Scholes Street Children's Garden

Scholes Street Children’s Garden has been an active site for vegetable growing and community gatherings since 1986. This 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. The garden provides students with a much-needed green space in the middle of a vast concrete landscape and paved schoolyards.

In 2006, The Heckscher Foundation for Children provided New York Restoration Project with a grant to transform the site from a weathered and worn community space into a vibrant, outdoor classroom and learning experience. Then in 2019, thanks to New York State’s Vital Brooklyn initiative, NYRP updated the site with a water supply and new infrastructure, including sidewalks and pathways, and new garden beds.

Renowned landscape designer Billie Cohen also 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 street-tree pits in front, which highlight a wide variety of ornamental plantings. Scholes Street Children’s Garden—Cohen’s sixth NYRP garden restoration—also includes a number of green innovations, including a solar-powered composting toilet, storage shed constructed of rammed earth walls.

At the rear of the garden, a large shed with a porch allows visiting students from eight nearby schools, and members of a local community center to use the space as an outdoor classroom.