NY community gardens threatened by plans for affordable housing

New York

APART from a colourful hand-painted sign, there is little to suggest that the Mandela Community Garden in Harlem, a lot piled with pieces of pavement and bounded by graffitied walls and a chain-link fence, is a garden at all. The volunteers who pulled up the concrete had made plans for the spring, however: to pepper the dirt with wildflower seeds, make sculptures from the rubble and turn the lot into a verdant little oasis.

But those plans were dashed when the volunteers r…