The Power of Public Green Spaces: NY's Elizabeth Street Garden with Joseph Reiver

Cultivating Place: Conversations on Natural History and the Human Impulse to Garden

The Elizabeth Street Garden in New York City’s Little Italy and SoHo neighborhoods is a one-acre public garden founded in 1991 by Allan Reiver, an artist and art dealer who passed in 2021. The lot on which the garden has grown these many years is owned by the city and managed by the non-profit community group, Elizabeth Street Garden. Joseph Reiver, Allan’s son, is the current director of the group. Since 2013, Joseph, along with the Garden’s community, has been fighting to preserve and protect this special art and community-filled green space - one of few in this section of the city. In 2024, the Garden came under renewed threat of development, this time with increased vigor. In today’s conversation between guest host Ben Futa and Joseph Reiver, we learn how the inspiring story of how the Garden is fighting back - taking a stand against the powerful interests that seek to erase more than 30 years of community, growth, and beauty. This is something of a David and Goliath story: the modest community garden with surprising strength and agility going up against the many giants of New York City bureaucracy, lobbyists, developers. And while this is the story of one green space in one city, it serves as a call to action and a cautionary tale for all green spaces in all urban areas, where they are desperately needed, incredibly valuable to the quality of life for all, and easy to lose if we’re not paying attention. The Elizabeth Street Garden was featured in the 2023 book New York Green by acclaimed writer and photographer Ngoc Minh Ngo. Listen in! Cultivating Place now has a donate button! We thank you so much for listening over the years and we hope you'll support Cultivating Place. We can't thank you enough for making it possible for this young program to grow even more of these types of conversations. The show is available as a podcast on SoundCloud and iTunes. To read more and for many more photos, please visit www.cultivatingplace.com.