New York Times-published photographer Lucas Foglia understands that capacity deeply, and in his new book, Human Nature (out now on Nazraeli Press), he explores the complex relationship between humans and the natural world– an aspect of modern living that is increasingly threatened by technology, indoor living, and even the government of the United States.

Below, we discuss the garden at Rikers and Foglia’s experience trying to capture the paradox between imprisonment and the sense of freedom that nature inherently inspires.

Vanessa and Lauren Watering, GreenHouse Program, Rikers Island Jail Complex, New York © Lucas Foglia. Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York

GC: What was the most surprising thing you witnessed at the Rikers Island Prison Garden?

LF: Rikers Island is New York City’s main jail complex. There are three organic gardens run by the Horticultural Society of New York, where prisoners tend flowers, fruits, and vegetables. Riots, lockdowns, beatings, and solitary confinement occur in the nearby buildings.

When I was visiting the gardens, a Guinea hen had flown over the barbed wire fence and hatched baby chicks. The prisoners were trying to lure the chicks back inside the fence to keep them safe.

There was one moment when Troy cupped a bird in his hand. The scale of his body, framed by the barbed wire, in contrast to the fragility of the bird and the intimacy of his gesture was surprising.

Troy Holding a Guinea Fowl Chick, GreenHouse Program, Rikers Island Jail Complex, New York © Lucas Foglia. Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York

GC: That’s very touching. How do you think gardens impact prisoners, based on what you saw?

LF: Prisoners who spend time working in the gardens are 40 percent less likely to return to prison after they are released. One inmate named Peter said, “If we could stay here all day that would be wonderful… It’s the only place we feel like human beings.”

GC: Who maintains the garden? e.g. Is there someone overseeing it in addition to prisoners?

LF: The gardens on Rikers Island are administered by Hilda Krus, the Director of the GreenHouse and Horticultural Therapy Programs for the Horticultural Society of New York. Hilda is, in my opinion, a magnanimous and wonderful person.

Jackie, Vanessa, Valerie, Lauren, Jakelyn, and Brenda Outside the Rose M. Singer Center, Rikers Island Jail Complex, New York © Lucas Foglia. Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York

GC: What challenges were you faced with, as a photographer, when trying to capture the essence of a project like this? Were there any restrictions placed on what you could/couldn’t see or bring into the facility?

LF: There are images that people expect to see in prisons, of inmates experiencing isolation, dehumanizing activities, violence, or loneliness. I was looking for moments that felt complex, surprising, positive, and intimate. I think it is vitally important to expose injustice. And I think it is vitally important to look for examples of a positive way forward.

Jonathan Holding Pruning Shears, GreenHouse Program, Rikers Island Jail Complex, New York © Lucas Foglia. Courtesy of Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, New York

GC: What do you think is the most “quintessential” photo that you took there and why? What were you hoping to convey?

LF: I want to make photographs that compel viewers to ask questions; to want to learn more.

The photograph of Lauren spraying water on Vanessa is both intimate and violent, both playful and serious. That is an example of the type of moment I was looking for.

Or the photograph of Jonathan holding pruning shears. He is so relaxed, lying down on a bench in the garden. His eye contact is comfortable and direct. And the pruning shears in his hand look vaguely like a gun.

GC: Can you briefly speak to what value you think prison gardens have for society as a whole?

LF: I think if we treat people like people then they are far more likely to act morally. Time in nature can teach prisoners that growth literally and figuratively comes from care.

The post Inside The Rikers Island Prison Garden appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

On the first day of spring in 1968 when his book was first published, it was free, as Brautigan had granted permission for anyone to reprint the book with one condition: that it couldn’t be sold.

True to its eponymous credo, Please Plant This Book was unconventional, imaginative, and caused a bit of an uproar among a group he was said to be apart of called The Diggers, an anarchist guerrilla street theatre group that challenged the emerging counterculture of the ‘60s.

The Diggers wanted a society free of private property, and while Brautigan was making seeds– and therefore food– more accessible, he was also self publishing, writing for Rolling Stone, and recording spoken-word albums for The Beatles. Digger or not, he created a new way for people to consume content and with that, a new way for them to think about the cultural importance of food.

