The New York City departments of Parks and Recreation and Housing and Preservation and Development are drafting regulations to replace a 2002 agreement between the city and the New York State Attorney General's Office that preserved 198 community gardens in the GreenThumb program of the Parks Department, increased the protection of 197 other gardens and agreed to not develop 100 gardens maintained by the Department of Education. That agreement also designated about 150 community gardens in the city for sale and development.

The 2002 agreement expires in September and had settled a lawsuit in which the Attorney General's Office sought to stop the Giuliani administration from selling city-owned gardens to developers.

According to an article by Colin Moynihan in today's edition of The New York Times, the drafts now being written "do not contain language guaranteeing the continuation of gardens preserved by the existing agreement." "And while the existing agreement states that 'the city represents that it has no present intention of selling or developing' other gardens, such assurances do not appear in the drafts," the article continued.

"This would be a policy change from preservation to the ability to develop," said Aresh Javadi of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, who said he would ask that the city make all GreenThumb gardens permanent, the article said.

The article said that "Adrian Benepe, the parks commissioner, said that there were no plans to develop parks department gardens but noted that community gardens were always considered temporary."

The proposed rules will be published in the City Record, followed by a public hearing.

The 2002 agreement came after the city transferred control of hundreds of gardens to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in 1998 and placed many on the auction block leading to numerous demonstrations and arrests.

"Perhaps the most intense clash," according to the article, "came in February 2000 when city workers bulldozed the Esperanza Garden on East Seventh Street while lawyers for the attorney general's office were arguing in court that the garden should remain untouched. More than 100 people hoping to stave off the bulldozer had barricaded themselves in the garden overnight, but the police dismantled their defenses, arrested some and dispersed others. At the time, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani said the site would be used for moderately priced housing. The company that got the lot built a development there called Eastville Gardens, where some apartments have been listed at more than $3,000 per month."

"They're greasing the wheels for development," Harry Bubbins, a Bronx gardener, told The Times and "Peter Cramer, a founder of the Petit Versailles garden on East Houston Street, said he was concerned that the new rules might open the door to build on the lot, near Avenue C, where he and others hauled away garbage and auto parts in 1996, which they replaced with trees and flowering plants."

Many of the community gardens, especially in the East Village, dramatically transformed vacant lots into lush and very attractive gardens.