Serving community gardeners in New York City since 1973.
Community gardening is a radical act.
Green Guerillas uses a unique mix of education, organizing and advocacy to help people cultivate community gardens, sustain grassroots groups, grow food, engage youth, and address issues critical to the future of food justice and urban agriculture.
Our Seed Library and Tool Lending Library are open!
Our work
Our work centers around our belief that all New Yorkers should have easy access to open, green spaces where community members can gather, grow their own food, connect with nature, organize on essential community issues, relax, play, and celebrate.
Will you join us?
Many community gardeners are vital members of a larger movement towards food sovereignty, and have been working vigorously for the right to healthy, fresh, culturally relevant food; the right to green space and community land ownership; and the right to health. We uphold these values.
We stand with New Yorkers gardening in community gardens, on their blocks, on their stoops, in empty and unused spaces.
Gardening for their families, for their neighbors. To produce food, to create beauty, to heal the soil.
Green Guerillas in the News
Green Guerillas collaborated with WNYC for a series on NYC community gardens. This episode featured interviews with city gardeners and Green Guerillas. Julian Campbell, a YEP intern, shared his poem "Garden of Joy." Iyeshima Harris Ouedraogo and Sarah McCollum Williams spoke with host Michael Hill about the youth program's importance.
Con Edison Customer News for Summer 2023 featured a blurb about Green Guerillas’s Youth Empowerment Pipeline on their "Community Partnerships" page. The newsletter was mailed to Con Edison's 3.6 million electric customers and 1.1 million gas customers in the New York City metro area.
The Green Guerillas youth were featured in a news story aired on the New York City news channel WPIX11 in August 2022. Please click below to watch the clip:
Join our vital efforts.
Awards
Green Guerillas received two New York City-wide awards for our work during 2023. We were awarded with New York City Parks GreenThumb Greening Partner of the Year award in January 2023. We were also proud to receive the Community through Collaboration Award from UHAB (the Urban Homesteaders Assistance Board) in February 2023, in the spirit of celebrating the impact that cooperation between grassroots movements, local organizations and volunteers can have. Each year, the award is presented to UHAB’s strongest partners and valued community-driven programs that have made a positive impact.
2023
One of our staff members received a prestigious international recognition related to her leadership of youth programming at Green Guerillas. Iyeshima Harris, our Director of Youth and Community Engagement, was named one of the 30 Under 30 Global Environmental Education Leaders for 2022 through the North American Association for Environmental Education. This 2022 group is composed of transformative leaders from around the world who are expanding their impact and inspiring and mentoring the next generation of sustainability leaders. See Iyeshima’s bio and learn more here: EE 30 Under 30 | North American Association for Environmental Education.