Our Story

LaGuardia Corner Gardens

The Future of LaGuardia Corner Gardens

LaGuardia Corner Gardens is on land owned by the NYC Dept. of Transportation. LCG’s members have sought to transfer the site to the NYC Dept. of Parks in order to protect the garden from development. Both Community Board 2 and our NYC Council Member support the transfer. So why hasn’t it happened?

NYU owns the one-story supermarket adjacent to the garden, as well as the superblock comprising the Silver Towers. NYU plans to replace the supermarket with a massive building, which would block the sun needed to grow flowers. To read more see News. To donate online, click Donate.

Improvements & Repairs

The garden has celebrated its Silver Jubilee. We have gone through several sheds and more than a few tools. The chain link around the north garden fence has been replaced. White marble chips were added to the path around the perimeter of the garden. And many of the boards between the plots have been replaced. Our next major project is to replace the above-ground water system, which has weathered and aged.

Our Past

● 1974 - 1981

An Ending . . .

The Corner Garden

In 1974, on a vacant lot at the southwest corner of LaGuardia Place & West 3d Street, a loosely formed group of village residents began to garden.

In the summer of 1980, the land was sold for development. The Corner Garden, as it was known, ended with the arrival of a bulldozer.

A Beginning . . .

LaGuardia Corner Gardens

In the spring of 1981, several of the gardeners, led by Cheryl Small, Norma Turrill, Susan Kocki, Gean Mathwig, David Blake, Sandy Klabunde, and others, formed LaGuardia Corner Gardens, Inc., as a 501(3)(c) non-profit corporation.

The gardeners negotiated with NYC’s GreenThumb program and Community Board 2 to move the garden to barren land a block south, on city property adjacent to a supermarket.

After many Community Board meetings and hearings, and over some opposition but with the overwhelming support of the majority of local residents, the garden obtained approval to develop the space as a garden.

1981 was spent getting estimates for a fence, planning a water system, laying out plots, and raising money. The perimeter flower border and the pathway around the garden were negotiated with GreenThumb and the Parks Committee of CB2, chaired by Anthony Dapolito.

That summer the top soil from the West 3d Street garden was moved, by court order, to the new site.

● 1982 - present

The Work Begins

By May 1982, the garden had an eight-foot high chain link fence. The garden members set aside a weekend to lay out the garden and spread the soil.

Armed with sifters and wheelbarrows, the gardeners spread the dirt and removed the rubble, which was mostly broken bricks left over from the tenements that had stood on the site. Strings were laid out and plots were assigned. Some used the rubble for their pathways. A wood shed was built to house the tools. And the planting began. Gean Mathwig was the first gardener to plant her plot.

In the spring of 1983, garden members installed boards between the plots. In the summer, Jeffrey Rowland and others broke up the bricks for the perimeter path bed.

The Water System

Water was siphoned from a barrel filled from a fire hydrant outside the entrance to the garden. David Dorfman and Jeffrey Rowland then built an above-ground water system from PVC pipes. They connected the pipes to the hydrant with a hose, which was later suspended overhead to make it semi-permanent. Estimates were sought for a permanent connection to the water.

During the summer members of the garden and Ken Green, Director of GreenThumb, held a party to celebrate the garden’s progress.

In April 1985 an underground connection to the water supply was installed, making the garden self-sufficient.