New York City has the largest network of community gardens in the United States. Community gardens borrow from earlier urban-gardening movements, such as Frannie Griscolm Parsons' educational "Farm-Gardens" of the early 20th-century and Depression-era "subsistence gardens" which provided for communities across the city. Beginning in the 1960s, New Yorkers increasingly favored progressive government programs and looked towards the city to sponsor many past-due revitalization efforts for neighborhoods. One such effort was community gardens, which beautified abandoned lots and, most importantly, allowed the community to have an active say in the design of their urban environment.

Regina Horowitz Margareten was a Hungarian-Jewish immigrant American, matriarch of a kosher food dynasty, business woman and “Matzo Queen.”