I’m Starting a Garden, of Questionable Legality

This article originally appeared in my newsletter.

I’m starting a new community garden.

Technically, we don’t have permission to do this (yet). The city’s Department of Transportation owns the land. I haven’t been able to get ahold of them. We’re starting the garden anyway.

In March 2025, I showed the vacant space to a long-time community gardener named Aresh.

I’d met him the summer before at Maria Sola, a South Bronx community garden under a highway, when he hopped out of a pickup truck loaded with willow shrubs. (That story is published here in Flyway Journal.)

He’s a skinny man with gray hair often pulled into a bun. He always seems to have a yellow worker’s vest on, even if he’s not working. In the 90s, when the Giuliani administration attempted to tear up hundreds of gardens to sell off the lots, Aresh strapped himself to trees to defend them.

That afternoon, we’d pruned a willow hut at another South Bronx garden until the sun started to set.

“Oh do you like West African food? There’s a really great place near here,” Aresh asked me.

As white oval plates came with rice and meat with spices I could smell from several feet away, I began to tell him about this site. “There’s this vacant spot behind my building.” With people like Aresh, our conversation often followed a shared, repetitive obsession. Where can we put more gardens and green space? How do we do it? Who can care for it?

“It’s really long and narrow. It’s just a lot of overgrown weeds. And it’s in the flood zone.”

He sawed his knife into his dish. “Do you know who owns it?” he asked.

“No, I don’t.”

He put his fork down for a moment. “That is always the first thing, you always want to know who owns the land. If it’s a city agency, then that’s good because it’s public.”

As I tried to explain the site, Aresh interrupted. “Let’s just go see it!”

We finished eating and grabbed Citi Bikes. It was past 7pm. The sun had set, but our eyes hung on to whatever light remained.

We stared at East 132nd St, which ran just one block from where we stood before ending underneath the Willis Avenue Bridge. To our right, to the south, was the Harlem River.

All day trucks zipped by this spot to reach the industrial businesses on the waterfront.

I began the explanation from the water, and moved north. “So we have the Harlem River, then the Waste Management building. Then right here—” I pointed to a big empty parking lot that separated the street from the industrial land.

“Yeah it’s the truck driving school.” Aresh pointed to a big sign that said “DRIVING SCHOOL.” “A surface parking lot in front of a flood zone, what a great idea.”

“Right. Then there’s this fence.” We walked along the barbed-wire fence, our feet trampling shriveled-up weeds. The fence had both classic barbed wire, covered with rust the way moss covers rotting logs, and shiny circular razor wire, like a giant, masochistic slinky. In some parts, the wire had uncurled and sagged off the top of the fence, hanging at about the height of my face. It was no longer keeping anyone out, so much as waiting for someone to walk into it.

“This is the potential green space,” I said as I pointed at our feet, “then the street, then on the other side of the street is the sidewalk.”

Aresh’s pattern recognition kicked in.

“Oh I see what’s happening. This is Department of Transportation land. This is supposed to be a sidewalk.” He too pointed at our feet. He nodded his head back and forth like a bobblehead. “But it’s the Bronx so they just left it like this.” We shared a morbid laugh.

Along the block, we saw a faded “NO DUMPING” sign stapled against one of the few trees along the route. Next to it, I saw an office chair with a missing arm. As we walked we had to be on alert for dog poop, some of it fresh, some so old it looked like it would disintegrate if poked.

Many parts of the green space had few signs of life at all. The light-colored, rocky dirt lacked enough nutrients for even the most resilient of New York City’s weeds.

“The key here is that DOT doesn’t want to deal with the land, so you start guerrilla gardening to show them that a group will maintain it.”

“How long do you think it would take to really establish a garden here?”

“It’ll take a few years. Including the formal recognition, I’d say to have a really developed garden, three to five years.”

I nodded and stayed silent for a moment. “Aresh, the 90s sounded a lot more fun.”

I meant it as a joke, but I meant it. “Yeah, well, in the early days, nobody cared about the land, so we could do what we wanted. But now, every parcel is valuable in one way or another,” Aresh said. “But it still took several years to get gardens really going.”

Did I have several years? I thought.

In the warm months, I kept walking past it. I went out of my way to do so. The idea that it could be something more had seeped in.

I told myself that I couldn’t do it alone. I was, subconsciously, waiting for a push.

In fall 2025, I saw some unplanted bulbs on a table at Maria Sola. “What are those?” I asked a gardener named George.

“Daffodils. Don’t plant them here.” He raised his voice. “We have too many. They spread and they’re allelopathic.” Now he bordered on screaming. “So they inhibit the growth of other plants!”

I knew that poor gardening conditions made George upset. I’d long ago learned to not take it personally. I thought of 132nd St and the vacant strip. “Well can I plant them somewhere else?”

Now his voice calmed again. “I’ll kiss you on the cheek if you get them away from here.”

I texted one of the friends I’d made in my building who I’d told about the site.

“Yo Dan,” I wrote. “Do you want to plant behind the building?”

We became friends the second I found out he worked for Amtrak and binged as much urbanism YouTube as I did.

A day later he texted me back. “I’m at Home Depot. What plants should I get.”

I rode the wave of his enthusiasm. “What do they have?” He switched to a video call and showed me the garden section. I saw purple flowers. “Does that say ‘aster’ on it?” I asked. It was one of the only plants I knew how to identify.

“Yeah.”

“Grab those. I’ll meet you at the garden and we’ll grab compost and shovels.”

As we dug holes for the daffodils and Dan’s aster, we discovered big rocks that we took out. The earth was compacted, a light brown, more sand than dirt. We mixed in compost to give the bulbs some room to breathe.

“Are we starting a new garden?” he asked me.

“I think we are.” I looked out at the whole strip. “Do you think we’ll have this whole strip planted before or after the Second Avenue Subway reaches 125th St?”

“Do you really think the plants will make it?” Dan asked.

“To be honest I have no clue.” I shrugged.

“Well do you think people will mess with the plants?”

“That I’m even less sure of,” I replied looking down. “I think the daffodils are pretty tough.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

The winter grew colder. I told more people we were starting a garden. I hosted two sessions at the office of a non-profit to come up with ideas.

Aresh was there one of the days. Dan was there on the other. George walked in late both days with his cane. A dozen others stopped in.

We decided to move in phases, year by year. We decided we would try to reach DOT and get a maintenance agreement.

George crossed his arms. “You’ll be waiting until 2029.”

We agreed. We would not let city bureaucracy slow us down.

This spring, half a dozen neighbors came to pick up the trash and spread wood chips. We got a delivery donated by a local arborist. We spread as much compost as we could get from Maria Sola and the city’s giveaway program. We moved rocks to form the future beds.

Whether this is illegal or not, I’m not really sure. But who’s going to object to us making a neglected strip of land look better?

Update: read the other essays on this new community garden.

Part 2: Semilla is Growing, and So Are Its Problems (June 2026)

Part 3: Make No Little Plans (July 2026)

Part 4: Teaching the Youth to Open Hydrants (September 2026)

Part 5: For Groundhog (October 2026)