I investigate multiple competing visions within one community garden in a Queens, New York, neighborhood characterized by gentrification, legacy of racial segregation, and dramatic immigration-driven persification. I show that differences in how the garden is understood (e.g., a place to grow food, a place of beauty, or a community space) are not simply a reflection of a multicultural mosaic in an iconi- cally perse locale. Instead, the visions of the garden reflect normative notions of community and civility, as well as local memory and identity, and are inextricably connected to social inequalities and power hierarchies beyond the garden gates. What are the processes through which particular visions of the public space compete and prevail? How are societal hierarchies replicated and when are they challenged?

NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT

The community garden under study is located in a Queens, New York, neigh- borhood settled by waves of immigrants, including Italians in the early twentieth century, and Greeks in the mid-twentieth century, and again in the 1970s. In the  past 2 decades, there has been a rapid persification as multiple groups of immi- grants have moved into the area, including those from Mexico, Ecuador, Bangla- desh, China, Morocco, and Croatia. Although the neighborhood continues to be identified with Greeks and features several major Greek American institutions, many Greek immigrants and their descendants have left (Alexiou 2013). No ethnic group comes close to dominating the area numerically (U.S. Census Bureau 2010).

In addition to a perse population of first-, second-, and third-generation immigrants, there is a concentrated population of African Americans and Puerto Ricans, who reside primarily in the waterfront public housing developments, far from major corridors of transportation and services. In the past decade, the public housing population itself has become more perse, as more immigrants from coun- tries such as China and Bangladesh are housed there. A recent explosion of high- end development has brought construction of new apartment buildings and growing rents. Some of this development, including a recently constructed luxury 19-story

building, is taking place along the waterfront, which was previously home to vari- ous industrial and  commercial  properties. There are plans  for a vast new high-  rise complex alongside and even inside the public housing development. To sum- marize, the three distinguishing features of the neighborhood for the purposes of  this study are (1) high levels of persity, (2) spatial concentration of disadvan- taged African American and Puerto Rican populations, and (3) ongoing gentrification.

RESEARCH METHODS

Data for this study come from ethnographic observation of a community gar- den and surrounding neighborhood for 2 years starting in summer 2011. I began by volunteering in the garden and spending time in its shared spaces and walkways. Eventually, I became a member, gardening in the communally run community plot and sharing an inpidual plot. I attended and helped out with garden meetings and events, participated in online discussions, and interviewed new and old gardeners formally and informally. I took numerous photographs and some video footage. I repeatedly informed the gardeners of my work as a researcher. All the names in this article have been changed. I also drew on Census data and a review of the local media and nonprofit agency reports to better understand the local context. As part of a broader project, I interviewed people in the surrounding neighborhood who were not involved in the garden.

In analyzing the data for this article, I studied my field notes and interviews transcribed by an assistant in order to identify episodes in which gardeners expressed their vision for the garden, both aesthetically and in terms of expected behavior of gardeners and visitors. I looked for commonalities in these visions to create typologies. I repeatedly returned to the field to test my understanding of the different visions, relying on focused observation as well as direct conversations with people in the garden.