The diversity of plants in the city’s community gardens reflects the variety of New Yorkers themselves. For example, there's a bed of special red peppers planted by a Mexican immigrant family growing next to a stand of flowering peonies tended by a homesick Chinese gardener.

Mint says gardens in African-American neighborhoods often feature the collard greens and black-eyed peas favored on many Southern family farms.

"And they hold up that tradition of farming because it’s still within the memory of the family. They still go back down South and their relatives still come up to New York. So it’s always a source of pride for them to bring their relatives to the community garden to see that they are continuing this tradition that’s gone on in their family for so long. And people walk by it and say ‘That’s a farm. That’s a farm.’"

There is pride on the face of Lori Harris as she surveys the half square block of green her farm-raised father, now 90, helped create from a rubble-strewn Harlem lot in 1979.

"You have to give back to the Earth. You can’t just take everything from it. You gotta learn how to recycle and clean up. People think groceries come from the grocery store, but they come from a farm," says Harris. "They start from somewhere. So you really have to treat Mother Earth right and she treats you just the same."