Annual Report 2024: Building Green Spaces

The following blog post is an excerpt from our 2024 annual report.

Since it began almost fifteen years ago, NYRP’s Gardens for the City (GFTC) program has completely renovated or built over 300 green spaces throughout New York City. This includes 15 new gardens in 2024 alone, with at least one in every borough.

The program is community-driven: interested groups with available open space can apply to NYRP for free garden design consultation, materials, and labor to help achieve their vision. Then, prioritizing applications from the city’s least green and historically most underserved neighborhoods, NYRP selects partners and gets to work. Groups who want to can also opt-in to receive a year of free urban agriculture consultation from NYRP experts.

The property types we’ve partnered with span almost every gathering space imaginable including existing gardens, schools, parks, courtyards, houses of worship, assisted living facilities, and even rooftops.

For Jason Sheets, NYRP’s Director of Garden Horticulture & City Greening Projects, this ability to customize green space for a wide selection of partners is a key strength of the program. “Of course we can install raised beds, but that’s not always what a community needs to make the most of their shared outdoor space,” he says. “Green spaces in a place like New York City aren’t only for gardening or food production; at the end of the day, the projects we complete are spaces to build and sustain community.”

In this spirit, we were proud this past year to both bring and enhance green space for a range of different partners including an East Harlem community health center wanting a garden for therapeutic practice; a Staten Island artist collective seeking to improve public access to their free outdoor programming area; and a Bronx special education school enriching their outdoor engagement opportunities.

“Our gardens are community assets,” reflects Jason. “In addition to gardening, there’s so much that happens in our spaces to benefit local communities.”

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NYRP’s Gardens for the City program completed the following green space projects in 2024:

THE BRONX

Bissel Gardens (Wakefield)
The Christopher School (Williamsbridge)
Kelly Street Garden (Longwood)
New Roots Community Farm (Concourse)
PS 48 / SBxSGOC (Hunts Point)
Seneca House – Lutheran Social Services (Hunts Point)
Van Cortlandt Park Alliance (Northwest Bronx)

BROOKLYN

Riverdale Avenue Community School (Brownsville)

MANHATTAN

Food Bank for New York City (Harlem)
Garden of Love (Harlem)
Settlement Health Inc (East Harlem)
Union Settlement (East Harlem)

QUEENS

Jamaica Children’s Magnet School (South Jamaica)
PS / IS 102Q Parent Association (Elmhurst)

STATEN ISLAND

Maker Park (Stapleton)