Friends, Community Gardens Ain't Permanent Unless You're Mapped as a Garden, have a good land use convenant, or Own the Land. This story is absolutely classic.
Everbest, Adam Honigman Volunteer, Clinton Community Garden NY TimesApril 13, 2005 The Sanctuary vs. the Oasis By MICHAEL BRICK omewhere in the world, gardens are tranquil and churches are altars of gold. On Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, where rumbling trucks and buses make their way past Hoyt Street, transcendence comes from humbler things. There is the Hoyt Street Garden, just big enough for half-court basketball if not for the forsythias and the cherry tree. It offers no silence, only something quieter for the eyes. "When I come to the garden, I just relax," said Paulo Soares, 76. "A lot of friends passing by say hello." And there is the Iglesia Presbiteriana del Cristo Vivo, pink paint peeling from its walls as if the hand of God went at it with big divine fingernails. The cross is crumbling, the window frames are crumbling, the doorknobs are crumbling and so are the doors. "But the people are lovely," said Judith Mulet, who worships there. "Do you know what I mean?" For three decades, they stood side by side, church and garden, two kinds of sanctuaries in a hard, noisy place, but now success is making a failure of their harmony. The corner they share is in the heart of what people call New Brooklyn, where a fancy apartment house has a swimming pool and where steak tartare can be had for $18. For the church, which is part of the Presbytery of New York, New Brooklyn is an opportunity. By building rental apartments on a patch of land it owns, its leaders say they will be able afford to finance repairs. For the gardeners and neighbors, this is a problem. Their oasis - their garden - is that small patch of land. The impasse is one small part of the broad transformation making the city confront its identity one neighborhood at a time, from El Barrio to Hell's Kitchen to Boerum Hill, in a process typically perceived as a battle between greedy corporate types and helpless ordinary people. But on this corner, there are no obvious villains; there is hardly much animosity. Nothing is personal, but something has to give. Margaret Cusack, one of the original gardeners, keeps yellowing pages of photographs dating back to 1975, when the Hoyt Street Garden was sown. "It was a very ugly vacant lot," Ms. Cusack said. "Tenants were out here sweating eight hours on Saturdays." Back then, the oak tree that now shades the benches had three leaves. A young girl left it by the front gate in a pot with a note, and the gardeners invited her class to help plant the tree. The planting took, and so did the communal spirit it set off. The gardeners began a children's story hour called Pooh & Company back when Pooh was in fashion. They padlocked the garden gate, then handed out hundreds of keys. "The only rules are that when you use the garden, leave the gate wide open and encourage others to come in," a flier handed out with each key says. In this spirit, the garden thrives. There are three teetering benches of wrought iron and wood, a brick pathway meandering past a small birdbath, a mural, some rosebushes and flower beds, all contained within a few hundred square feet. "It's not only beautiful, but it's done so much for the community," said Regina Kelly, a former prosecutor who lives nearby. "I don't care how much money you have or where you're from, beauty is beauty." A master gardener oversees what is planted, but suggestions are welcome. Because the land is not owned by the city, it was untouched by an agreement three years ago to preserve about 400 community gardens and raze 150 others for housing. Last month, Ms. Cusack received a letter notifying her that the property owner wanted the land back immediately. "I said to them, 'I can't cope with this,' " she said. " 'You're telling us something very monumental here.' " She circulated petitions, posted a note on the garden's fence and started talking about raising money, doing all the usual things community groups do when a beloved neighborhood fixture is threatened. Often, the next step is to vilify the developer, corporation or sports franchise on the other side. But the gardeners of Hoyt Street quickly discovered that loaded language can be riddled with oversimplification and distortion. The inside of Iglesia Presbiteriana del Cristo Vivo is wood-paneled, with 29 pews lined up crookedly under the pipes of a noisy exposed heating system. Good Friday's service drew 12 people. The pastor, the Rev. Alfredo Ferreras, preached in Spanish with a rising sing-song cadence. A young boy rocked back and forth. Soon the child's mother led him out, past the cracked exit sign and the makeshift bulletin board thumb-tacked to the paneling. The sparse attendance was typical; it was a holy day but it was also a weekday. Mareily Nieves, 36, was there. She has attended services at the church for as long as she can remember. It was founded in the early 1970's, around the time she came to New York from Cuba. Shortly after taking over the property, the church allowed its neighbors to turn the patch of bricks and weeds next door into a garden, for use free. The arrangement came to seem part of the natural order of things. "I got married in the church," Ms. Nieves said, "and we even took pictures in the garden." Over the years, as the church's boiler, heating system and facade fell into disrepair, parishioners like Ms. Nieves clung to the church as a substitute for the families they could not visit in Latin America. They raised money each September, selling sodas and rice and beans at the Atlantic Antic street fair. But the church's troubles had deeper roots. The congregation had been coping with the changes that would eventually be known as New Brooklyn for a long time. "A lot of Spanish people used to live in the neighborhood," Ms. Nieves said. "Now there's like, four parishioners that are from the neighborhood. Our pastor can't afford to live there." Pastor Ferreras travels from Jamaica, Queens, to preach, and Ms. Nieves travels from Staten Island to hear him. Hoping to build a residence for the minister and to finance repairs, the church leaders consulted an architect, Ms. Nieves said. They were told that the first step was to regain control of the property, so they sent that letter to Ms. Cusack. The gardeners have proposed making a monthly $100 donation to the church, but Ms. Nieves said the church leaders were uncomfortable with some conditions attached to the money, such as sweeping and shoveling the sidewalks and maintaining light fixtures, in part because the congregants live far away. The gardeners are considering raising money to bid for the land, Ms. Cusack said, but that would be a formidable undertaking. To Ms. Mulet, one of the last Iglesia parishioners who still lives in the neighborhood, in the Gowanus Houses, the end of the arrangement between the church and the garden seems prescribed by some force beyond anyone's control. "It's like when you give your baby to someone to take care of," Ms. Mulet said. "Enough is enough. It's 30 years. This is Hoyt and Atlantic. It costs a lot of money now." Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company ______________________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: https://secure.mallorn.com/mailman/listinfo/community_garden
