3/8/2024 0 Comments Louis pink houses brooklyn![]() ![]() “We just have to tell the gardeners the sad news: This is going to be the last grow season you have at this site,” Harris said. She and her staff teach residents how to collect food scraps for compost, maintain gardens and care for trees on their blocks. The garden, opened in 2019, is one of several operated by UCC, including a larger operation near its headquarters that hosts youth education camps, compost piles and hoop houses for year-round growing.Ī lot of education and outreach goes into creating a new garden site, said Iyeshima Harris, the co-director of UCC’s farming programs. “The agency will explore options for an alternate garden location to accommodate a nearby housing proposal.” ![]() “DOT is proud to have worked collaboratively with the Wortman Avenue Community Garden to establish their current site,” Barone said. In a statement, Vincent Barone, a spokesperson for the Department of Transportation, which owns the garden site, said the city is now planning to let the garden remain at the site through the end of the year, to finish its growing season. “Developers are everywhere in the community, creating these imbalances in the social network,” Aguirre said. The episode highlights New York City’s ongoing struggle to build sufficient affordable housing as it experiences the highest rents in its history, while balancing that with the long standing needs of many neighborhoods for more green space and access to healthy food. “Especially with this administration, that is focused on eating healthier, supporting efforts by community gardens - there's an inconsistency here.” ![]() “Treating residents like that - picking up the phone and letting us know we have to leave in a month and a half - is disrespectful to the community,” Aguirre said. Aguirre said the city had no alternative sites proposed for the garden, and did not offer any resources to gardeners to rebuild their planting beds next season. Two weeks ago, however, Aguirre received a call from the city: The site would need to be vacated by the end of the summer, as it was slated to be paved over into a road in preparation for construction of a low-income housing complex on the lot to its north. More than 30 families grow food there, and the site has been a popular location for distributing clean soil to aspiring cultivators in the neighborhoods around it, according to Ana Aguirre, the executive director of United Communities Center, a local nonprofit that operates the garden. Though only in operation for a few years, the garden has become a beloved social space in this corner of East New York - and a productive hub for new local gardeners. Summer squash, kale, herbs and strawberries grow in squat planting beds in the small community garden sandwiched between an empty lot and a USPS facility in far eastern Brooklyn. ![]()
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