Art and the Community Garden

Decorative Iron Gate at the El Sol Brilliante in New York


If you visit a community garden in the winter it can look quite barren - a winter landscape. It does make me think about how art in the garden can bring beauty and winter interest to a community garden.

Art in and about community gardens can take many forms. Sculpture, murals, art from found objects, decorative fencing and structures are just some of the types of art found in community gardens.

Garden art is often ephemeral. Artist Noah Baen created such a piece many years ago, a Bulldozer fashioned from mugwort stems. Sorry I don't have a picture. Noah has also created a number of murals in community gardens.

Garden art can be moveable. Artist Tattfoo Tan creates moveable gardens, gardens on anything with wheels like a shopping cart or skateboard and a garden classroom on a bicycle. He also creates other garden based art.

Garden art projects can be everything from a medicinal herb garden, to guerilla garden seed packets, to a community garden / herb sanctuary in Charlotte, North Carolina with ceramic bird houses by artist Joan Bankemper .

In North Philadelphia artist Lily Yeh created the Village of Art and Humanities, 12 vacant lots that were transformed by art including many mosaic murals, benches, pathways and other structures.

Mural in Aspen Farms in Philadelphia

Bottles and Pavers artistically arranged at Diaz y Flores Garden in New York

Ladybug Rainwater Harvesting Tanks at New Vision Garden in Brooklyn, NY

Fantastical Creature mural painting on Rainwater Harvesting Tank in

the PS 4 Paradise Garden in Brooklyn, NY

The Garden itself can be art when viewed from above

The Garden of Eden

Today, January 8th, is the 25th Anniversary of the demolition of the Garden of Eden. An urban garden or an eARThWORK as it is titled by Adam Purple, the creator of the Garden of Eden. While it wasn't technically a community garden this anniversary is significant to me for several reasons. When I was beginning my career in community gardening I lived close to the Garden of Eden and visited a few times. It was impressive because it was created mostly by horse manure carried by Adam Purple on his bicycle from Central Park. It was a work in progress of concentric circles built from the center yin - yang planting. It was a wonderful place to see and be in.

There was a lot of controversy at the time as community gardens were looked at as a temporary land use and there was a demand for land for housing in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. There were over 50 community gardens in the neighborhood AND hundreds of vacant lots in the community. Developers were proposing all kinds of housing projects. The local community board and neighborhood activists were trying to make sure that the current residents weren't gentrified out of their community. Signs appeared in building windows saying "This land is not for sale - It is the property of the people of the Lower East Side. A number of building were being renovated by sweat equity.

Housing was proposed for the Garden of Eden but the garden and Adam had many supporters and there were legal and political efforts to save the Garden of Eden. There were other vacant lots in the community where the housing could have been built. Architects and Urban planners proposed alternative designs for the housing development that would have preserved most of the garden but Adam Purple would not compromise. There was a pending lawsuit to preserve the garden but there was no injunction against bulldozing. In a move that would be repeated 15 years later the city demolished the garden before the lawsuit was resolved.

This was the beginning of the ongoing efforts by developers and politicians to pit gardens against housing. It is of course a false argument because in order to have a livable community it is important to have quality housing and accessible open space. This is a sad anniversary but an important one that taught us lessons that are still relevant today. For me it reaffirms why I do what I do. Community Gardens and open spaces are important and necessary parts of the city I call home and any city. But not everyone feels that way so we have to continue to support those whose hands create our community open spaces.

Winter Gardening

Here in the Northeastern United States winter gardening for most of us consists of reading, scheming and dreaming. That can mean reading a book about gardening, perusing catalogues, making a garden plan, ordering seeds or just sitting and drinking a cup of tea or coffee and staring at a snow covered garden and seeing a lush, fertile garden in your mind.

This is cyberspace after all so much of that stuff is done these days on computers and smart phones. I've spent some time over the past few days looking at websites to see what's out there to recommend. I searched "community garden(s) and "community gardening" and was happy to see this blog showing up in the 3rd or 4th page of community gardening results. By far the most viewed pages were the American Community Gardening Association website pages. It is the best place to start a search for information whether you are starting a community garden, looking for a garden near home or doing research about community gardens. It is the only website I have listed on this blog so far. The other website I highly recommend is City Farmer .This is their older site which has hundreds of articles between the years of 1994 and 2008. You can literally spend days looking through articles. They have a new site called City Farmer News with over 75 categories of information - everything from Africa to Zimbabwe. You can find excellent information on composting and all kinds of cool stuff. Today in one of those cool articles I discovered that January 8th, 2011 is the 25th anniversary of the destruction of The Garden of Edena seminal event in the history of New York City community gardening. An exhibit of photographs chronicling this garden or earthwork will be at the Fusion Arts Museum from Feb 2 to Feb 20.

