A. Badillo Community Rose Garden

The A. Badillo Community Rose Garden is a small community garden on Southern Boulevard near East 173rd Street in the Crotona Park East section of the Bronx. Named for a local community activist, the garden provides a cultivated green space in a neighborhood that has historically had limited access to quality parks and gardens.

The garden features rose bushes, ornamental plantings, and seating areas maintained by volunteer gardeners from the surrounding community. Community gardens in the South Bronx serve vital functions beyond horticulture: they provide social gathering spaces, combat food insecurity through vegetable growing, and create beauty in neighborhoods that have endured decades of disinvestment.

Crotona Park East experienced devastating abandonment and arson during the 1970s and 1980s, when the South Bronx became a national symbol of urban decay. Community gardens were among the first signs of neighborhood rebuilding, as residents claimed vacant lots and transformed them into productive green spaces.

The garden is part of a network of community gardens across the South Bronx that collectively provide green space, growing opportunities, and gathering places in one of the most park-deficient areas of the city. These gardens represent grassroots community investment at its most resilient.

The A. Badillo Community Rose Garden embodies the spirit of the South Bronx: a community that has endured extraordinary challenges but continues to create beauty, cultivate connection, and invest in the shared spaces that make a neighborhood feel like home.