A Brooklyn community garden was shut down after city officials allegedly found pot plants growing at the public space on two occasions.
The Green Gems community garden in East New York was shut down recently after officials with GreenThumb, which manages the city's community gardens, found marijuana plants twice, in fall of 2014 and last summer.
The agency said that it warned the garden after the first marijuana plant was found and decided to revoke the its license and chain its gates after another plant was found in 2015.
Bill LoSasso, a New York City Parks Department said that officials plan to meet with community members about the future of the garden.
"GreenThumb takes these violations of the license very seriously as well as the potential harm to communities that they can cause," LoSasso said.
The garden's supervisor, James McCrae, said that he thinks that a teen left the marijuana plants -- which he said were small and easy to miss -- at the garden, which he had transformed from a junkyard 23 years ago.
Garden maintenance workers said Friday that by shuttering the garden, the city is taking away an important resource for children and the community.
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"For one person, everybody's gotta pay, that's not right," said Gabriel Maldonado, who tends to the garden each day.
"It was a little piece of heaven in hell," said neighbor Michael McMahon.
