The Prospect Heights Community Farm is located on Saint Marks Avenue between Vanderbilt and Underhill Avenues in Prospect Heights, the “Heart of Brooklyn.” In the mid-1990’s, neighborhood gardening enthusiasts—including P.S. 9 teachers and staff, Boy Scout troop leaders and scouts, and the Pastor and members of the local Baptist church—cleared the site, planted trees, and created an educational garden. After a few years, the troop disbanded and church interest waned, leaving an abandoned green space save one sole gardener.
In 1997, another group of gardening enthusiasts joined the lone remaining member and reinvigorated the garden, transforming the three adjoining lots into the vibrant and dynamic public garden you see today. Memorial Day 1998 marked the first growing season of the Farm.
Soon thereafter the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) revealed plans to use our garden as a staging area for a nearby housing development and then build on the site as well. Working with Community Board 8, gardeners convinced the City to release the garden to the New York City Parks Department GreenThumb program. In the early 2000′s, fearing that the garden’s future was still not secure, gardeners worked to deed the garden to the Trust for Public Land, ensuring that it would be safe from development if it was maintained as a green space. In 2012, the garden voted to transfer the deed to another Land Trust: the Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens.
Today, the Farm has almost 100 members. We garden in both individual and communal spaces, maintain a compost program that processes hundreds of pounds of food scraps weekly, manage a water harvesting project to collect rain water from the adjacent building, offer 20 hours of Open Hours when the garden is open to the community, and provide educational and fun activities for members and community alike including the annual Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash!
Block 1152, Lots 20, 21 and 23
Community Board: 8
City Council District: 35 –Crystal Hudson
State Senate District: 20 –Zellnor Myrie
State Assembly District: 57 –Phara Souffrant Forrest
US Congressional District: 9 – Yvette Clark
Learn more about the Farm with the following links:
BANG Land Trust 