The Plot
New York runs the largest urban gardening programme in the country, and almost nobody knows how to get into it.
There are hundreds of community gardens on city land in New York, spread across all five boroughs — on former vacant lots, in housing developments, beside schools, and in a few cases on genuinely enormous sites at the city's edges.
Most of them are run by their members. Most have waiting lists. Very few explain, anywhere findable, how a person actually joins one.
This guide is an attempt at the practical information: how the system is organised, how to get a plot, what will and will not grow here, and what to do about soil you should not eat out of.
What is here
- Getting a plot — how the waitlists work and how to shorten them
- The growing season — frost dates, what to sow when
- Soil, lead and containers — the urban gardening problem nobody warns you about
- Gardens across the city — how the network is organised by borough
If you are looking for FBGA
This domain previously belonged to the Floyd Bennett Gardens Association, the community garden at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. They are still going, and their site is now at fbga.us. This site is not them and has no connection to them.
Why bother
A plot is cheap — usually a nominal annual membership plus some hours of work. It is also the fastest way to meet the people who live around you, which in New York is otherwise surprisingly hard. Most people who write about community gardens talk about the vegetables. The regulars will tell you the vegetables are not really the point.