Annie’s is offering small grants to community gardens, school gardens and other educational programs that connect children directly to real food. These funds can be used to buy gardening tools, seeds or other needed supplies.

Awards of up to $250 are available. Eligible entities include schools and nonprofit organizations that focus on school and community gardens or sustainable agriculture.

Please contact Annie’s for more information and to apply for this funding: http://www.annies.com/grants

Our newest garden restoration is the Carroll Street Community Garden, three blocks from the infamous Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn. Generously sponsored by Jo Malone London (an Estée Lauder company), the new garden is also a pilot site for the NYC Department of Environmental Protection’s new Green Infrastructure Grant Program. Together with our partners and the community, we will create a garden that will be as functional as it is beautiful – this new pocket park will include features to capture the tens of thousands of gallons of storm water that frequently flood this neighborhood.

This green infrastructure will be the first of its kind in an NYC community garden. In addition to storm water control, the design will include greenery that will be engaging, beautiful, and low maintenance. The new Carroll Street garden will also be a living classroom for local schoolchildren to learn about storm water and biology. NYRP has commenced the design process with the local community, gardeners, and partners. We will share designs and more photos from this latest restoration project in the months ahead.

We've been Tree-cycling! Through MULCHFEST2012 and our Community Gardens, we've collected hundreds of discarded Christmas trees to recycle for reuse as mulch.

Highbridge Park
Our crews at Highbridge Park are involved in mapping significant gaps in the forest canopy. The series of devastating storms over the past two years have taken a big toll on natural areas around the city. This mapping project is a small part of our response and will be used to monitor the forest and plan for its restoration since we have completed clearing the majority of the downed and damaged trees in Highbridge Park.

East Harlem
Last Friday, our crew completed paving work in the El Cataño Community Garden requested by community members. While we were at it, we added this new, long raised bed to replace smaller planters—now they can grow even more vegetables, herbs and flowers this summer. According to an active community member the finished product is receiving “rave reviews” on the block.

El Cataño Community Garden 

East Harlem Community Meeting: Winter Planning
All East Harlem Community members are also invited to attend our winter planning meeting this February. We’ll be turning local needs and ideas into plans for this spring.

Who: Open to all East Harlem community members

Where: Patsy’s Pizza, 2287 First Avenue (between 117 St & 118 St)

When: Friday, February 17 | 6:00 pm

This month, NYRP and the NYC Parks Department hit a big milestone with the MillionTreesNYC initiative. On October 18, NYRP joined Mayor Bloomberg, the NYC Parks Department, and MillionTreesNYC lead sponsors Toyota and BNP Paribas to plant the 500,000th tree in St. Nicholas Park in Harlem, marking the halfway point in the effort to plant one million new trees around New York City. During this fall, MillionTreesNYC has worked with the community to plant trees through a variety of large- and small-scale volunteer planting days.

October’s series of volunteer planting days kicked off on the 1st, with American Express-sponsored “Serve2gether,” a Saturday devoted to planting trees in the Bronx’s Co-op City. With over 200 community volunteers, we successfully planted 291 trees that day. On October 11, NYRP continued its MillionTreesNYC planting efforts at Pomonok Houses in Queens, sponsored by Alcoa Foundation. Volunteers from Alcoa, City Year, Trees New York, the Harvey Milk School and NYCHA residents worked together to plant 145 new trees across the Pomonok Houses campus. On October 22, NYRP and the NYC Parks Department held several large-scale reforestation days across New York City in all five boroughs, engaging close to 1,000 New York volunteers in our greening efforts and planting over 21,600 trees.

MillionTreesNYC is a public-private partnership between Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s PlaNYC sustainability initiative, the New York City Department of Parks & Recreation and New York Restoration Project.

The 103rd Street Community Garden in East Harlem has recently undergone some big changes, bringing a large multi-disciplinary recreational and garden space to the local community. Before the renovation, the 103rd Street Community Garden was home to a very special playground, which has since been removed from the space during the renovations. Donated to New York Restoration Project by Beverly Caplan in 2007 in memory of her late husband, Joseph H. Caplan, this playground is about to find a new home.

