The Heckscher Foundation Children’s Garden has been an active site for vegetable growing and community gatherings since 1986. This 5,000-square-foot garden is situated one block from a building that houses the Lyons Community School, William Gaynor Intermediate School, Multicultural High School and Green School: An Academy for Environmental Careers – providing students with a much-needed spot of green contrasting with the surrounding concrete landscape and paved schoolyards.

In 2006, the Heckscher Foundation for Children provided New York Restoration Project (NYRP) with a $300,000 grant to transform the site from a weathered and worn community space into a vibrant, outdoor classroom and learning experience. The grant also provided essential funding to support the garden’s dedicated and multi-cultural group of neighborhood gardeners.

Renowned landscape designer Billie Cohen partnered with NYRP horticulture and design teams and local residents to create a community space that is both visually stimulating and alluring to the senses. The garden’s design features a pinwheel array of planting beds at its center, a grape arbor, fruit trees and large, abundantly planted street-tree pits in front, which highlight a wide variety of ornamental plantings. The Heckscher Foundation Children’s Garden – Cohen’s sixth NYRP garden restoration – also includes a number of green innovations located throughout the space, including a solar-powered composting toilet, storage shed constructed of rammed earth walls and a rainwater collection system.

At the back of the garden, a large shed with a porch allows visiting students from eight neighboring schools and members of a local community center to work on-site, alongside their teachers and NYRP educators. In partnership with the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment and local New York City schools, NYRP offers a wide variety of educational programs in this green space, including after-school nature tours that explore the garden’s green features and seasonal workshops that instruct schoolchildren on composting, planting, harvesting and cover cropping.

In June 2007, NYRP Founder Bette Midler and staff joined young gardeners and their parents who reside in this densely populated and largely Hispanic section of Williamsburg to celebrate the garden’s restoration. As part of the day’s festivities, attendees picked broccoli, cilantro and other vegetables and were served dishes prepared by the students from their bountiful harvest.