Community Gardens: How Effective Are They Really?

Katie Whittaker, May 6, 2015

In New York City, there are two kinds of public green space. The first is city parks, including Central Park, where the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation is in charge of maintaining the grounds and providing opportunities for community engagement. In Central Park, there are numerous volunteers and employees on golf carts, raking leaves in the fall and trimming tree branches when they become unruly.

The second kind of green space is much more dependent on direct involvement from the surrounding homes and residents. These are the community gardens. Even though they are supported by the same department that works on public parks, there are some unique challenges facing community gardeners today. Green Thumb NYC is an organization associated with the Parks department that encourages community garden growth and gives them a resource for support when gardens need materials or programming. However, they don't have the same amount of protection as city parks, and if they are not supported by the local community, they may not survive.

Some of these gardens are founded in lower income areas, which is a challenge in itself. According to Lenny Librizzi, the assistant director of Open Space Greening at GrowNYC, "The residents of these areas have many social issues - child care, income assistance, homelessness, high instances of obesity and heart disease, high crime, drugs, so there are challenges not related to community gardens." The mentality is that community gardens can serve to help a community by giving it a greater overall appearance, and giving young people a hobby.

Another factor to consider is that young people are not always encouraged to participate in gardens traditionally run by older people in the community. Howard Hemmings, vice president of Bissel Gardens in the Bronx, says, "community gardens are a place where people can help to put unity in the communities they're in. However, as 'oldsters' transition, there is a void that youngsters don't necessarily identify with. We need to nurture these relationships." Part of this can be attributed to a lack of programming, which Hemmings mentions as a problem with Bissel Gardens in particular.

Ultimately, though, what is the effect of gardens on a neighborhood? Can they be considered positive influences? There is an incredible amount of data to look at to make conclusions, but I have focused on the number of gardens related to income, population, and crime in the borough.

Garden Information by Borough
Borough Total Number of Gardens Total Population Garden/Per 1,000 People Total Arrests/Per 1,000 People Median Income
Bronx 119 1,407,535 0.0845 52.558 $34,388
Manhattan 144 1,618,266 0.0889 50.408 $69,659
Brooklyn 237 2,567,201 0.0923 32.797 $46,085
Queens 33 2,276,634 0.0144 26.599 $57,001
Total 533 7,869,636 0.0677 38.160 $51,783

This table illustrates the characteristics of the boroughs where the gardens are located. Crime rate in this case refers to both violent and non-violent crimes. The table demonstrates the amount of crime in the neighborhood per 1,000 people in the population. Queens has the second highest population of the 4 boroughs studied, but its crime rate is the lowest. It also has the lowest number of gardens, which would indicate a lack of correlation between community gardens and crime. Instead, it may point to the fact that crime is much more strongly related to income (Queens has the second highest median income behind Manhattan) than population.

Another interesting factor to note is that although the Bronx's number of gardens per 1,000 people in the population is roughly comparable to Manhattan's, and even reasonably close to Brooklyn's, its total arrest rate is still quite high. Again, this could be attributed to income, but when compared to Manhattan, which has the highest income, the total arrests per 1,000 people is only about 2 more.

Since the data does not seem to show strong correlations between gardens, crime, and income, it was helpful to get a closer view of the precise surroundings of the gardens. I looked at these maps from the nyc.gov website outlining the crimes from January until December of 2014, looking at specific blocks where gardens are located by inputting the gardens' addresses. I looked at Bissel Gardens, Family Garden in East Harlem, Manhattan, Newport Garden in Brooklyn, and Long Island City Community Garden in Queens.

The area immediately surrounding Bissel Gardens, 1820 Bissel Avenue in the Bronx, shows that there are a little over 2 crimes in that precinct per 1,000 people, and a little over 3 crimes in the borough. While there is nothing immediately surrounding the garden, bigger crimes have occurred only a few blocks away. The map also indicates that Bissel sits on the end of a block, where there would presumably be less traffic overall. The second, Family Garden at 431 E. 114th Street in Harlem, also does not appear to impact crime in the area, with approximately 3 crimes per 1,000 residents in that precinct, and 3.8 crimes per 1,000 residents in the borough of Manhattan. In terms of location, it is similar to Bissel Gardens in that it is not set within a purely residential area - Thomas Jefferson Park is nearby, which may suggest that in this area, public green spaces do have an effect on crime.

Newport Gardens sits at 823 Newport Street in Brooklyn. Its situation seems to differ strongly from both Bissel and Family Gardens. With 4.6 crimes per 1,000 residents in the precinct and a little over 3 crimes per 1,000 residents in Brooklyn, it does not seem to have a particularly positive influence on crime in the immediate area. When filtering the map, there are even murders that appeared in the area. And finally, the Long Island City Community Gardens at 50-39 49th Avenue in Queens has approximately 2.7 crimes per 1,000 residents in the precinct, and 2.3 crimes in the borough. Its location seems to be set away from the major transit and residential areas, with only a few incidents of crime in the immediate area.

This is a random sampling from the list of gardens, but it illustrates that the location of a garden does not mean there is any effect on crime in the area. This suggests that community gardens are not currently doing the most they can to create change in a neighborhood, or even on a street. The results are somewhat limited without knowing exactly what the size of each garden is. However, I would argue that acreage in the case of community gardens is probably not a major deciding factor in its effectiveness, as the data shows no particularly strong correlation between crime and number of gardens.

Could this be improved through further programming? Would additional funding be a solution to this problem? While it is an important goal to promote change through green space, it may not be currently implemented the best way possible.