Community Gardens in Highbridge

Community gardens provide food, health, and sustainability benefits to their communities. These gardens are community led projects that help to mitigate air pollution, correct unequal access to greenspace, provide food access, foster learning opportunities, and provide safe spaces in a wide variety of neighborhoods. Usually, these gardens are created and cared for by neighboring residents that beautify and make productive use from those previously underutilized spaces. Urban gardening has taken multiple roles in the promotion of physical, economic, environmental, and cultural health. Many studies have highlighted the importance of community gardening to New Yorkers, but few have focused on the Bronx. The Bronx has about 175 community gardens, however, on my last Bronx Food and Farm tour I visited several community gardens in the neighborhood of Highbridge, the central-west section of the Bronx. This study focuses on La Isla Youth Garden, and the neighborhood, exploring its history, its community, and particularly how they have survived in this space, especially in the face of a fast gentrifying area.