Swindler Cove Park is home to our Riley-Levin Children’s Garden, the vibrant centerpiece of New York Restoration Project’s (NYRP) environmental education program. Named for long-time NYRP board member and supporter Barbara Riley and her former husband, Gerald Levin – the garden was endowed with a $1 million grant from the couple in the late 1990s.
Created by acclaimed landscape designer Billie Cohen, this beautiful and fully functioning green space features 18 large planting beds, an interactive herb garden, butterfly gardens, peach trees, blueberry bushes and strawberry patches. Here, students from nearby public schools grow and tend their own vegetables, flowers and herbs through free in-school, after-school and summer programs.
The Riley-Levin Children’s Garden also features attractive brick walkways, vine arbors, a large teaching circle and podium, and "cold frame" storage areas that allow local gardeners and schoolchildren to extend the growing season into the winter months. Jonathan’s Pond – honoring the late son of Gerald Levin – is located in the southwest corner of the garden and serves as a frequent site for NYRP educators’ and their students’ study of freshwater plant and animal life.
During the summer months, approximately 100 students per week attend various NYRP gardening sessions at the Riley-Levin Children’s Garden, exploring and enhancing the garden’s habitat by turning soil, starting seeds, planting seedlings and maintaining planting beds. Through NYRP’s innovative environmental education programming and hands-on projects, children also learn how to be better stewards of this and other green space, their neighborhood, the planet and themselves by delving into a variety of topics, ranging from nutrition to healthy life styles and recycling to community responsibility.