GrowNYC's 2024 Plant Sale

March 17, 2024
Posted in Community Gardens

 

GrowNYC's Annual Spring Plant Sale, which we've been running since 1986, is a great way for community gardens, schools, block associations, churches, and any other group greening project to purchase vegetable, herb, and flowering plants grown by local Greenmarket farmers at wholesale prices. Our Plant Sale takes place over 5 days in early May - 3 days in Brooklyn and 2 days in the Bronx.  

More information about GrowNYC's Annual Spring Plant Sale

2023 Photo Recap:

Spring 2018 Garden Builds with GrowNYC's Garden Program

June 4, 2018
Posted in Community Gardens

This spring, GrowNYC's garden program has been busy doing what we do best: building new gardens! 

We've started work on 6 new community gardens in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens, including four sites in close partnership with NYC Parks Green Thumb

 

Garden @ NYCHA's Melrose Houses and Bronxworks' Classics Center   
Melrose, Bronx
3,600 square feet

 

Eternal Life Community Garden
Morris Heights, Bronx
3,600 square feet

Eternal Life Community Garden

 

Georgia Avenue Community Garden
Brownsville/East New York, Brooklyn
1,961 square feet

Georgia Avenue Community Garden

 

Good Life Garden
Bushwick
13,500 square feet

 

Corona Taxpayers Association Garden
Corona, Queens
6,600 square feet

 

NYCHA Bay View Houses Garden #2
Far Rockaway, Queens
2,500 square feet

NYCHA Bay View Houses Garden #2

Our 100th Community Garden - Jackson Forest Community Garden

October 16, 2017
Posted in Community Gardens

Drum roll please…

GrowNYC is proud to announce that we have completed our 100th community garden -- Jackson Forest Community Garden!

 

Jackson Forest Community Garden Slideshow

 

The Jackson Forest site has been home to a garden since 1983. After a building was demolished, the lot was an eyesore – it was a mess and full of trash. The community cleared out the lot and began planting, and the site became a GreenThumb garden in 1991. It flourished – it was full of trees, flowers, fruits, vegetables, and herbs. A true community space, gardeners at Jackson Forest would often leave extra produce near the entrance so neighbors walking by could grab fresh vegetables. In 2008, the garden closed to build a new retaining wall and an iron fence and install a permanent water source. The garden had to be demolished in the process, and the renovations ended up taking longer than expected, while the anxious gardeners had no access to the site.

Jackson Forest Community Garden was recently rebuilt by the GrowNYC Gardens team, along with help from corporate volunteers from BrainPOP, Morgan Stanley, and KPS Advisors. It was a lot of hard work! They mulched, raked, spread soil, and built new garden beds, tables, and benches for community members to enjoy.

The gardeners have been working on getting the garden back up and running and so far have grown cucumbers, okra, peaches, and lots of tomatoes! Students from the nearby school come to take care of their two beds and learn about the science of gardening and composting. Next spring, the gardeners plan to throw a big opening party to welcome the neighborhood back to the garden. In the future, the gardeners hope that Jackson Forest will again be a community meeting space, to offer fresh produce to the neighbors, and to teach classes for children on weekends.

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“Thanks to [GrowNYC Assistant Director] Mike Rezny and his team, we have a lot of benches, we have a lot of tables where the community can come sit, read the newspaper, just get in touch with nature.” - community gardener Marie Brook
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GrowNYC is so honored to call the Jackson Forest Community Garden our 100th garden. The dedicated spirit and joy of the community gardeners at Jackson Forest are a shining example of how important places like this are for a neighborhood. Today, this garden’s beauty shows what can be accomplished when we work together! 

You can be proud knowing that all the achievements of our Gardens program were made possible with support from people like you. We never would have been able to do it without help from our many donors, especially the Louis and Anne Abrons Foundation. Since September, you helped to raise $41,592 for the New Garden Fund. That’s $11,592 over our goal! You’ve helped establish the foundation for our Gardens program to continue building the NEXT 100 gardens that serve communities like yours all around the city. 

