A well-traveled plantsman with an extensive background in horticulture, Kevin C. Shank left his mark on the NYC community gardening scene. He served as GrowNYC’s Gardens Director from 1985-88, and was Vice Chairman of the Green Guerillas, with a heroic dedication towards revitalizing NYC through community gardening. After graduating from SUNY Delhi and Cornell University, Kevin was the Founding Horticulturist at the Pinkerton Garden for the Madison Square Boys & Girls Club in Manhattan. This intergenerational community garden included a state-of-the-art greenhouse and a rigorous after-school program for inner-city kids.  After this, Kevin moved on to the Group Live-In Experience Farms, which was the talk of the town in the late 80s in NYC. Growing and packaging fresh herbs for high-end restaurants in a state-of-the-art greenhouses in the South Bronx was unheard of then. Kevin went on to put his expert plantsmanship to good use in his final days as Senior Horticulturist at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, on the Upper West Side. He will be forever remembered as one of the great contributors to the NYC community gardening community.

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This fall GrowNYC will build its 100th community garden. To celebrate, we are sharing stories from GrowNYC gardening history! 

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.

It’s been almost 50 years since Marian Heiskell accepted Mayor Lindsay’s nomination to become Chair of GrowNYC! A forward-thinking conservationist who didn’t believe “urban environment” was an oxymoron but an opportunity, she worked tirelessly to convince fellow New Yorkers of the same. Since that time, Marian has made countless efforts to preserve New York’s green space, earning the honor of the title “Living Landmark” and a park named after her! Today she serves as Honorary Chairman on the board of GrowNYC.

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This fall GrowNYC will build its 100th community garden. To celebrate, we are sharing stories from GrowNYC gardening history! 

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.

Richard Abrons, Liz Christy, and former Mayor Ed Koch (holding a zucchini) at a Plant-A-Lot Garden opening in the early 1981.

Richard Abrons has been one of GrowNYC’s gardens’ greatest supporters.

In 1978, Richard and Liz Christy founded Plant-A-Lot (PAL), a material and technical resource for underserved neighborhoods where volunteers devoted years of sweat equity to convert vacant lots into community gardens. Richard and Liz partnered on 17 projects before Liz passed away in 1989.

PAL is active today and leveraged millions of dollars of private funding for many of the community gardens and park playgrounds known as Lots-for-Tots throughout the five boroughs. A New York City treasure, Richard is a generous philanthropist, serves on the board of GrowNYC, and is also an author and playwright! Thank you, Richard!

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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.

Announcing the Third Annual JetBlue BlueBud Mentoring Program

JetBlue is partnering with GrowNYC for the selection process to connect with food and beverage businesses focused on sustainable sourcing and social responsibility. The company selected for this year’s BlueBud mentoring program will participate in a mentorship initiative that includes:

• Access to JetBlue teams including Strategic Sourcing, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability, Communications and Marketing, Brand and Onboard Product
• A trip to JetBlue’s orientation in Orlando to understand JetBlue’s culture and values
• A speaker and taste-testing event opportunity for JetBlue crewmembers at the airline’s Queens, NY Support Center
• Travel certificates for travel to and from New York City for sessions with relevant JetBlue leaders and business partners
• A tour of JetBlue’s Long Island City, NY Support Center, JetBlue’s home terminal – T5 at JFK Airport, and an airline catering station to understand how food gets onboard

Applications are now open: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/bluebud2017

Previous winners were The Bronx Hot Sauce and Hot Bread Kitchen. Full information on the opportunity can be found on the JetBlue website: http://www.mediaroom.jetblue.com/investor-relations/press-releases/2017/07-27-2017-201536570

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.

                                                     All People's Garden, 1979                                                                      Governors Island Teaching Garden, 2017

We are thrilled to announce that this fall GrowNYC will build our 100th new community garden!

