Tours / Manhattan
Self-guided walking tourEast Village Community Gardens
A MUSEENYC walking tour · Free, and not sponsored by anyone
- Distance
- 2.5 miles
- Time
- 3 to 3.5 hours
- Stops
- 13
- Start
- Liz Christy Garden, E Houston St at the Bowery (F to 2 Av)
- End
- 11th Street Community Garden, E 11th St near First Ave
The East Village and the blocks around it hold one of the densest clusters of community gardens in New York, nearly all of them built by neighbors on rubble-strewn lots in the 1970s and 80s, and all of them free to walk into. The catch is the hours. Volunteers open the gates, mostly on weekend afternoons, and only from April through October. This route is timed for a Sunday: start at Liz Christy Garden at 1:30pm and every garden on it will be open when you get there. Come outside those hours and you will be looking through fences.
Route card
Screenshot this. Full detail for each stop is further down.
- 1Liz Christy Garden
- 2Le Petit Versailles
- 3Parque de Tranquilidad
- 4Orchard Alley
- 5El Jardín del Paraíso
- 66BC Botanical Garden
- 76th Street and Avenue B Community Garden
- 8Creative Little Garden
- 9Green Oasis and Gilbert's Sculpture Garden
- 10Francisco "Pancho" Ramos Community Garden
- 11La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez
- 12Dias y Flores
- 1311th Street Community Garden
Get the map
The Google map for this tour is on its way. Until it's up, the walking navigation links below take you from stop to stop, and the printable guide has every stop in it.
Getting there and back
- Start
- F to 2 Av, or 6 to Bleecker St, then walk east on Houston St.
- Finish
- L at First Ave, three blocks north. The 6 at Astor Pl is about 10 minutes west.
- Along the route
- The F runs under Houston St. Crosstown buses: M21 on Houston St, M8 on 9th and 10th St, M14A/M14D SBS on 14th St.
Cutting it short
Every walk here has exits. Good ones on this route:
- After stop 2 (Le Petit Versailles): M21 bus west on Houston St, or walk back to the F at 2 Av.
- After stop 8 (Creative Little Garden): F at 2 Av, about 8 minutes south and west.
- After stop 11 (La Plaza Cultural): M8 bus west on E 10th St, or the L at First Ave, about 12 minutes.
The walk through Bowery / Alphabet City / East Village, Manhattan
1Liz Christy Garden
Open to the publicHeads up: Open Saturday and Sunday noon to 4pm, plus Tuesday and Thursday 6 to 8pm, April through October. The gate is on the north side of Houston St between the Bowery and Second Ave.
Every garden on this walk descends from this one. In 1973 Liz Christy and her Green Guerillas started seed-bombing the vacant lots of the Lower East Side, then got permission to clear this one at the Bowery and Houston. It became the first community garden in New York City. Inside is a pond with fish and turtles, a grape arbor, a grove of weeping birches, a dawn redwood, beehives, fruit trees and a wildflower meadow. Houston Street is right there and you stop hearing it.
Open in maps ↗40.72413, -73.99174
2Le Petit Versailles
Open to the publicWalk: East along Houston St, past First Ave and Ave A, to between Aves B and C. The garden runs through to E 2nd St, with gates on both streets. About 12 minutes.
Or ride: M21 bus east along Houston St.
Heads up: Open Thursday to Sunday, 2 to 7pm. Earlier in the week it opens only as weather permits.
The garden on this walk where the art matters as much as the planting. A narrow brick path runs from the Houston Street gate to a small stage, and through the warmer months performers, filmmakers and artists show work there among the flower beds and an arbor-covered seating area. Before 1996 the lot was a car chop shop. See what is on the gate when you arrive.
Open in maps ↗40.72112, -73.98181
3Parque de Tranquilidad
Open to the publicWalk: Out the E 2nd St gate, east to Ave C, then north two blocks to E 4th St and turn right. The garden is between Aves C and D.
Heads up: Open Sundays only, 10am to 6pm.
Neighbors cleared these lots in 1979. About a third of the garden sits on the site of an 1887 synagogue, Chevra Bikur Cholim B'nai Israel Anshei Baranov, and nothing on the street tells you. The name is an accurate description: winding paths, planting thick enough to close over your head, and old seating the garden is slowly taking back. The quietest stop on this walk.
Open in maps ↗40.72179, -73.97967
4Orchard Alley
Open to the publicWalk: A few doors further east on E 4th St, toward Ave D.
Heads up: Open Sundays only, 9am to 7pm.
The name is literal: fruit trees over an actual lawn, which is rarer in these gardens than you would expect. Neighbors built it up a little at a time on an empty lot, and it still feels hand-made. Sit on the grass. On a Sunday, this garden and Parque de Tranquilidad a few doors down are reason enough to come to this block.
Open in maps ↗40.72129, -73.97846
5El Jardín del Paraíso
Open to the publicWalk: Around the corner: the garden runs through the block to E 5th St, between Aves C and D. The address, and the main way in, is on E 5th St.
Heads up: Open Tuesday to Sunday, 10am to dusk. Closed Mondays.
Three-quarters of an acre, the biggest and wildest garden on the route: open lawn, birches, a pond where turtles sun themselves, and an octagonal treehouse built around a willow trunk in 2003 by the treehouse architect Roderick Romero, his first community project. Ten tenement buildings once stood on this land, and one of them was Allen Ginsberg's home in 1964 and 1965. The lots were cleared, and neighbors founded the garden in 1981.
Open in maps ↗40.72232, -73.97920
66BC Botanical Garden
Open to the publicWalk: West on E 5th St to Ave C, north one block to E 6th St, then left. The garden is between Aves C and B.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6pm.