Thank you so much to everyone who believed in our vision and helped contribute! We couldn’t do it without you!

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Want to stay involved? Visit our website to learn more about our Gardens program, find a community garden near you, receive our community gardens newsletter, or sign up to volunteer

 

100 Gardens - Celebrating Liz Christy

August 29, 2017
Posted in Community Gardens

This week, we are highlighting the amazing contributions of Liz Christy. Liz Christy was a fierce advocate for neighborhood revitalization through community gardening her entire life. She founded the Gardens program at GrowNYC (formerly the Council on the Environment), where she worked from 1975-1984.

In addition to her work at GrowNYC, Liz founded the Green Guerillas in the 1970s, an urban community garden group that fought urban decay head on by planting seeds anywhere possible - vacant lots, street meridians, abandoned buildings. She helped create the Bowery-Houston Community Farm and Garden (since renamed the Liz Christy Garden) and many other community gardens, and was the first winner of the American Forestry Association's Urban Forestry Award. Liz came to be known as NYC’s “Mother of Gardens.”

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This fall GrowNYC will build its 100th community garden. To celebrate, we are sharing stories from GrowNYC gardening history! We are so honored to have Liz Christy as part of our story.

But these stories are far from over

You can help ensure that all New Yorkers have access to green space by making a donation today to GrowNYC's New Garden Fund.

NY Times covers GrowNYC S. Bronx Garden

August 7, 2017
Posted in Community Gardens

The New York Times recently profiled several Bronx community gardeners as part of an article about immigrant gardeners and their influence on the increasing number of community gardens being built across the City.  

The Bronx gardeners profiled are all from United We Stand Community Garden, a garden GrowNYC rebuilt in 2016.  

New Garden Build at a NYCHA site in Harlem

May 8, 2017
Posted in Community Gardens

 

GrowNYC's garden program recently built a new garden at the New York City Housing Authority's PS 139 Conversion senior housing development in Harlem.

With help from volunteers from Helmsley Charitable Trust, we built 30+ garden beds and moved 20 tons of topsoil, giving the residents of PS 139 Conversion an accessible garden that they'll be able to use for many years to come.

Check out a timelapse of the build below - and let us know if you're interested in organizing a build day of your own!

 

An Interview with Efrain Estrada from United We Stand Community Garden

January 4, 2017
Posted in Community Gardens

 

On East 137th and 138th Streets in the South Bronx, four contiguous community gardens flourished for more than 25 years. Hundreds of Mott Haven residents tended to flowers, grew food, and met one another. Then, in 2015, a fire broke out in the neighborhood, burning infrastructure across the garden block. The City was forced to close all four gardens and the site lay dormant.

Starting in February of 2016, the NYC Parks Department’s GreenThumb program began the gargantuan task of rebuilding the entire site. With help from the Department of Sanitation and the Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation, the site was completely cleared, including thousands of pounds of debris and all the internal fences, and a fresh, vacant lot appeared.

GrowNYC joined the effort in May to restore the space to its previous horticultural glory, building more than 100 garden beds, a performance stage, murals, dozens of tables and benches. In September, we finished work on the new United We Stand and 138th Street Community Gardens. You can see the transformation in the before and after pictures, but let Efrain Estrada, a community garden member, tell the story:

“After the fire, the garden was closed. It was very bad: we had nowhere to garden, nowhere to hang out. It looked like a jungle, with a burned casita, and then people started throwing junk in there.

I felt bad that the garden was gone—I felt like a piece of myself was gone. The garden community is a family and the family didn’t have any place to go. I was close to crying. It was 25 years that we had made that garden and then it was gone. But then I thought, let’s go. It was spring and it was time to go again. Let’s start again. And that is where GrowNYC stepped in.