The playground, which was generously given to this East Harlem Community by Mrs. Caplan in order to provide children of the community a place to grow and play, will continue to provide benefits to New Yorkers of a different community. In partnership with WHEDco, an organization devoted to the economic and aesthetic enhancement of the South Bronx, NYRP will relocate the playground from 103rd Street Community Garden to the Urban Horizons housing community in the Bronx. Located in the Concourse/Highbridge section of the Bronx, this housing complex was converted from an abandoned hospital in 1997 and has won several awards including the TD Charitable Foundation Housing for Everyone Award for the Energy Retrofit (2010) and the Fannie Mae Foundation Maxwell Award for Excellence for the Production of Low-Income Housing (1998).

NYRP is proud to bring this playground to Urban Horizons. We look forward to offering the children of this neighborhood the gift that keeps on giving: a new playground through which they can safely engage with each other and the outdoors.

Head to one of the Manhattan Whole Foods Markets this Thursday, September 22 to stock up and branch out! That day, Whole Foods Markets is donating 5% of all receipts from the six Manhattan stores to support MillionTreesNYC. You can help us continue our efforts to plant and care for one million new trees around the five boroughs by shopping at a Whole Foods Market this Thursday. As a bonus, the first 500 shoppers at each store will receive a limited edition MillionTreesNYC tote bag. Tell your friends and join us as we continue toward our goal of planting one million trees!

September 22, 5-7pm
103rd Street Community Garden, 105 East 103rd St., Manhattan

This Thursday, join the local East Harlem community, NYRP and founder Bette Midler for the official opening of the 103rd Street Community Garden. All are welcome to attend an evening of festivities and a special ribbon cutting ceremony at this brand new public space. There will be activities for all ages, free seed giveaways for your own garden, and an eclectic musical performance by Coco Rico. Refreshments will be provided by East Harlem Café and music by local musician, DJ Tedsmooth.

The Walt Disney Company Foundation,as part of their commitment to a healthier and more active lifestyle, has generously sponsored this multidisciplinary space, which includes a playground, basketball court and vegetable garden. Their substantial support provides the surrounding East Harlem community with a beautiful and safe place to play and grow.

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Through a partnership with El Museo del Barrio in East Harlem, NYRP is turning several of its community gardens into temporary exhibition spaces this summer and fall during our annual Arts in the Gardens series. As part of an ongoing exhibition titled El Museo's Bienal: The (S) Files 2011, innovative and cutting-edge artists from the local community are bringing their work to some of NYRP's community gardens in the Bronx and Manhattan.

This year's installations and performances in El Museo's Bienal" The (S) Files 2011 work to expand and challenge the definition of contemporary Latino and Latin American art. At each of these venues, the artists will be on site to discuss their work and engage with local community members. For more information on the individual Arts in the Gardens exhibits, please check the NYRP calendar of events page.

It was a busy summer for our Nature University campers at Swindler Cove, exploring the environments of Northern Manhattan and beyond. The month-long summer enrichment program engaged 30 youth from Inwood, Washington Heights, Harlem and the Bronx in a variety of innovative outdoor activities that helped deepen their awareness of the natural world around them. Through cultivating their own vegetables, cooking meals from scratch and learning about sustainable practices, the students developed a strong sense of ownership for their environment and their personal health and wellbeing. One camper has even been urging his mother to cook more vegetables for him at home!
 
NYRP Education staff and junior counselors escorted campers on field trips to the High Line to learn about the unique public park restoration, the Liberty Science Center to experience some of the concepts they had been learning, and Stone Barns in Westchester County, where they met farm animals and participated in a nature walk through the farm. The summer culminated in a camping trip to Sebago Cabins in Harriman State Park where campers had the opportunity to fully surround themselves in nature and test out all they had learned this summer.

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On July 16, 160 summer associates from Goldman Sachs gathered at northern Manhattan’s Harlem River esplanade for what was expected to be a routine employee volunteer day of cleaning and greening a park in New York City. The volunteers had signed up to assist in the ongoing restoration of this popular riverfront space but the work quickly turned into a mini-excavation when they uncovered something quite unexpected: hundreds of feet of rusted metal edging, that had at one time separated the bike path from the lawn, deeply buried and completely obscured by over-growth.

After a morning of assisting in much needed maintenance and cleanup of the area, Goldman Sachs volunteers unearthed a section of metal buried a foot below the ground and otherwise invisible to the unknowing eye. With sheer determination and lots of muscle, volunteers successfully excavated the divider. The removal will allow for expansion of the existing lawn space, to be used in the near future as a public recreation area for the community surrounding the Harlem River Esplanade and nearby Highbridge Park.

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