While Brautigan was making seeds more accessible, he was also self publishing, writing for Rolling Stone, and recording spoken-word albums for The Beatles.

Some say the inspiration from this book, which contained four flower and four vegetable packets with poetic prose dedicated to whichever vegetable or flower the seeds could yield, was a rock concert called the Festival of Growing Things, which took place in July 1967. (All that attended the weekend festival at Mount Tamalpais Outdoor Theater received seeds.)

As Brautigan wrote in his poem Shasta Daisy: “I pray that in thirty-two years passing that flowers and vegetables will water the Twenty-First Century with their voices telling that they were once a book turned by loving hands into life.”

Today, nearly 50 years later, we are just beginning to understand the significance behind what Brautigan was saying. These flowers and vegetables that surround us should have a history, a diversity, and an ex situ preservation strategy– a practice of protecting seeds in gene-banks so that their story can live on for many years.

Without these efforts, packets of seeds won’t be accessible for purchase at your local nursery; they won’t arrive complimentary with your check at The LINE Hotel; and they won’t be given freely on the first day of spring in Golden Gate Park, a tradition that Brautigan once facilitated.

We are living in an age where every seed patent, from corn to cannabis, can be owned. This began with innovation in the horticultural industry, as plant breeders perfected the amount of petals that a ranunculus could yeild or controlled how perfumed a rose could smell, and this has become interminable in modern day agriculture.

For us to regain agency, we must rewrite our current narrative of how plants are grown, connect with the land by growing plants ourselves, and help seed banks preserve heirloom varieties. Brautigan knew the significance of seed preservation then, and his work continues to inspire the next generation to reinterpret the significance of it now.

Photo: Courtesy of Francis Daulerio

Photo: Courtesy of Burnside Rare Books

Photo: Courtesy of Burnside Rare Books

Photo: Courtesy of Book Patrol

Photo: Courtesy of The Brautigan Book Club

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Just two years ago, Please Plant This Book inspired Argetine publisher Pequeño Editor to launch a campaign that turned popular children’s books into books made from recycled paper printed with biodegradable ink and hand-sewn bindings. In the first of the Tree Book Tree series, [easyazon_link identifier=”9871374062″ locale=”US” tag=”gardcoll03-20″]Mi Papá Estuvo en la Selva[/easyazon_link] (My Dad Was In The Jungle) by Gusti Llimpi and Anne Decis, Jacaranda tree seeds are embedded the paper, which is capable of growing a tree when planted.

On March 20th, 2018, Francis Daulerio will also release a 50th anniversary reinterpretation of Brautigan’s Please Plant This Book to benefit The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. Nature, in this way, has always been a literal and metaphorical place of refuge and solace. 

Still, Americans don’t require an anti-establishment movement to change seed culture: making seeds accessible to all is enough. Many of these changes are already being made, but the movement is in constant need of public awareness and support.

Farmers are lobbying against seed patents from large corporations like Monsanto at the time of this writing, seed saver exchanges are popping up everywhere, and organizations like the Center for Food Safety are increasingly spreading the word about the importance of heirloom seeds (and encouraging strict pesticide regulations, as unregulated chemicals sprayed on food often have the additional adverse effect of harming bees). 

To help farmers in Puerto Rico rebuild their agriculture after the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria, for example, people can donate seeds to Delaware Valley University, who are working with an agronomist and seed researcher to help restore land that was damaged in the storm.

Buying heirloom varieties of common vegetables like tomatoes and potatoes also goes a long way to improve food security (heirloom produce has the added benefit of being more nutritious than conventionally-grown varieties, as well).

And for DIY growers in the spirit of Brautigan, the Hudson Valley Seed Company is also making heirloom and open-pollinated garden seeds more accessible than ever– because change, as always, is often initiated in one’s own backyard. 

Want to learn more about seed saving? Read our article on the global importance of seed banks.

