The community gardens of the Lower East Side/East Village have not been documented for over a decade which is when they were threatened by bulldozing by New York City. They are a vibrant example of how a neighborhood that was burning down was saved by community gardeners amongst others, and how in turn, the neighborhood saved the gardens when they became endangered.

By documenting the existing gardens (as well as the ones that were lost), we would like to achieve the following: make the gardens and their history more visible to neighborhood residents and visitors; help the gardeners come together again in a community using social networking and other tools to share best practices; tell a story of successful resistance to the politics of just let the city and developers do what they want; promote the garden venues through walking tours and other means.

We have documented the current garden sites as of summer 2009. The philosophy is that we would like the garderners and neighborhood organizations with a stake in keeping the open spaces to be able to document and share information after this initial inventory. In addition to the gardeners, our audience is neighborhood residents and visitors as well as local not for profit organizations that are concerned with neighborhood open spaces.

Sixth Street Community Center is a not-for-profit community based organization. It began in 1978 as a block association organized by single mothers living on East 6th Street between Avenues B and C in the Lower East Side. These neighborhood women decided to organize to transform the meager conditions they were forced to live in: streets lined with abandoned buildings, poverty, crime and despair. They made it their mission to create a better and safer community in which to raise their families. One of their first efforts was to work with the City to seal up abandoned buildings that had become vulnerable to drug trafficking and crime.

More recently, beginning in 1996, the Community Center has initiated projects that bring youth and community residents together around issues of sustainable agriculture, health and nutrition through our Community Supported Agriculture, Seeds To Supper and SOS Food programs.