The Lotus Garden

On our list of the best activities in New York.

Before 1981, neighbors had already turned a vacant lot on West 97th Street, once home to two movie theaters torn down in the 1970s, into a community garden. When developer William Zeckendorf bought the site, horticulturist Carrie Maher and architect Mark Greenwald spent over a year persuading him to rebuild it on the roof of the building he was putting up instead of paving over it. The result, open since 1983, is a 7,000-square-foot garden with a peach tree, two koi ponds and rows of plots tended by 28 families. The public can walk in on Sundays from 1 to 4pm through mid-November.