New York Community Gardens
Liz Christy Bowery-Houston Community Garden founded in 1973 by Liz Christy and Green Guerillas, is one of the first community gardens in New York. Since then and up until now a whole culture has emerged with now more than 700 gardens in New York, run and maintained by residents. Even though the gardens are often fenced for practical reasons, the culture is committed to openness and everyone that wants to can take part by showing up on the gardening days. On top of being local gathering places, the gardens also serve as places for minority cultures, as playgrounds for children and places for the elderly, some are vegetable gardens, others are used for parties, birthdays and a lot of other stuff.



The lot of people working for a greener city are well organized in a variety of unions. At The Hub you can see links to the different organizations, and get an impression of the variety of ideas and aims behind urban gardening.

At Oasis and community gardening mapping project you can see maps of the city where the different gardens are marked. The map to the left shows the density of gardens in Lower east side where the concentration is highest.

 

The second map to the left shows the community gardens as light-green fields, you can on the internet click through to a description of the garden, and in some cases continue to the private homepage for the garden, with for instance a program for the activities in the garden.
 
Below are a few examples of community gardens in New York.
 

United Community Center Garden
The group began gardening only a few years ago, started by folks from the United Community Center nearby. It’s a large site that uses its space for growing vegetables for sale at a farmers market as part of an afterschool and summer youth program. They work with the children in the daycare and afterschool programs by using the garden as an educational resource and for various cultural events throughout the summer (link)

  

Malcolm X Day Care Center
Children grow flowers and vegetables in this garden. They also have picnics and barbeques. Malcolm X Daycare started this garden in 1980 in order to provide an outdoor space for children attending the center to play. Previously children had only the roof of the daycare building as outdoor space. (link)


Le Petit Versailles/Allied Productions
The garden is often used for screenings, workshops and more. Every other sunday there is open yoga in the garden. The picture below comes from their homepage Le Petit Versailles
 
6BC Botanical Garden
User organized Botanical Garden.(link)