Community gardens are a good idea, so good you have to wonder why there aren’t more of them in the Binghamton area.

Last week, the Press & Sun-Bulletin reported that a Binghamton University professor is turning a vacant city lot he owns into a community garden and plans to deed the lot over to the city.

Richard Andrus hopes this garden will inspire the creation of similar gardens around the city, especially where derelict houses have been — or will be — razed.

Reading about it brought to mind an episode of BBC America’s “Ground Force” that aired a few years ago. In it, the show’s green-thumbed British crew transformed a New York City garden gone bad. The garden is owned by the New York Restoration Project, founded by singer Bette Midler. It has rescued or created dozens of community gardens in the city’s five boroughs.

Reading the NYRP Web site, www.nyrp.org — and checking out the before-and-after photos of its garden revivals — is enough to make you want to put on your gardening gloves and start weeding the nearest vacant lot.

It also gives you an idea of what could happen here.

Here’s how NYRP works: After it assumes ownership of a garden or lot, it sets about restoring it. Local residents serve as garden managers, while NYRP provides ongoing support, “including design consultation, garden materials, volunteers, community outreach and educational programming,” according to its Web site.

This, too, is from the NYRP Web site: “Community gardens are oases of vegetables, fruits, flowers and tranquility in neighborhoods where concrete otherwise rules. They are the site for picnics, cookouts, birthday parties and other community gatherings, and are special places for residents of all ages, with and without green thumbs. Community gardens create a network of green spaces in the city in an unprecedented way.”

One more thing I remember about that BBC America special is the pride the NYRP project generated in those who helped make it happen — and in those who lived nearby. You could see it in their faces.

We could all use a healthy dose of pride in our community. Turning vacant space into gardens where living things can grow and people can find respite from urban life seems a good way to make that happen.

Binghamton is reportedly exploring the idea of community gardens as an option for land that will become vacant when some 25 homes are demolished. There may be grant money available to help the project get started. And a meeting for people interested in helping to develop the gardens is planned for 6:30 p.m. June 7 in Mayor Matthew T. Ryan’s conference room. Call 772-7001 for more information.

Here’s hoping Andrus’ community garden idea will grow — and prosper.
Connections runs Monday. Haupt teaches journalism at Binghamton University and is a copy editor for the Press & Sun-Bulletin. Write to her at mhaupt@pressconnects.com or c/o Press & Sun-Bulletin, P.O. Box 1270, Binghamton, NY 13902-1270.

source : www.pressconnects.com