“Let us cultivate our garden,” Candide said. Good advice, but all too difficult to heed in a city of walk-ups and flower boxes. Yet just a block and a half away from Times Square and the Theater District, there is a place you can actually do it.

The Clinton Community Garden is one of the oldest in the city, and it was the first, in 1984, to be officially converted into parkland. By that time the denizens of Hell’s Kitchen had already done the hard work, clearing a derelict lot on 48th Street between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues (the story goes that they found two dead bodies in abandoned cars) and creating a splendid oasis quite unlike anything else in Midtown.

You need a key to get into the garden, which requires a $10 deposit. Anyone who lives or works between 34th and 59th Streets, west of Eighth Avenue, is considered part of the community. Many of the area’s office-dwellers could use a place to sit on a bench or spread a blanket as they read or picnic.

The real pleasures of the garden, however, are reserved for those with green thumbs. The grounds are entirely maintained by volunteers, for which there is a constant need. Those who put down roots in the neighborhood reap the ultimate benefit: their own plot of ground, on which to plant anything they like.