To the individual, garden areas link to the natural world, offering solace, refuge, inspiration, and purpose. To a low-income neighborhood, where often the only greenery sprouts from between cracks in concrete, their impact can be monumental, signaling sustainability, beautifying, attesting to value and worth--even prompting civic change. A 2000 survey by Canada's Office of Urban Agriculture showed that gardens in low-income neighborhoods were four times as likely as those in non-low-income neighborhoods to redirect focus onto other issues in the community. Beautiful library gardens already abound across the U.S., such as the reading garden of the Greene County Library in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the rooftop garden of Salt Lake City's new main library. The Horticultural Society of New York (HSNY), with its GreenBranches program, is taking the concept of a library garden beyond that of a secluded spot for summer reading, making it an opportunity for real cultivation and use that enables learning outside a library's static walls. This article discusses New York's GreenBranches program and describes how the program links the library to the street.