Working with the community and volunteers, we started rebuilding the entire site in the spring and we finished in fall.

People from the neighborhood say it’s beautiful now. We are proud. The people from the neighborhood see this whole new space on 137th Street and 138th Street. They see the flowers and all the vegetables and they love it.”

4 New Gardens Bloom in NYC

July 5, 2016
Posted in Community Gardens

GrowNYC's garden program has had a busy first half of 2016! 

Among other things, we've built four new community gardens, totaling 40,000 square feet of new open space.  Here's the skinny:

 

Windmill Community Garden

Windmill Community Garden
A vacant lot in Long Island City - who would have thought? We worked with a great neighborhood association and adjacent school on building out this 2,500 square foot space with raised beds, a shed, and, you guessed it, a windmill!  Lots more to come from this space in the 2nd half of 2016.
 

 

400 Montauk Avenue Community Garden

400 Montauk Community Garden
An existing garden in East New York, Brooklyn that had been extinct for several years, we started the year with a rubble-filled lot and, a few weeks later, had a total renewal - 20 new raised beds, picnic tables and garden benches, and more!  

 

Warwick Street Community Garden

Warwick Street Community Garden
Another extinct community garden in East New York that we worked with a host of community partners on identifying, organizing, designing, and building a new garden on a completely vacant space.  Now features raised beds, picnic tables, a shed, and, most importantly, plants! More info

 

United We Stand Community Garden

United We Stand Community Garden
4 contiguous community gardens flourished for 30 years until they were decimated by fire in the Winter of 2014.  Flash forward to this February, and we'd worked with the garden groups and the Parks Department to tear all the internal garden fences down, clear the entire site, and start working on a design for 1 large united community garden that spans an entire block between 137th and 138th Streets in the South Bronx.  

Halfway through 2016, we've built 50 raised beds, a dozen picnic tables, a new shed, and a pathway linking the two streets.  We can't wait to put the finishing touches on the garden this summer!  

Volunteer Profile: Jonathan Kong

July 4, 2016
Posted in Community Gardens

Volunteers are a major source of strength for nonprofits and GrowNYC is fortunate to have the time, effort and talents of so many dedicated New Yorkers. Whether they are corporate groups giving back to the community by helping with a garden build for a neighborhood or school or a single individual who feels passionate about what GrowNYC does, we are extremely grateful.  Want to volunteer with GrowNYC?

Jonathan Kong started volunteering with GrowNYC in 2014, quickly establishing himself as a tireless worker and enthusiastic supporter of all things GrowNYC.  But in 2016, Jonathan has taken things to a new level: Creating and undertaking The Greenmarket Challenge: a quest to volunteer at all 54 Greenmarket farmers markets in 1 year.  

We spoke with Jonathan what inspires him, which Greenmarket is his favorite, and much more:
 

How long have you been volunteering with GrowNYC?

This is my third year.

What is it about GrowNYC that inspires you to work with us?

I really like the environment, working outdoors, getting to interact with the public, doing hands-on activities such as the cooking demos, and learning something new about myself everyday.

Favorite activity when volunteering?

Cooking demos are always fun to do because I get to see the actual ingredients I'm using and use them with the recipe. Outreach is great since I get to see the diversity of people who live in different neighborhoods.

How many different Greenmarket locations have you volunteered at?

So far about 30, but I plan to volunteer at all of them by the end of this year.

Do you have a favorite Greenmarket?

I like Union Square a lot because there's a lot of different activities going on down there and it's really easy to get to. I also have favorite markets for each region: Forest Hills for Queens, Columbia for Upper Manhattan, Tompkins for Lower Manhattan, Fort Greene for Brooklyn, and Parkchester for Bronx.

Favorite fruit and/or vegetable?

I tend to go for tropical fruits like mangos, pineapples and coconuts, but they don't sell them at the markets.

What would you tell someone who was considering volunteering with GrowNYC?

