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A message from Judy Zuk, the president of The Brooklyn Botanic Garden.I bring greetings from your gardening colleagues in the US, and congratulations to all who participated in this year’s REEP Garden Award competition. Everyone in this competition is a winner, for you have all had the rewards of building a better community through gardening.
Many of our programs provide city children with their first exposure to gardening and the natural world, and they come away with a greater appreciation for how vital plants are to our lives, from the air we breathe, to the food on our table to the beautiful flowers that restore our souls. They also discover how they can cultivate good friends and neighbors, as they cultivate fruits and flowers. Congratulations and best wishes, Back to the Awards day at Wimpole
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Here at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden school gardening is a core part
of our mission. For almost 90 years we have been giving city children
the opportunity to put their fingers in the earth, plant a seed, and
experience the miracle of watching plants grow. The cornerstone of our
program is our Children’s Garden, the first of its kind in a public
garden in the world. Since 1914 thousands of city children, from all
walks of life, have come to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to cultivate
their plots, while learning life lessons of responsibility and cooperation
with their gardening partners. And each September, the children share
their bounty with the greater community at the Harvest Fair, when the
end of the season produce is harvested and donated to City Harvest, which
supplies food to homeless shelters.
During the school year more than 100,000 school children come to the
Brooklyn Botanic Garden to have a hands-on experience with the natural
world. We also travel to classrooms throughout Brooklyn with our Project
Green Reach program, to provide classes in botany & environmental
science. We also provide the resources for classes to do a community
project... creating
planters for the schoolyard, window boxes for a neighboring senior citizen
center... projects that ensure that the students share their newfound
gardening skills with their community.
Brooklyn GreenBridge, our community outreach program, works with block
associations and interested individuals to help them with block beautification
projects. We also work with schools to create school gardens and to develop
gardening curricula. Our training manual, City Kids Get Green!, is full
of ideas for how teachers and other adults can work with youth to build
gardens in their own school or neighborhood. Today hundreds of these
gardens across Brooklyn provide a meeting ground for young and old to
come together build better communities through gardening.