On September 17, the sun sets on the Garden Settlement of 2002; a law which protected community gardens from being developed by real estate projects. A new set of proposed rules to be released by Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe is aimed at preserving the 282 garden sites assigned to their department by making it harder for a developer to transfer a garden for a non-garden use. No decisions will be made until after a public hearing.
“We are interested in what people have to say,” said Benepe who calls community gardens “unique public spaces.” Benepe boasts that no active Parks garden has been lost during the Bloomberg administration but admits that the word “permanent” has been left out of the language in the proposed rules.
Organizations like the Community Garden Coalition (NYCCGC) are not happy with the proposed rules and stated so in a letter to gardeners and garden supporters.
“NYCCGC is firmly in opposition to these proposed rules because they threaten all gardens on City property with development and do not offer the same protections as the 2002 Community Gardens Agreement,” read part of the letter.
According to the CGC, supporters should demand rules that would make community gardens permanent and allow pathways for the creation of more gardens.
Community gardens and the Green Thumb organization formed as a result of landowners who were defaulting on their taxes and abandoning property in the 1970s. Local residents began to “seed-bomb” these locations with the intentions of beautifying the areas and eventually earned a license from Mayor Ed Koch for volunteers to maintain the areas. Currently, there are 40 community gardens in Queens – most of which are a fraction of an acre – that would be affected.