If you have the inclination to look at community gardens you can find websites for gardens from New Orleans (inspiring), Edinburgh, (Scotland - always wanted to go there), Silicon Valley (called 'Sustainable Community Gardens' ) , Plattsburgh, NY (cold) or O'ahu (hot and real dirt gardening in the winter). A trip around the country and the world can be inspiring to the gardener frozen out of his or her garden.

There is so much more out there. A lot of it is repetitious but there is always something new to be discovered even to those that think they have seen it all. Many sites, like this blog invite comments and for those who like to be more interactive there are listservs and meetups to ask questions, give answers or opinions or just follow others conversations. The ACGA listserv is a good place to find interesting discussions and once you sign up you can search the archives. But that's another story for another post.

Community Gardens Are Good Neighbors

Good fences make good neighbors. This old adage is true but it is only the beginning of being a good neighbor for community gardeners. Community Gardens can be seen as a positive neighborhood resource offering neighborhood residents space to grow vegetables, herbs and flowers, a place to meet neighbors, habitat for birds and insects and an amenity that improves property values .

Surprise, surprise, Community Gardens are not always seen as good neighbors. Other residents might see a community garden as a nuisance that brings unwanted visitors to the neighborhood both human and rat. Next door neighbors might be upset about noise, smells or problems with their buildings possibly caused by the garden. I know of a case where an adjacent landlord would not allow the gardeners to divert rainwater from his downspout which was not more than 2 feet from the garden because he was upset that he could not purchase the garden lot, so he was not willing to support he gardens in any way. There are many instances where community gardeners and neighbors do not get along.

In a recent posting on the ACGA community garden list serv someone asked if anyone had a survey she could use to gauge neighborhood concerns about a new community garden in their neighborhood. While this might be a good tool to have, it seems to me that this is a case where if you have to ask then this might not be the place for a community garden. Successful community gardens are created from the ground up by community residents who want a garden in their neighborhood. Attempting to get agreement before the project starts from all neighbors is probably a good idea but fraught with possible scenarios for short circuiting the yet to be community garden. Just one neighbor could bring up a concern that the folks don't have an answer for because they haven't had a chance to create their vision and run it for a season. I am totally in favor of a community garden being governed by consensus with every member having a say but to allow a neighbor not involved in the garden to block a project does not make sense to me.

A community garden group has to spend quality time being good neighbors by being open to all to join or to visit. Having good signage that informs passersby about the garden is important. Making connections and developing collaborations with community organizations, schools, senior centers and day care centers takes time but shows that the community garden is a community amenity and not just a private garden. Knowing and listening to concerns of adjacent neighbors and making realistic adjustments based on these concerns once the garden is up and running is also part of being a good neighbor.

There are instances where a garden group can do everything to be a good neighbor and positive community resource but marginalized groups like homeless squatters, drug dealers or substance abusers will still see a community garden as a threat to their lifestyles. One such case happened about 6 weeks ago at the Hattie Carthan Community Garden in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. A fire burned their shed that was used to store supplies for their community market.

When I heard this my first thought was that a garden member that did not like the market or someone involved might have done this. There are times when infighting can cause real problems for a garden group. More likely it was squatters living in the abandoned building adjacent to the garden who were the arsonists unhappy that the market was drawing attention to their illegal activities. So here is a case where surveying the next door neighbors did not make sense, listening to their concerns (that the garden not exist?) would be ridiculous and that trying to be a good neighbor to these folks would be akin to abetting many criminal activities.

There are very community centric issues that one finds in a neighborhood like Bedford Stuyvesant that one might not find in a smaller less urbanized place. So how a community garden group relates to their neighbors will vary based on these local issues. As important as it is to work really hard at building a strong group, this strong group has to work really hard at being a good neighbor for the community garden to be successful and sustainable.

Lots of Community Gardening Research

Research about community gardening is happening on many fronts. Over the last few weeks news and events have come to my attention and I attended a workshop all concerning research on community gardening. The first was a simple notice on the ACGA listserv about a study in England that found that people who have allotment gardens (one of the European versions of community gardens that can be found in England, Sweden and France among other places) and especially seniors tended to be "significantly" healthier than those who did not have allotments. A relatively small study of around 180 subjects but none the less shows the health benefits of increased physical activity and eating fresh produce.

A second notice on the ACGA listserv announced an article that is a review of over 50 research studies over the past 10 years about community gardening in the Journal of Community Practice, a journal of research by and for social workers. 'Review and analysis of the Benefits, Purposes and Motivations Associated with Community Gardening in the United States' by Carrie Draper and Darcy Freedman analyze the research in terms of primary theme and secondary themes. They found that much of the research is qualitative with a dearth of quantitative research.

