Still, there's some hope. Last month, State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sued the city to prevent it from developing or auctioning roughly 600 community gardens. A Brooklyn judge halted construction at all the sites until a March 15 hearing on the case. Not even people power. City officials contend that the community gardens were never meant to be permanent fixtures and that the city needs more low-income housing.
Some community groups agree.
Still, she said, the city should sit down with community residents before coming up with housing development plans. Garcia pointed out that Green Thumb was supposed to be a stopgap measure to fill scores of abandoned lots in the 1970s. Not all of the green patches can be featured in Martha Stewart Living, though, especially during the winter months. Broken shopping carts, engine parts and rubber tubing litter some sections of the garden on Freeman Street and Chisolm, for example. When the protestors walked to another garden at Freeman Street and Prospect Avenue, they found that someone had planted two abandoned vehicles.