Men and women dressed in 21st-century thrift-store versions of 18th-century garb riding on bicycles decorated with cardboard cutouts of horses' heads shouted to passers-by on Avenue B Thursday that "The bulldozers are coming," according to an article in today's edition of The New York Times by Colin Moynihan.

Modeled on Paul Revere's famous nighttime ride to Lexington, Massachusetts in 1775, the riders on Thursday, the article said, meant to warn people not about an invading military force, but about proposed rules by the city that would alter the status of hundreds of community gardens in the city.

An agreement will expire next month that has regulated community gardens since 2002 and preserved or gave increased protections to about 500 such gardens while designating about 150 for development. The agreement had been reached after the New York State Attorney General had sued the city to block the sale of gardens to developers.

"Although city officials have said they have no plans to develop gardens, rules proposed by the Department of Parks and Recreation and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development do not include any guarantees of preservation," the article said.

"In the 1990s, gardeners and their allies became known for using unorthodox tactics," the article said, "to rally support for their cause. Those included the release of thousands of live crickets during an auction of gardens at One Police Plaza; an event that involved people sleeping overnight in a jumbo sculpture of a tree frog inside a garden on East Seventh Street; and an episode in which a man dressed as a sunflower climbed a tree near City Hall. Some gardeners said the ride was the first in a series of events meant to sway opinion in favor of explicitly preserving the gardens. Members of a citywide gardening group are encouraging people to bring signs and banners on Aug. 10 to a public comment session for the new rules. Some gardeners said they would deliver fruit and vegetables from gardens to the mayor and members of the City Council on Monday."

The article said that "in dusting off some of the street theater techniques employed in previous disputes, about 50 people turned out for Thursday night's event, organized by Time's Up, a cycling and environmental advocacy group" and "rode from garden to garden in the East Village to spread news of the rules, then ventured uptown to deliver a message to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg."

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. "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, a previous article by Mr. Moynihan said. That 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 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."

Many of the community gardens, especially in the East Village, dramatically transformed vacant lots into lush and very attractive gardens thereby significantly improving the ambience of their neighborhoods.