Gardens in Harlem

Last week my band O'hAnleigh was honored to play in the Fertile Ground Music Series at the National Black Theater in Harlem, New York City. Growing up on Long Island, I visited Manhattan many times for shows, to the Hard Rock Cafe, museums and so on downtown but never made it north of Central Park. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, but what I found was a complete surprise: Gardens. Everywhere.

Little did I know that New York City's Green Thumb program is the largest community gardening program in the world. Just get enough people to sign up to take shifts and the city parks department makes available city-owned vacant lots for planting, along with resources like compost and workshops. The program's website provides a forum for local groups to exchange information, posts photos, and announces programs like farmers markets and the upcoming NYC Black Farmers and Urban Gardeners conference.

I did not see any of these gardens in the sterile streets of Central Park West or the area around Columbus Circle but the vibrant community of Harlem was rich with lush green gardens--and full of gardeners excited to talk about them. The video above is just a quick bit of conversation at one such garden on 126th Street near St. Nicholas Avenue, but there were many more. As in the original Garden, the food is just free for the taking. People sign up for short shifts to work in the garden through the week, then the gate is open through daylight hours for anyone to come pick some produce. Further up the block was a larger garden running alongside a building for about half a block that included cherry trees and a large patch of sweet corn.

I guess I should not have been surprised that a town with so much faith, heart and soul would also be full of gardeners!