The most designed of the neighborhood gardens, and the one that earns the word botanical. Brick paths wander past peonies and climbing roses to a koi pond with a waterfall that took the members ten years to finish. The grape arbor hides solar panels in its vines, there is a sunken grotto, and the two-story toolshed doubles as a take-one, leave-one library. Find one of the hidden benches and stay.
Open in maps ↗40.72387, -73.98066
76th Street and Avenue B Community Garden
Open to the publicWalk: West on E 6th St to Ave B. The garden takes up the corner.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday 1 to 6pm, plus scheduled evening events.
More than 17,000 square feet, divided into individual beds of about four by eight feet, each one gardened by a different member, so no two steps look alike. The garden dates to 1982. From the late 1980s until 2008 it was home to Eddie Boros's Tower of Toys, a 65-foot wooden tower hung with things he found on the street. The tower is gone, but the garden still has a children's garden and puts on films, festivals and workshops.
Open in maps ↗40.72437, -73.98195
8Creative Little Garden
Open to the publicWalk: Continue west on E 6th St, about halfway to Ave A. Look for the yellow gate.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday 1 to 4pm, and weekdays 1 to 2pm. Get here before 4pm.
Here since 1978, and run differently from most: there are no private plots, so members landscape the whole garden together, like a shared backyard. A fish pond, peach and cherry trees, a grape arbor, a Japanese garden and a gazebo, plus a chair swing and birdhouses tucked into the planting. It is a certified National Wildlife Federation habitat that is slowly becoming a woodland of native plants, which is why the birdsong here is so loud.
Open in maps ↗40.72467, -73.98256
9Green Oasis and Gilbert's Sculpture Garden
Open to the publicWalk: Back to Ave B, north two blocks to E 8th St, then east past Ave C. The garden is between Aves C and D. About 10 minutes.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday, 11am to 5pm. The garden also lists Wednesday mornings on its own site.
Two gardens that grew up side by side from 1981 and joined in 1997. Normand Valle and Reinaldo Arana built Green Oasis, and next door Gilbert Ingram carved found wood and stone into sculpture and invited the neighbors in. Today it is one garden with a koi pond full of goldfish, beehives, a grape arbor, a gazebo, and trees that have had forty years to get enormous. Nuyorican poets performed here, and the garden still puts on theater and readings.
Open in maps ↗40.72401, -73.97739
10Francisco "Pancho" Ramos Community Garden
Open to the publicWalk: West to Ave C, then north to E 9th St. The public entrance is on the east side of Ave C, between 9th and 10th St.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6pm.
Long known as the 9th Street Community Garden, and now named for Pancho Ramos, one of its members. Nearly 22,000 square feet of winding paths between plots and casitas, the small wooden houses the neighborhood's Puerto Rican gardeners brought to these lots. It waters itself from rain caught in a system of drains and barrels, and makes its own soil from compost.
Open in maps ↗40.72538, -73.97749
11La Plaza Cultural de Armando Perez
Open to the publicWalk: Directly across Ave C, on the corner of E 9th St.
Heads up: Open every day, 11am to 5pm: the most generous hours on this walk.
Founded in 1976 on rubble-filled lots, and the most public of the gardens: a stone stage, a gazebo, shady benches and an amphitheater built with the artist Gordon Matta-Clark from timber salvaged out of abandoned buildings. Early members worked with Buckminster Fuller on a geodesic dome here. The weeping willows planted when the garden began were rotting and came down in 2017; the neighborhood held a wake for them. The garden is named for Armando Perez, a co-founder of the CHARAS community center, who was killed in 1999. Check the gate for yoga, readings and festivals.
Open in maps ↗40.72531, -73.97872
12Dias y Flores
Open to the publicWalk: North on Ave C to E 13th St, then west past Ave B. The garden is mid-block. About 10 minutes.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5pm.
Founded in 1978, in the middle of a quiet, tree-lined block of 13th Street, with a membership of around sixty gardeners from all over the world. A fish pond, a rainwater collection system and a solar-powered fountain. It is one of the smaller gardens on the walk and one of the prettiest, the kind of place where you sit down and lose track of time.
Open in maps ↗40.72912, -73.97993
1311th Street Community Garden
Open to the publicWalk: West on E 13th St to Ave A, south two blocks to E 11th St, then west toward First Ave.
Heads up: Open Saturday and Sunday, noon to 6pm.
Finish here and sit down. Pines, flower beds and a shaded porch behind a wooden trellis gate, looked after by volunteers and held by the Manhattan Land Trust. It is a good place to decide where to eat, because First Avenue is a minute away.
Open in maps ↗40.72870, -73.98293
Combining this with other tours
- Tour 3 (East Village to LES) shares stop 7 here, the 6th Street and Avenue B garden, and passes through Tompkins Square Park, two blocks from stops 7 and 8. Walk this one on a Sunday afternoon for the gardens and Tour 3 another day for the history, or pick up Tour 3 at stop 5 (Tompkins Square) after stop 8 here.
Take it with you
Download the printable guideA PDF with every stop, direction and transit option, for when your battery or your signal gives out.
Want this one led in person?
This walk is free to follow and always downloadable above. We also lead it privately, for your party only: a licensed New York City Sightseeing Guide doing the navigating and the photographs while you look up at the city instead of at a map.
See private guided walksAbout MUSEENYC
MUSEENYC writes free guides to New York museums, neighborhoods and walks. Nothing here is sponsored, nothing is paid placement, and no one pays to be included.
Questions about a stop, a closure, or anything else on this walk? Reach MUSEENYC at museenyc.tours@gmail.com or @museenyc on Instagram.