A collaborative effort between teens and community partners from East New York, Brooklyn to reactivate a neglected neighborhood lot into a beautiful garden on Warwick Street.
As a youth led and youth driven group of environmental leaders, we would like to do an urban beautification project through the creation of a community garden.
We have located an empty lot in East New York, Brooklyn that we would like to to reactivate. We are a group of high school students from neighborhoods across New York City, including East New York. Through the revitalized Warwick community garden, we are hoping to promote community building, healthy eating, and a greater ecological presence in New York. To achieve this goal, we would like to fundraise $1600 in order to obtain the proper materials and tools to start the garden build. To date, we’ve already secured the support of city-wide and local neighborhood partner organizations and residents.
Our vision is to host a community work day in early May where we re-open the space to the public, clear out debris and trash, build raised beds, conduct soil tests, spread mulch and fertilizer, plant wild seeds, steward street trees, clean up the block, and celebrate with art and food.
The empty lot we want to create this garden on is city-owned property which has been vacant for a few years. Taylor Gordon, a community organizer and long-time resident of Warwick Street, had recently been organizing in his community around transforming the vacant lot, so we reached out to him and let him know that we wanted to provide energy and support to bring the garden back to life.
Since then, we have brought together a broad coalition of city-wide and local community partners including Green Thumb, NYC Dept. of Parks, 596 Acres, GrowNYC and East New York Farms to ensure the successful reactivation of this lot into a community garden and green space for the residents of Warwick Wtreet and East New York.
Between now and the end of May we plan to:
1) Recruit 30 or more volunteers for our Make Warwick Green Again project.
2) Gather tools and materials for the garden build.
3) Inform the stakeholders about our plans for the community.
4) Attend workshops to learn how to build raised beds
5) Execute our Community Work Day in early May!
Warwick Street Greenery Glow garden was used in the past by Warwick St neighbors and gardeners. It has not been used in several years and has the potential to become a flourishing community space once again. As Ambassadors of The Nature Conservancy’s Leaders in Environmental Action for the Future (LEAF) program, we would like to apply the skills we learned during our summer internship to transform this lot into a thriving green space. The community garden will serve as a sanctuary for social gatherings, fresh food and a place to escape the hustle and bustle of the city!
This space will be an educational tool for the community, supply necessary green space for rain collection, habitat for pollinators, and organic / fresh / local food.