The Living Concrete/Carrot City exhibit at the New School also has been a forum for public panel discussions. The last in the series which I unfortunately missed was titled Engaging the University in Urban Agriculture. The premise was that much of the research up to this point has come from the land grant/ cooperative extension schools and focused more on the agriculture aspect of community gardening/urban agriculture. The need for a focus on additional liberal arts, social science and design research is clear. There has been some research as was pointed out in the 'Journal of Community Practice' article but there is a need for additional research, in particular qualitative research.

A workshop that I attended last week is the first step in a year long project titled Five Borough Farm: The Future of Farming in New York City that will look in depth at urban agriculture in New York City. A project of the Design Trust for Public Space that embarks on year long research initiatives relating to improving public space in the city. The workshop goal was to get input from practitioners and advocates before the research begins. Community gardening / urban agriculture in New York City is flourishing at the moment but so much is happening so quickly that it is hard to keep track of it all. What are the benefits of all of this activity? Are the outcomes from urban farms, rooftop farms, school and community gardens positive for the neighborhoods and the city? What are the variables we need to look at? Do the outputs justify the inputs? What are the social and political effects of all of this activity? There are many more questions and few answers.

These four publications and events point out how robust the community gardening movement is; much is happening and a lot of research has been done or is in progress to chronicle and measure what it all means.

What Good is Community Gardening?

What Good is Community Greening is an often cited and quoted article written by David Malakoff for the ACGA Community Greening Review in 1995. In fact it was one of the first in depth articles that looked at the benefits of community gardening and greening. I was part of the discussions by the ACGA Board of Directors at the time on whether to use the word "Gardening" or "Greening". While it may matter to some who are looking for the most accurate word to describe what folks are doing, this blog is named Community Gardening hence the title of this post. Maybe we will look at the gardening-greening debate another time.

Over the course of my work over the past few weeks, I have supervised the building of 2 rainwater harvesting structures in 2 gardens in the Bronx. How that happened and several small occurrences gave several uncommon answers to the question " What good is community gardening?"

The first installation was at the Jacquline Denise Davis Garden (JDD), a garden that I have mentioned in previous posts. This garden is one of the host gardens for the GrowNYC LearnIt Grow It Eat It Program a program I helped create that connects high school students to community gardens. The students and the community gardeners were using a shade structure with a collapsing roof to get shelter from the rain and sun. We had a design for a new structure from a landscape architecture graduate student. With that in hand the Learn It Grow It Eat It program, and two neighborhood organizations, the Morrisania Revitalization Corp. and BASICS Inc. allocated the funds for the materials. Clients from BASICS Inc. helped with the demolition of the existing structure and building the new one. A crew from the Sustainable South Bronx Best Academy assisted in the construction and the rainwater harvesting installation. Learn It Grow It Eat It student interns helped with site preparation.

This community garden was a catalyst for neighborhood organizations to work together, teenagers and adults to be part of a building process and learn construction skills in a hands on project. The men from BASICS Inc. regardless of whatever hardships they have endured in their lives were happy to be involved in something constructive. The Best crew learned some new skills and were able to see a project through to completion.

Two very interesting things happened with members of the Best Crew. One woman kept saying she was afraid of heights and was not going on the roof to attach the roofing. With some encouragement from her crew members and courage on her own part she made it onto the roof and took part in that process. When we completed the project she was interviewed by a film crew who she told several times about her accomplishment.

One of the last things we do in a Rainwater Harvesting installation is to secure the tank with rope or wire to eyebolts to make sure it doesn't tip over or shift in the wind. I usually ask if any boy scouts or girl scouts are in the crew that might know how to tie knots. I handed a 100 foot long high strength rope to several people and went off to check on the rest of the crew. When I came back they had fashioned a very elaborate but very secure tie-down. The crew member who was leading the tie-down crew had been a paratrooper and learned knots for securing equipment and supplies that had to be lowered or raised into a helicopter. He was able to use his skills in a community garden.

The Neighborhood Advisory Committee Garden was the second garden to receive a Rainwater Harvesting structure. This garden is one of the Bronx Land Trust gardens and the land trust was able to raise the funds for the materials. One of the gardeners and a crew from the Green Apple Corps assisted with the installation. The Green Apple Corps members attended top high schools and colleges in the city and elsewhere and are learning environmental restoration, green roof and water management skills. Most of them have no construction skills but were able to master the use of basic power tools and carpentry techniques.

