A Brief History of Community Gardening
Did you know that 2023 marked the 50th anniversary of the first community garden in NYC? Liz Christy started the first community garden at the intersection of Bowery and Houston St in 1973 on an abandoned lot. Liz Christy’s garden still exists today, along with hundreds of other community gardens throughout NYC administered by the GreenThumb program. The history of community gardening goes much further back. The Diggers were a group formed in 1600s England that planted vegetables in the commons to protest rising prices of food. During WWI and WWII, “Victory Gardens” were established in private and public property to boost morale and supplement rations. One of these victory gardens became the Pound Ridge Garden Club. The quote used in the email signature for my local community garden, Riverview Community Garden, comes from one the Pound Ridge Garden Club’s members Augusta Carter: ”You don’t have a garden just for yourself. You have it to share. But you have to be willing to do the work.”
There is an argument to be made that community gardening history begins at the beginning of human civilization. The centers of origin, where farming began around the world, can also be described as community gardening in a sense.
The Riverview Community Garden will turns 30 years old this year. It was built on 285 Ogden Ave in Jersey City, an abandoned, overgrown city lot where a house fire had occurred. Two residents, Greg Brickey and Kathy Packard, applied to Jersey City for a grant to create a fenced community garden. In 1995, Anne-Marie Uebbing, Director of the NJ Department of Housing, Economic Development and Commerce, granted the lot to the community on a permanent charter, making it an integral part of Riverview Fisk Park. The garden is registered as a New Jersey Nonprofit Corporation, and has been granted Federal tax exemption under 501(c)(3). Our garden is part of the Jersey City’s Adopt-A-Lot program.
The origins of community gardening stem from acts of civil disobedience also known as “guerrilla gardening”. Guerrilla gardening is the practice of growing trees, flowers, or food on land that the gardeners do not have legal rights to cultivate. Part of the practice of guerilla gardening is throwing “Seed Bombs” into abandoned lots to beautify them and promote more native biodiversity. To make seed bombs, combine compost and clay with native wildflower seeds and roll them into a ball usually about the size of a large marble.
