NYC's community gardeners petition for legal protections
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Yemi Amu (left) gives a tour of Oko Farms, New York City’s largest and only outdoor aquaponics facility. Community gardens have few legal protections that would prevent them from being evicted. Image courtesy of Oko Farms, file
By David Brand
New York’s 550 community gardens provide vital patches of green squeezed into the concrete cityscape, but their minders have few rights to the land they maintain, harvest and open up to their neighbors. A coalition of 52 community gardeners have petitioned to change that.
They have partnered with the New York City Community Garden Coalition and the environmental law organization Earthjustice to urge the Parks Department and other city agencies to grant the gardens legal protections by designating them as Critical Environmental Areas, or CEAs.
CEAs were created under the New York State Environmental Quality Review Act, but there are just two in New York City — Jamaica Bay in Queens and Ridgewood Reservoir on the border of RIdgewood and Bushwick, Brooklyn. The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation makes the CEA designations.
The coalition specifically asks the Parks Department to recommend designating 40 gardens as CEAs over the next six months. They also request that Parks conduct a yearlong review of every other community garden on city-owned land and recommend CEA designation for additional qualifying gardens as well.
Parks Department spokesperson Dan Kastanis said the agency is reviewing the petition.
New York City’s community gardens are concentrated in predominantly low- and middle-income Black and Latino communities of Northern Manhattan, Central Brooklyn and the South Bronx, according to a Parks Department garden site map. Local residents there have turned vacant lots into flourishing farms, in spite of generations of disinvestment by the public and private sector.
“When our communities were abandoned by the city, it was, and still is, through spontaneous acts of faith in one another that we came together to reclaim our communities and honor our sense of human dignity,” said NYC Community Garden Coalition President Raymond Figueroa, Jr.
But a suddenly hot real estate market can jeopardize the community gardens, which have little recourse when faced with eviction. So can a dispute with the Parks Department.
Community gardens are predominantly concentrated in low and middle-income communities of color. Image via NYC Parks
“For decades, community gardeners have benefitted New Yorkers by increasing access to fresh fruits and vegetables, strengthening social and cultural connections, and supporting healthy urban habitat for pollinators and other wildlife,” said Earthjustice attorney Alexis Andiman.
“It’s time for New York City to return the favor by working with gardeners to secure the protections that gardens so richly deserve.”
The state’s Environmental Quality Review Act authorizes agencies to designate land as a CEA if it meets certain criteria. The land must provide a benefit to human health; represent a natural setting; upholdsagricultural, social, cultural, historic, recreational, or educational values; or fulfill ecological or hydrological needs that may be eroded by disturbances.
A few of the initial 40 gardens identified as potential CEAs are located in Queens, including patches of land cultivated by the organizations Rockaway Youth Task Force and DIVAS for Social Justice in Springfield Gardens.
DIVAS founder Clarissa James has offered her garden, known as the Garden of Resilience, as a space for outdoor classes and other community services. She highlighted the importance of gardens like hers in an August interview with the Eagle.
“Access to green spaces in Black and Brown communities is limited,” James said. “To protect our community let’s open up our parks and gardens to be learning spaces as our children navigate our new normal.”
