By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL – Four months of campaigning and more than 4,000 signatures later, there is finally a vegetable garden at City Hall. It's just not the one petitioners have been fighting for.
Kindergartners at the Spruce Street School and the Battery Park City School, both currently housed in the Tweed Courthouse, began planting a small vegetable garden in March on the grassy patch outside the school as part of the city’s “Learning Gardens” program.
The five small raised beds are now green and sprouting with nearly a dozen crops, including snow peas, lettuce, kale, cabbage and kohlrabi neatly planted beside the statue of Horace Greeley in City Hall Park.
Numerous schools across the city have created gardens like these, including the Upper West Side's Manhattan School for Children, which is now building a greenhouse, administrators said.
But Daniel Bowman Simon, the leader of People's Garden NYC, says this isn't the garden he had in mind.
“I’m happy that garden exists but it's not what our campaign asked for,” said Bowman Simon, whose group has been petitioning the city to plant a vegetable garden on the barren patch of stone directly in front of City Hall for months.
“The petition is a respectful request for a vegetable garden in front of City Hall,” he added. “Behind City Hall and right in front of City Hall are like night and day.”
The school project is much smaller in scale to People's Garden NYC's vision, which calls for a larger garden that would be tended to by volunteers, with harvests donated to a local food panty.
Bowman Simon said once he learned about the school's garden, he asked many of the people who signed his petition whether they should consider their mission accomplished or keep fighting on.
“Almost everyone says, 'keep asking,’" he said.
Still, Bowman Simon says that despite the competition, his vision will boom.
“It makes me even more confident that we’ll get a vegetable garden growing in front of City Hall real soon,” he said.
And those who frequent the park say the more gardens, the better — no matter who's in charge.
Christina Klarsfeld, 31, who just moved to Queens from TriBeCa, said the green projects are great for kids, especially those who live in the city.
"I see kids out here with rakes, always doing activities," she said.
"As a mom, I greatly appreciate that the kids are being so involved."
