Liz Christy in 1975, in one of the Lower East Side gardens she started. Photo by Donald Loggins.
“The collective work of homesteaders and squatters to stabilize an environment of spiraling decline was joined by the Lower East Side’s community garden movement, which sought to reclaim turf from encroaching urban blight. The resident gardeners set out to transform vacant lots strewn with trash, bricks, old appliances, and automobiles into green spaces. The movement’s first community garden began in 1973, when a group of residents threw balloons containing plant seeds and bulbs into a large fenced-in parcel on Houston Street near Bowery. The activists, who called themselves Green Guerillas, assisted local residents and block associations in starting gardens and, at times, gaining permission to use city-owned properties…”
- Christopher Mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City.
(Source: morusnyc.org)
Touring the Lower East Side Ecology Center, a garden between Avenues B and C on 7th Street. For more information on MoRUS tours, visit http://www.morusnyc.org/tours
Touring community gardens in the Bronx (Brook Park). For more information on MoRUS tours, visit http://www.morusnyc.org/tours
Time’s Up! Dumpster Diving Team Patch
Check out www.morusnyc.org for more information about the upcoming Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space and www.times-up.org for information about Time’s Up! direct action environmental group
(Source: Flickr / reclaimedurbanspace)
