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The Liz Christy Garden, begun in 1974, is named after a co-founder of the Green Guerillas.
Photos courtesy of The Green Guerillas |
The Green Guerillas, New York City
In 1974, Liz Christy, a Greenwich Village artist, cleaned up a trash-filled vacant lot on the Lower East Side and turned it into a productive community garden. Soon after, she and Hattie Carthan formed the Green Guerillas. One of their early restoration activities was to toss seed-filled water balloons over fences into the city's abandoned lots. The Guerillas now have 800 members and have helped neighborhood groups create and maintain 1000 urban gardens over the last 25 years. They provide provide ecologically suitable plants and gardening materials, offer garden design and horticulture advice, and teach everything from composting and worm growing to strategies for forming neighborhood coalitions. The Liz Christy Garden, at Bowery and Houston Streets, grows more than 1000 different species. It has cactus and moss collections and operates a public learning center. On 8th Street between Avenues C and D, the Green Oasis Community Garden has a mini-arboretum containing 50 tree species and varieties and offers gardening lessons for children. It is also building wetland and pond habitats as part of its urban garden environment. In the South Bronx, gardeners at Rancho Borecua grow traditional medicinal and culinary herbs from Puerto Rico. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Hattie Carthan Memorial Garden cultivates an entire city block and, with the Magnolia Tree Earth Center, provides expert assistance to urban growers.
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