M'finda Kalunga Garden

Overview

M'finda Kalunga Garden between Forsyth and Christie (north of Delancey), proximate to an original African Burial Ground. M’finda Kalunga is located between Rivington and Delancey Streets, two blocks south of Houston. Situated on the thoroughfare that connects Christie and Forsyth Streets, this corridor was created when the city knocked down rows of tenements as part of ‘urban renewal’ as part of the WPA project during the Depression. As a result, it is not only long but wide. It is also unique in that it is almost completely shaded and immediately became an oasis for the housing projects and tenements within a block of the garden. Its name is a reference to an old African burial ground used from 1794 to 1853 which was situated within a few hundred yards of the garden. The name means “Garden at the edge of the other side of …”, and it is one of two African themed neighborhood gardens. Developed in 1983 explicitly to deal with neighborhood drug problems, it gradually expanded into an apprenticeship gardening program with twenty regular gardeners who have created a truly lovely deeply verdant, almost forested respite, replete with beds of flowers and shrubs and gravel-strewn paths.

NYC East Village-Loisaida Community Gardens
updated 03/2012 by NYC Lower East Side East Village Community Gardens