The first gardens in Loisaida, a neighbourhood in Manhattan’s East Village, were created at the beginning of the 1970s, in the wake of the environmentalist movement, thanks to the initiative of a group of friends who, together with the local community, decided to use the many vacant lots, at a time when the city government considered the land to be of little value.
Today, nearly 30 years later, there are 60 of these gardens, each of them with their own history and character, and they provide an important frame of reference for life in the neighbourhood. They aren’t just simple community gardens, but informal community centres that run courses, host parties, entertainments, exhibitions, and provide a venue for baptisms and weddings.
For some years now, the gardens have been the subject of a battle between the city government – which has implemented a development scheme placing the vacant lots under threat – and groups of activists who have mobilised the entire neighbourhood to save their self-run spaces: some of them have become permanent, but many of them have been dismantled.