Community Gardens and Urban Agriculture

The Community Gardens Program was created to support the thousands of New Yorkers who are building greener, healthier cities through community gardens, school gardens, and educational farms. Our mission is to help develop and sustain community gardens in New York by leveraging resources across state agencies. In doing so, we assist in the identification of vacant public land for community gardening purposes; coordinate on behalf of interested community groups and state or local agencies to facilitate the use of vacant public lands for community gardens; and support and encourage networking among community garden programs around the state.

There are well over 1,000 registered or permitted community gardens in New York's cities and many more cases where residents have rescued derelict private or public lots in an effort to build more livable neighborhoods.

Urban Agriculture

Through this program we also promote urban agriculture, connect gardeners to resources in their communities, and help to identify supportive community and school gardening policies.

Urban agriculture is defined as growing food and raising animals in cities, accompanied by complementary activities such as processing and distributing food, collecting and reusing food waste and rainwater, and educating, organizing, and employing local residents. Some examples of urban agriculture include hydroponics, urban apiary, aquaponics, backyard chickens for egg production, and rooftop farming.