Medicinal Garden of La Plaza Community Garden

La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez (La Plaza Cultural) is an iconic community garden and public green space located in the East Village neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

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. A community garden, park, playground, wildlife refuge, urban farm, community composting site, and performance venue, La Plaza Cultural is also utilized by local day-care centers, after-school programs and a growing number of parents with small children. The garden has been known to grow a number of various edible plants including fruits, vegetable, and herbs. The lot is approximately 0.64 acres and consists of at least 11 members.

History

La Plaza Cultural was founded in 1976 by local residents and greening activists who took over what was then a series of vacant city lots piled high with rubble and trash. In an effort to improve the neighborhood during a downward trend of arson, drugs, and abandonment caused by the

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of the late 1970s, members of the Latino group Charas/El Bohio cleared out truckloads of refuse. Working with

Buckminster Fuller Richard Buckminster Fuller (; July 12, 1895 – July 1, 1983) was an American architect, systems theorist, writer, designer, inventor, philosopher, and futurist. He styled his name as R. Buckminster Fuller in his writings, publishing more t ...

, they built a geodesic dome in the open “plaza” and began staging cultural events. Green Guerilla's pioneer, Liz Christy, seeded the turf with “seed bombs” and planted towering weeping willows and linden trees. Artist

Gordon Matta-Clark Gordon Matta-Clark (born Gordon Roberto Matta-Echaurren; June 22, 1943 – August 27, 1978) was an American artist best known for site-specific artworks he made in the 1970s. He was also a pioneer in the field of socially engaged food art. ...

helped construct La Plaza’s

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using railroad ties and materials reclaimed from abandoned buildings. Later, block residents tilled the western portion of the space and planted vegetables, flowers, and fruit trees. During the 1980s, the garden came under attack by developers seeking to build on the space. After numerous court battles, La Plaza was finally preserved in 2002 as part of the terms of a legal settlement. In 2003, La Plaza was renamed in memory of Armando Perez, a CHARAS founder and former District Leader of the Lower East Side, who was killed in 1999. Loisaida_Center-LaLuchaContinua-Mural

In 1985, Artmakers Inc., organized a meeting calling for "artists of conviction to paint political murals." 34 artists gathered during the summer months and produced 24 "La Lucha Continua" murals on the surrounding walls of the garden. Many of the murals have been destroyed through building renovation or destruction, existing murals on the west wall have faded, but still stand today.

References

{{East Village, Manhattan East Village, Manhattan Community gardening in New York City