunity for service to community. We are citizens who produce value and service for our communities - it’s really a case of “lead, follow, or get out of the way.”

   Community gardens are another American place where citizens will provide for their communities what a budget strapped city will NOT do, namely create and maintain the open green spaces that our communities require; to take city land, more and more expensive in today’s real estate bubble, and grow food for our hungry, and to create public, noncommercial meeting places for the neighborhood residents to re-create themselves, without having to buy a corporatized cup of coffee.

   I differ with Edie Stone in believing that the issue here is not “translat(ing) a grassroots, anarchistic, rebellious movement into an institution--and still keep what’s vital about it,” but finally getting serious about this city’s community gardens - creating permanence through real zoning on the City’s land use map, and requiring accountablity from volunteers to maintain their gardens for their larger communities, making sure they are accessible, safe and embrace the full diversity of their communities - no matter where they come from. The garden gate is there to protect, but never exclude - the community must never feel that the garden is separate from themselves, run by “them,” instead of “us.”

   The issues here is how well the powers that be support and help “govern,” community gardens do their jobs in keeping NYC’s community gardens accessible by promoting democratic, non-cliquish, genuinely democratic governance, keeping their physical sites safe, getting their soil tested, their garden sites insured, their land protected in a city that closes firehouses and has not formally accepted community gardens as a registered land use category under NYC’s zoning resolution.

   The gardeners with their trowels, sore backs, and tens of thousands of volunteer hours and have given this city the equivalent of Central Park in park acreage to the citizens of the City of New York over the last 30 years. 

   What gardeners need, in this old gardener’s opinion, is community garden zoning and formal placement on the City Map, i.e., “mapping”, best practice self-governance coaching that keeps gardens accessible to their communities and truly sustainable, piping of water from the NYC water supply into all of our gardens, and official respect for community gardeners as volunteer public benefactors, just like the “dollar a year,” guys like Mayor Bloomberg and Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff, instead of “clients,” in social service terminology who have to be watched, lest they run around with garden shears.

   This “normalization, “ process is going to be interesting to watch, and I’ve shared this website and information with the ACGA listserv because it’s always best to learn from other’s mistakes, and see if the “reinvention,” of the wheel can be avoided.

   Again, Thanks to Mark Leger for creating his garden blog. It will open our process to anyone who cares to look at it.

   Everbest,
   Adam Honigman
   Volunteer,
   Clinton Community Garden
   NYC

   Posted by  on  04/04  at  10:04 PM

4. herbal garden of eny a member of the east new york garden association was also part of the planning group. we met with rebecca and hannah office and three members attend this discussion group.
   at the event saturday april 2, 2004 three members attend the discussion and took part in two seperate parts of the breakout.
   herbal garden of eny has attend many of ny colition meetings representing eny garden association.  so please remember we put in our vast knowledge in order to help the forum happen.
   thank you.
   johanna e. willins, president
   herbal garden of eny

   Posted by  on  04/04  at  10:22 PM

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