1908 Parks Annual Report image of children tending the De Witt Clinton Park Farm Garden.

Constant Gardens for New York

By Christine C. Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito
New York Times
August 18, 2010
Christine C. Quinn is the speaker of the New York City Council, and Melissa Mark-Viverito is the chairwoman of its parks committee.

Excerpt:

Community Gardens are as much a part of our city as the Empire State Building or Times Square.

Yet it wasn’t long ago that their existence was threatened. As mayor in the late 1990s, Rudolph Giuliani tried to auction them off to developers. But gardeners dug in, held rallies. One protester chained himself to a building in a garden. The state attorney general filed a lawsuit to stop the auctions. Some of the gardens were sold to nonprofit groups. And, in a settlement agreement in the lawsuit, almost all of the rest — nearly 300 of them — ended up under the jurisdiction of the Parks and Recreation Department. The city agreed not to sell many of them for eight years.

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