Volunteering with GrowNYC will help you improve your social skills, build confidence in yourself, and feel comfortable working with other people.                                                                                                                         

5 Questions with Mike Rezny, Assistant Director of Open Space Greening

January 7, 2016
Posted in Community Gardens

As part of our end of the year review, we caught up with Mike Rezny, Assistant Director of Open Space Greening at GrowNYC, to talk about the year in urban agriculture, all the new gardens we built, and what's on tap for 2017.

For those that don't know, what does GrowNYC's Open Space Greening program do?

Open Space Greening builds and supports community gardens, urban farms, and school gardens all across New York City.  That includes building farms and Green Thumb gardens on city-owned land, gardens in public housing developments, gardens at NYC public schools, and, one time, a garden at JetBlue's terminal at JFK.  

Most commonly, that means we're working with Green Thumb to identify a vacant lot and working with them and community members to organize a group to steward the space, designing a garden, building garden beds, seating, shade structures, and anything else a garden needs, and turning it over to that neighborhood group who will make their garden into a community hub for growing healthy food, for neighbors to meet one another, and for running public events.

What were some highlights in 2016?

We definitely had a busy year!  We built eight new farms and gardens, creating more than 54,000 square feet of new green space in New York City.  We also renovated more than 20 additional gardens, built 11 rainwater harvesting systems that collect more than 100,000 gallons of water every year, and had our 3rd successful year of our farm on Governors Island where we ran 9 school tours a week from March to November and worked with more than 5,000 NYC schoolchildren.

What was your favorite garden project of the year?

Hard to choose, but it's got to be the 2 new gardens we built in the South Bronx, United We Stand and 138th Street Community Garden.

Note: These gardens were featured in a 2017 New York Times article.

For about 25 years, 4 contiguous gardens thrived on 137th and 138th Street in Mott Haven.  They had hundreds of members, grew an enormous amount of food, and were some of the best known gardens in the city.  Then, in the winter of 2014/2015, a fire broke out in one garden, spread to the other gardens, and decimated all 4 spaces.  Casitas, garden beds, picnic tables, fruit trees -- all ruined.  The gardens were closed for an entire year and everyone that used to enjoy the gardens was really devastated.  

Green Thumb flagged the project for us in February of 2016, and shortly thereafter we took funders and some city agency partners on tours of the space.  We started work in April, our first volunteer groups came in May and we wrapped up construction with a garden opening in September.  So many city agencies helped out - Department of Sanitation cleared the space, the Mayor's Office of Environmental Remediation's Clean Soil Bank brought in 300 cubic yards of fill, and we worked with NYC Parks to run a dozen community design charettes.  

The garden has been an unbelievable success.  Where there were once 4 separate gardens all separated by fences, there is now 1 big space connecting 137th Street to 138th Street in the middle of the block.  There are hundreds of garden members, 80 garden beds growing a ton of food, a huge performance stage, and so many happy people. 

What's next for 2017?

We built one garden with New York City Housing Authority in 2016 and we see lots of great opportunities to build more gardens in public housing in the future. 

There is so much green space around public housing buildings that is just dying to be used.  One unique thing about community gardens is that they give residents the opportunity to design a public space in their own image, to organize how it is managed, and to use the space on their own terms.  The best gardens are extremely reflective of the neighborhoods in which they exist, with young and old people working alongside each other to do something for the entire community to enjoy.  

What kind of support could you use in 2017?

Volunteers have been a huge part of what's made our garden program so efficient in recent years: of the 94 gardens we've built since 1975, 31 have been built in the last 4 years, and a lot of that is thanks to volunteers.  We worked with more than 2700 in 2016 and we can always use more.

The United We Stand and 138th Street Community Garden projects couldn't have been completed without generous funding from companies like Timberland, Heineken, and Samsung, all of whom funded our work and brought hundreds of employees out for volunteer days.  If your company is interested in coming out to volunteer, let us know!

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