Three new or improved programs invite neighbors to garden, farm and adopt forgotten lots

This Week’s Top Agenda Items

• Adopt a Lot turns 10 and could grow beyond gardens
• City Farms Garden Program would let residents grow food in parks and greenways
• Neglected hillsides may become permanently protected open space

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The Department of City Planning (DCP) wants residents to dig into caring for Pittsburgh’s green spaces.

Members of the department spoke with city council during its June 10 committee meeting about a five-piece legislative package. Deputy Director Andrew Dash said, “The overall intent is trying to make it easier for residents, for nonprofit organizations and others to be able to steward the city’s either vacant or hillside properties.” 

There are a lot of spaces for residents to work with. The PGH2050 community plan reported there are 18,178 vacant residential lots, which is 17% of all residential lots in the city. 

The proposed legislation would expand the city’s Adopt a Lot program as well as create new farming and greenway programs. Adopt a Lot turns 10 and could grow beyond gardens 🔗.

The adoptions of city-owned property are not meant to be forever.

The 10-year-old Adopt a Lot program allows residents to lease vacant city-owned lots in one- and three-year intervals. It started as a gardening program, but, Dash said, residents have asked to expand use into displaying public art and creating other community spaces. 

The bill also addresses questions around permanency. “We acknowledge now, which didn’t happen previously at the start of the program, that it is a temporary-use program,” said Mackenzie Pleskovic, DCP senior planner. The lots are always meant to be sold for private use such as for building infill housing.

Last year, council heard from nearly two dozen residents in support of Ebony Lunsford-Evans, who operated a farm on an adopted lot in Manchester. The space had been earmarked for affordable housing as part of the Esplanade development, and her lease would not be renewed when it ended in July.

Council President R. Daniel Lavelle of the Upper Hill District said, “You now have a garden through the Adopt a Lot program that has absolutely served a good service to the community and to the city at large… How will we deal with that tension?”

“We understand that in our communities with different real estate markets, ‘temporary’ can mean very different things,” said Dash. “One year in one community may mean 15 in another.”

Pleskovic said that, while city code prevents direct sales, DCP can guide lease holders toward treasurer’s sales or the land bank if the property is not otherwise being held for permanent use.

City Farms Garden Program would let residents grow food in parks and greenways 🔗 🔗

If the package passes, urban gardening and farming could continue to grow.

“In 2025 the city provided the resources, materials, technical assistance and dollars for about 60 gardens,” said Council Member Deb Gross of Highland Park. “Five years ago, it was only four.” She added that urban gardening reaches nearly as many residents as the city’s aquatics division.

Dash said DCP is trying to meet the “really high demand” across the city for community gardens as well as urban farms and food forests. 

For example, Gross said, people in her district, which includes Lawrenceville and Highland Park, planted 600 trees in the last five years. Three hundred of them were Western Pennsylvania native food trees such as pawpaws and persimmons.

The proposed City Farms Garden Program would allow residents and community-based groups to operate gardens and other urban agriculture on underutilized city-owned property such as parks and greenways. Participants would be permitted to sell off-site up to $25,000 per year of unprocessed edibles or flowers.

Gross said there are organizations in every council district working with residents as part of the local food system. “People are learning how to grow food and also harvesting it, processing it, storing it, preserving it, using it, cooking with it. That’s really the work that we should all be proud of.”

Neglected hillsides may become permanently protected open spaces 🔗 🔗

New greenways would be designed to create a green ribbon to tie neighborhoods to each other.

The Open Space Institute awarded the city a $25,000 grant to acquire privately-owned tax-delinquent land to improve greenway connectivity.

Dash said the city can use the funds to purchase neglected spaces such as hillside lots through treasurer’s sale or the land bank. These would become permanently conserved, primarily passive open spaces.

According to Dash, DCP completed a parcel-by-parcel analysis to identify potential purchases to add to the city’s 12 existing greenways or to create new ones.

 Council Member Barb Warwick of Greenfield asked how the city would prevent dumping at some of the sites where it is currently a common occurrence.

“I don’t believe that, as a city, we can continue to rely on twice-a-year community cleanups,” she said. “If we’re going to take ownership of these hillsides, they will be ours. So, what is the plan?”

Principal Environmental Planner Isabella Gross said that by creating an official greenways program — it has informally existed since 1980 — DCP can obtain additional grants. Funding could help support nonprofit partners such as Landforce and Allegheny Cleanways in large-scale cleanups. She also said DCP and the Department of Public Works are looking to build a long-term maintenance plan for these spaces.

Council moved to hold all five bills for one week.