Rats to Roses

The approximately 800 community gardens in New York City are small islands of hope and safety in the metropolis's more challenged neighborhoods. RATS TO ROSES follows the fate of two such gardens that became endangered when former Mayor Rudy Giuliani tried to open these formerly vacant lots to housing developers. In response, then-New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a lawsuit to save them as protected parks. But it didn't avoid a showdown with local neighbors and activists on one side and bulldozers and the police on the other.