Owner Takes a Chunk Out of an Unofficial Community Garden

Colin Moynihan for The New York Times Workers on Wednesday erected a fence around a privately owned lot inside a community garden on the Lower East Side as police officers, in the background, ensured order.

For years, the Children’s Magical Garden de Carmen Rubio on the Lower East Side has been known for the peach and nectarine trees that grow there and the roosters that roam the lot. Although the garden is not recognized by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, it has existed since 1982 with little official objection.

But on Wednesday morning, a group of workers accompanied by private security guards and a photographer erected a metal fence around roughly 2,500 square feet in the middle of the garden. They said that they were acting at the direction of a company that owns the center lot of the three that make up the garden, which stands at the corner of Norfolk and Stanton Streets and is named for a community organizer. The garden’s other two lots belong to the city.

Stan Weichers, 42, said that he was walking by the garden just before 9 a.m. when the workers and the guards arrived and used a power saw to cut through a lock securing the garden’s gate.

Soon, a crowd gathered, shouting that the workers had no right to enter the garden. But police officers who showed up said the workers had a permit to erect a fence inside. The workers carried in metal posts and rolls of fencing into the garden, as guards in suits stood by. A photographer who had arrived with them captured images of some of those objecting.

One gardener, Kate Temple-West, said the gardeners had been working with the local city councilwoman, Margaret S. Chin, to arrange a land swap with the owner of the third lot, in an effort to make the garden permanent.

“This is a community garden that is specifically for children,” she said. “It’s a very special place.”

A man who would not identify himself by name but said he worked for Norfolk Street Development, the company that controls the privately owned lot, told the gardeners that the fence was being erected to satisfy a request from an insurance company.

“We’re putting up something that ensures safety,” he said.

As the police stood guard, the workers began fencing off a rectangular area, roughly 100 feet by 25 feet. Dozens of gardeners and their supporters gathered, crowding into the city-owned sections of the garden. The group included 11th and 12th graders from the Lower East Side Preparatory School, which is opposite the garden.

Their teacher, Teresa Devore, described the garden as “a green place, a place for fresh air,” and said the students had participated in a program that involved planting tomatoes, peppers and eggplant there.