The post How Richard Brautigan’s <em>Please Plant This Book</em> Kickstarted a Revolution appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

So says Leslie Dweck who, along with cofounder Ilona de Jongh, runs Sprout by Design, a contracting service based in NYC that builds urban farms “for all abilities.” The pair specialize in creating green spaces for traditionally underserved communities, like youth in detention centers, people with special needs, or formerly homeless individuals now living in transitional housing.

Each garden is crafted as a therapeutic and calming space whose structure, according to Dweck and de Jongh, promotes healthier eating, environmental stewardship, and job training opportunities within larger communities. (Their motto: “No child left indoors!”) STEM programming, problem solving, and other curriculum standards are always incorporated into both the process of construction and the garden’s final, physical shape, regardless of “whether it’s an alleyway, or on a wall,” Dweck adds.

Their work (which appears around NYC– the wheelchair accessible garden at the Brooklyn Public Library and the mini-farm at the Red Rooster office, to name a few) is an attempt to remedy some of the many health and lifestyle issues currently facing populations of all ages– a theme de Jongh became intimately familiar with as an industrial design engineer in the healthcare sector, crafting things like syringes for in vitro fertilization or insulin pumps for diabetics.

“Rather than making products for sick people, like little bandaids, I thought, ‘How can I use design in a more preventative way?'” de Jongh explains of her dramatic change of fields. “Not that they’re not important– they are important,” de Jongh quickly adds of her earlier projects. “I just knew that I could have more of an impact preventing [health issues] than fixing them.”

As women working in traditionally male-dominated fields and running a women- and minority-owned business, de Jongh and Dweck are focused on making their work inclusive (“The most important thing is to show girls they can do this!” de Jongh says of herself as a role model). The rise of garden-oriented learning is now a fairly well established approach but where Sprout by Design distinguishes itself is in how all-encompassing its work is, accessible not only to those they expect the space to be used by but also for ancillary communities.

Reflecting on their work at the Horizon Juvenile Center in the Bronx, Dweck explains, “We realized that the staff would really benefit a lot from being able to get outside, get their hands in the dirt, blow off some steam, eat a healthy snack from the garden, get fresh air. So we started trainings…This is something they can add to their resume at the end of the day.” Dweck continues, “In the detention centers, we also work with families. For example, the kids learn how to jam, and when the parents come in on family night to see what progress their children are making in the detention centers, the kids can show their parents what they learned. It’s a great ice breaker– sometimes those sessions can be challenging.”

Beyond the brick and mortar (and dirt!) gardens they build, de Jongh and Dweck build ecosystems, ones they hope heal larger systemic issues; they are firm believers in the ripple effect. As de Jongh says, “You’re not just doing it for one…Because once one can take care of themselves, they can take care of their family.”

To encourage this, Sprout by Design extends their learning and services beyond on the garden, creating programming that teaches kids business skills, explains the different facets of the farm-to-table movement, and demonstrates how the kids might eventually earn a living in that system. Sprout by Design brings in local entrepreneurs, like Beth from Beth’s Jams (who gives a session on how to make jams), or a master composter from Earth Matters (who explains how you can literally turn garbage into a living).

Chefs from Marcus Samuelsson’s restaurant also visit to cook with kids, and Sprout by Design has a partnership with Bronx Hot Sauce, a program that pays the kids for the serrano peppers they grow. (Sprout by Design also built a garden for survivors of domestic violence, and set them up with the same chile pepper growing program, so they can earn income in a quiet, therapeutic way.)

“We do everything from A to Z,” Dweck adds proudly. “We’re a one stop shop.”

As climate justice and outdoor programming increasingly become trendy parts of the mainstream, Sprout by Design emphasizes making sure that no one gets left out of the movement. Asked what advice they would give to gardeners hoping to make their space more restorative and welcoming, de Jongh emphasizes embracing the diverse needs of different visitors.

“It’s about listening with words, but also without words– observing” de Jongh reflects. Relating her own experience, she adds, “You’re working with a lot of kids who have 0.05 second attention spans. It’s really important when working with people who have issues with attention to go slow, and have a place where people can sit down. Design it in a way to be forced to slow down in a comfortable way. We’ve worked a lot with people with special needs. We’ve done a lot of very practical designing for accessible garden beds or a nook where kids or adults with autism can go and feel safe in this little bean tunnel.”

