Resources and Partnerships
Brooklyn College has partnered with many organizations in New York City that promote gardening in an urban environment, sustainable gardening practices, community building, and a healthier, more active lifestyle. Below are some of them and how they help make the Brooklyn College Garden better.
New York City GreenThumb
The Brooklyn College Garden has been classified as a New York City GreenThumb garden and is a certified New York City community garden that opens opportunities for our gardeners to receive further training and free gardening materials. GreenThumb community gardens provide important green space, a key attribute of living in New York. Green spaces improve air quality, allow for biodiversity, and boost the overall well-being of residents.
The GreenBridge Program
We are affiliated with the GreenBridge program, the community environmental horticulture program of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. It promotes urban greening through education, conservation, and creative partnerships. The program works with block associations, community gardens, and other service groups. GreenBridge is building a vibrant network of people, places, and projects dedicated to making Brooklyn a greener place.
The NYC Wasteless Project
The New York City Department of Sanitation created the NYC Wasteless Project in 1993 to provide compost education and outreach to New York residents, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. It has provided valuable technical assistance to the Brooklyn College Garden in many areas, including composting.
The Lower East Side Ecology Center
We work with the Lower East Side Ecology Center on a variety of programs. The center lends its technical expertise and training program on greening and composting. The Brooklyn College Garden has also been the default caretaker of the beautiful trees that line the rear entrance of the school. The Lower East Side Ecology Center classes on tree care were instrumental in helping us with this respsonsibility.
Farming Concrete
Farming Concrete is an open community-based research project that measures how much food is grown in New York City's community gardens. It provides resources such as scales and recordkeeping materials, and generates reports to gardeners on their harvests.
Habitat Map
Habitat Map is an organization whose goal is to raise awareness about the impact the environment is having on human health. It also provides an online map of green resources and tracks environmental irresponsibility in urban communities.
Million Trees
Trees planted in urban areas have multiple environmental benefits: They help to offset the damage done by carbon emissions, reduce the energy used by buildings, act as aqua-filters for urban rainwater, purify the air by removing dust particles, and provide a home for many species of birds, insects, and animals. In 2016, Million Trees surpassed its goal to plant one million trees in New York City over the course of one decade.
In Our Backyards
In Our Backyards is a crowd-resourced platform for citizen-led neighborhood projects. In Our Backyard's goal is to deepen civic engagement in cities by connecting individuals to community-led, neighbor-funded environmental projects.
We have also learned and utilized many sustainable practices for horticulture technique, irrigation systems, rainwater harvesting, composting, and many other best practices from other organizations, such as the Floyd Bennett Field Garden, Farming Brooklyn, the New York City Parks and Recreation Department, Community Board 14, and many others.
