After a decade-long effort, the city will transform a once abandoned lot into a communal gardening and learning space for students and local residents in Brooklyn’s Bergen Beach.
The city broke ground on the 2.2-acre garden last year, and construction is now underway, said District 22 Superintendent Julia Bove, who has been working on the garden’s development for about as long as she’s been a superintendent. The concept came about after Carol Pino, a parent coordinator at P.S. 312, raised concerns about a nearby garbage-strewn lot, which was owned by the city’s Education Department.
“The community saw it as an eyesore,” Bove said. “We decided to make something that would be not only fitting for the students in the community but the adults in the community and the community at large.”
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The distinction in scale is a key part of the project, and the community focus will set this “learning” garden apart from a typical school garden, officials said.
Having access to gardens or green spaces — from indoor windowsill gardens to outdoor vegetable beds — has become increasingly popular at New York City schools. Nearly 70% of public-school buildings have access to such green spaces, with more than 1,200 schools reporting having a garden in the 2021-22 school year, according to the city’s Education Department.
But the ambitions for the Bergen Beach lot stretch beyond just an individual school, or even the district as a whole, officials said. Plans for the completed garden include a greenhouse, a fruit orchard, an outdoor classroom, a pollinator garden, a composting area, and a central space for farmer’s markets and other community events.
“Learning gardens are uniquely centered in communities, whereas school gardens tend to be insular to a particular school,” said Qiana Mickie, executive director of the Mayor’s Office of Urban Agriculture.
The effort represents a step forward in urban agriculture and a potential model for other communities across the five boroughs, Mickie said. Though a handful of other learning gardens exist across the city, this is one of the first instances of the city taking an underutilized neighborhood lot and transforming it into a community hub for learning and urban agriculture, she added.
“It’s a really good example of how we can reimagine what farm-to-school is in New York City,” Mickie said.
And the benefits extend beyond just the classroom, she added.
“It becomes a place of resiliency,” Mickie said. “There are some natural co-benefits that come with a learning garden: flood mitigation, stormwater mitigation, access to growing, places for respite and healing.”
Source: chalkbeat.org
Photo Credit: gettyimages-ron_thomase+
Categories: New York, Crops, Fruits and Vegetables, Education