Jenny Benítez Way: Street Co-Naming Ceremony

We are so proud of Riverside Park’s own community garden, located at 138th Street and 12th Avenue. Jenny’s Garden is a special part of Riverside Park named after Jenny Benitez, a remarkable individual and a giant in the community. In 2018 The New York Times wrote about her incredible impact in Riverside Park as one of the City’s original “Guerilla Gardeners” who transformed formerly abandoned areas around the City.

With help from her family and neighbors, Jenny successfully revitalized a derelict lot into a thriving, lush garden, which has been lovingly tended by Jenny and local volunteers ever since the 1970s.

In a decades-long, never-ending process of stewarding this one acre area of Riverside Park, Jenny, alongside her husband Victor, her children, and her neighbors, created a multi-generational, multi-cultural community of urban gardeners in West Harlem.

This space was severely neglected for years and was littered with trash, abandoned cars, and home to dangerous activity. In partnership with Riverside Park Conservancy and the New York City Parks Department, Jenny engaged the neighborhood, fed the hungry, and blessed the city with a horticultural oasis that grew across a half mile of landscape along Riverside Drive.

Jenny’s Garden is a living example of collective, community-based agriculture within an urban landscape. Today the Garden continues to be led and stewarded by local volunteers.

We are inspired by the ongoing work of all volunteers at this garden, and the community that has grown around it. This piece of land (which is just shy of one acre) produces a significant harvest every year, much of which is donated to local community centers and soup kitchens.

In November 2019, Jenny Benitez passed away in her home, surrounded by family, at the age of 86. She is missed every day by so many, but her legacy will live on in the Garden, in Riverside Park, and beyond.

Please join us on Saturday, April 4th at 3pm to honor the legacy of Jenny Benitez, whose decades of stewardship transformed the community and created a lasting green sanctuary.