When the benefits of community gardens are discussed growing food, habitat for wildlife and neighborhood beautification are most often mentioned. Providing hands on opportunities for job training or rehabilitation programs are rarely mentioned. I don't think anyone has ever mentioned that a community garden provided an opportunity for a former paratrooper to utilize his skills or a young woman to conquer her fear of heights. To me these moments give us a glimpse into What Good is Community Gardening.

Garden Membership - Open to All?

How do you give everyone an equal opportunity to be a member of a community garden? Sounds like it should be simple but there are complicating factors. Theoretically it might make sense to start over each year with a lottery of some kind to assign plots. But if you think about what goes into making a community garden successful a lottery would not make any sense at all.

Community Gardens need some degree of continuity for the group to gain strength and cohesiveness and to develop social systems for setting rules and making decisions. To make a comparison with healthy soil, it takes many years to create a healthy soil by adding compost, using cover crops and allowing beneficial organisms to build up in the soil. A garden group needs people with various skills, time on their hands and the dedication to making the group successful. Usually the first stab at setting garden rules needs a lot of tweaking as the rules are tested by real world situations. The rules may be too strict for all but the most dedicated members who have lots of time on their hands or they may be too ambiguous where people can interpret the rule in several ways and each could be technically right.

Sometimes a garden member is very good at fixing or repairing tools, fences or garden structures out of found objects. Some gardeners are expert gardeners or horticulturists and provide the answers to gardening related questions. Other gardeners are astute at getting municipal services or donations from businesses. It would be counterproductive to the social sustainability of a community garden to remove members with these assets that are so necessary. But maybe the new people would have similar or even better skills. That is possible but a successful group has a certain chemistry that may take years to develop. To try to recreate this chemistry each year would be very difficult or I would say nearly impossible. To make another soil analogy, if you were to remove the soil from a garden and bring in new soil each year it would not be a productive soil or use of time.

Recently this question of a garden lottery came up in a listserv discussion. A garden that was on property owned by a college was being built on and moved to a smaller location. The gardeners fought the move but the college prevailed. The plots in the new garden the gardeners were told would have to be filled by an annual lottery to give everyone (particularly students) a chance at a space in the garden. The college may have seen this as an opportunity to get rid of some of the most vocal gardeners but even if their intent was to be egalitarian it was still misguided for the reasons I mentioned above.

The discussion did bring up some interesting ideas; One gardener wrote about creating an apprenticeship level of membership as a way to determine those most interested,

" In recent years there has been such an explosion of interest in gardening, so we instituted an apprentice system to be able to make space in our gardening community, given the limits of our physical space. This season we have about 15-20 apprentices. Apprentice members are asked to fulfill membership requirements (open hour shifts, 4 meetings, and 4 workday/events) for a season after which they are placed on a waiting list for a plot. This system is only two years old, but so far, every apprentice who has fulfilled their requirements received their own plot in the following season. During their apprentice year, apprentices learn how the garden works and are involved in maintaining our common ornamental beds, our welcome gardens and our community herb garden. There is also a vegetable plot set aside for apprentice gardeners to work on, with some guidance from an experienced member.

Our members are very active and our garden is pretty highly-functioning and I'm not sure how true that would be if there was an almost complete annual turnover and a lottery system. I don't think a lottery as described here would allow for any sense of continuity or growth of a garden community. I do think it is important to create a meaningful role for interested newcomers. "

Another gardener talked about a similar system where new members tend communal plots and the most committed are then offered an individual plot when one is available,

" ...we take all comers. We're in our third year of having community plots and it seems to work pretty well. We have 26 individual beds and then 3 (growing to 4) supersized beds that are community plots. New members generally start out with the community plots and get to do as much or as little work as they want. They can also work on our landscaping/non-edible areas. It becomes clear pretty soon who is committed to the garden and who just wants to play in the dirt a bit. Those who are clearly committed get offered an individual plot (or a share) when one opens up, and with our newly transient population, beds have been opening up annually. We also have some large pots by some beds and sometimes they are used by those without their own beds. Those working the communal beds are seen as of equal status as everyone else, and it is important that some old-timers stick around because they get to teach the newbies what they know."

These are good suggestions from garden groups that have been in existence for a number of years and have dealt with the difficult decisions. While to an outsider it might make sense to give everyone a chance at a garden plot through a lottery, the reality is that it is not as clear cut as that. At the beginning of the season when a lottery would be held many people may sign up out of curiosity but then find that they don't have the time or interest to be a community gardener. This happens with new member who join a garden from a waiting list or directly even without a lottery. Yes there are instances where a garden that is run by a small group or even a single individual may not be open to new members (a subject for another post). But in most community gardens run democratically or by consensus, if someone is truly committed to community gardening the group will quickly recognize that and welcome that individual.