We opened our first garden, All People’s Garden, in the East Village in 1979. It takes a village: over the years we've worked with community residents, neighborhood associations, corporate volunteers, community partners, and city agencies. In addition to the 100 community gardens GrowNYC has built from the ground up, we’ve also lent our support to hundreds more.

To celebrate this milestone, we will be sharing photos and stories from GrowNYC gardening history every week until the 100th garden opening in October!

Though we have built 100 community gardens since 1975, 43 of those gardens have been built since 2013, thanks in part to a growing recognition of their importance for the health of NYC residents like you!

This story is far from over and WE NEED YOUR HELP TO KEEP THIS INCREDIBLE MOMENTUM GOING!!

Please keep NYC healthy and green by contributing to GrowNYC's New Garden Fund at http://www.grownyc.org/100-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.  

Making New Year’s resolutions is a relatively easy thing to do; keeping them, on the other hand, is not always a piece of cake (especially when you resolved to give up cake). If you’re a little chagrined by your follow-through this year, fret not. You get another chance!

At GrowNYC, we believe in Summer Resolutions. There’s so much inspiration to be found at the Greenmarkets in the dog days of summer. Here are a few of our favorite Summer Resolutions:

• New Market Adventure: Visit a Greenmarket you’ve never been to before. There are 51 of them throughout NYC. You may just find your favorite new farmer!
• Take a Chance: Try a new (to you!) vegetable. Maybe it’s a tomatillo, a pattypan squash, or epazote—just something new. You could also experiment with a local grain from the GrowNYC Grainstand that you’ve never cooked with before. (Related hot tip: keep an eye out for naked barley).
• Gear Up for Winter: Connect with your inner squirrel and prepare for winter. All those beautiful fruits and vegetables at market now can be enjoyed year-round…with a little planning. Here are some tips for freezing, jamming, and pickling. 
• Many Greenmarket farmers welcome visitors for wine tastings, apple picking, and tours - head out of town to visit them. 
• Fertilizing Fervor: With more and more compost drop-off sites popping up all around the city, now’s the perfect time to make good on that vow to start composing. It’s like nature’s way of recycling, and it feels great.

This list could go on and on--Cook more fish! Make it Locally-Sourced Fish! Consistently Pack a Lunch!--but we’ve got just over 60 days of summer left. We hope you enjoy it!

On June 15^th, GrowNYC's Project Farmhouse hosted the first in our Chef Seasonal Dinner Series. It was a seafood soiree, beginning with a double book reading by sustainable fisheries expert and New York Times bestselling author, Paul Greenberg (who read from American Catch: The Fight for Our Local Seafood), and Stephanie Villani, co-owner of Blue Moon Fish, a family operation that catches wild, local fish off the coast of Mattituck, on the North Fork of Long Island, who read an excerpt from her forthcoming cookbook, The Fisherman’s Wife.

This thoroughly informative and entertaining conversation with Paul and Stephanie was later followed by a four-course seated dinner featuring local seafood and shellfish prepared by Bill Telepan of Oceana, Howard Kalachnikoff of Gramercy Tavern, Melissa Rodriguez of Del Posto, Kerry Heffernan of Grand Banks, and Ron Paprocki of Gotham Bar and Grill.

In short, it was epic – as illustrated in this slideshow.

Look out for more info on our next dinner in the series!

Photography by Amanda Gentile

Now what? We keep on moving forward.

Why bother? Because each person’s actions, decisions and behavior still matter.

Is this it? Not yet.

People are fired up, mobilized, taking action.

Here at GrowNYC we continue to be astounded by the power of the people who take action to stop climate change and make a difference for all of us.

We see it in the faces of NYC community gardeners, in the joyful first harvest of our youngest school gardeners, in the sweat and determination of regional farmers.

The friendly smiles at Greenmarkets, Youthmarkets and Fresh Food Box sites.

The people who ride their bikes to drop off food scraps.

We see it in you.

We stand together – all of us.