Become a guerrilla gardener

Vacant lots and other neglected spots around your neighborhood are natural for community gardens

Remember Johnny Appleseed—the legendary horticulturist who roamed the countryside sowing seeds that would grow into bountiful apple trees? You can play that same role in your community by planting flowers and even vegetables in the vacant spots no one takes care of. Nature has a remarkable way of repopulating empty lands, and you can help out by tossing a few seeds through the chain links in a fenced-off property, planting some wild roses in a drab media strip or setting out ferns outside a local business that doesn’t bother with any landscaping.

Enterprising gardeners across the continent have taken over abandoned land to plant vegetables and flowers.

Or you can go a step further like some green-thumbed New Yorkers did in the 1970s by growing gardens in waste lands. The Clinton Community Garden now a lovely oasis in the heart of the once minfamous Hell’s Kitchen district, began in 1977 when a group of 48th Street residents noticed tomato plants growing out of the rubble on a vacant lot. The property belonged to the city, and the neighbors rented it through a special program. They cleared the area and built paths out of bricks found on the site. A serene public garden was created in the front while the back portion of the lot was opened to local residents who wanted to tend their own vegetables and flowers.

But in 1981 the city prepared to sell the site for development, prompting community protests and a grassroots fundraising campaign that raised more than $70,000 to save the Clinton Community Garden as a public park. Many other community gardens, some of them true guerrilla campaigns waged by gardeners who did not have permission to beautify the lots, have since become parts of the New York park system—bringing refuges of green and community spirit to neighborhoods across the city.

The Clinton Community Garden is still a community effort, with volunteers planning and caring for the herb garden, rose beds, grape arbor, rock garden, Native American medicinal plants, beehive, shrubbery, trees, paths, lawn and a special display of more than 100 plant species indigenous to New York. The garden is open to the public from dawn to dusk and hosts picnics, pot luck suppers, chamber music concerts, gardening classes, herb workshops, a harvest celepation, art festivals, many birthday parties and a citywide Summer Solstice celepation.



Excerpted from The Great Neighborhood Book by Jay Walljasper and Project for Public Spaces, which can be ordered via the PPS Website. To order the book in electronic format, please click here.

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