As de Jongh says of Sprout by Design’s spaces, “It’s not novelty, it’s necessity.”

To learn more about Sprout by Design, visit their website.

The post How Sprout By Design Are Championing Gardens For All appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Based in New Orleans, Solitary Gardens is part public art piece, part social sculpture, and part cultivated oasis, and is composed of garden beds that mirror the blueprint of six-by-nine foot American solitary cells. The gardens are “tended” by prisoners who select what they would like planted through written correspondences with volunteers; the volunteers in turn send photographs of the garden’s progress to the “Solitary Gardeners.” Standing at a curious intersection of time and place, choice and custody, growth and confinement, the project asks its viewers: “Can you imagine a landscape without prisons?”

A forceful activist and artist, sumell is no stranger to provocative, politically charged works. Prior to Solitary Gardens, sumell developed Herman’s House, an exhibition that later became a book and documentary film; sumell sees her current work on Solitary Gardens as a progression of the earlier piece.

“Solitary Gardens was inspired by the life and legacy of Herman Wallace who wrongfully spent forty-one years in solitary confinement in the state of Louisiana,” sumell explains. “Despite this grave injustice, his compassion and dedication to serving humanity was unwavering. As part of this commitment, Herman dreamed of vast gardens for his home, because they reminded us of life, beauty, and possibility; all of which are contraindicated by the prison system.”

Both Herman’s House and Solitary Gardens operate in conjunction with a question: the former around “What kind of house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?”, which sumell asked Wallace in 2013; the latter around the aforementioned appeal to envision a landscape without prisons. Inherent in both is a provocation, a demand on the critical imagination to rethink systems as they are, and to rise above them.

With the hope of engendering action, sumell’s aim is for the Solitary Gardens to be a “physical platform for collaboration, education, and commiseration”; towards that end she is currently developing a ‘Handshake Curriculum’ to accompany the Solitary Gardens as they expand to new sites (like UC Berkeley and the American Visionary Art Museum) around the US.

“This curriculum will outline ways to begin conversations around prison abolition as a viable solution to mass incarceration,” sumell reveals. “It is our hope that this curriculum will empower folks to discuss the advantages of alternatives to incarceration in a short conversation. It will also suggest various resources for those who are interested in knowing more. We are also developing permaculture curriculum for the Solitary Gardeners, so that they can develop a gardening skill set for when they come home.”

In this way, sumell’s work not only draws attention to injustice and to inspire the public to action, but attempts, in some way, to heal the trauma from a profoundly broken system. Though the Solitary Gardens seem to draw comparison with community gardens and the spatial healing that happens there, sumell is careful to differentiate her work.

“It’s more of a reclamation of humanity and dignity than space,” sumell reflects of the superficial resemblance. “Solitary confinement is a mechanism of torture that is applied to human beings who have been ‘othered.’ Isolation has become the go-to method of punishment for folks who identify as queer or trans, political prisoners who challenge the system, or those who suffer from mental illness. Solitary confinement is employed to dehumanize and silence people, many of whom are in solitary confinement simply because prison officials did not know how to deal with them humanely. Solitary Gardens is a way to give those folks voice, presence, purpose, and restoration of their humanity and dignity. In many ways the solitary cells become portraits of human beings that have been kept in cage by our institutions.”

Beyond the immediate call to end solitary confinement, Solitary Gardens traces the thread of slavery throughout American history into its contemporary form: the prison industrial system. As sumell writes of the project on her site, “Slavery did not end, as is commonly believed, in 1865; it merely evolved.” In pointed reference to this legacy, the Solitary Gardens are quite built using sugar cane, cotton, tobacco, and indigo, which sumell informs us are “the largest chattel slave crops in the colonized United States.”

“They played an integral role in the capital gains of divisible American ‘success,’ which is often ignored by our historical and educational narratives,” sumell continues. “When we look at incarceration, we see many capital gains only made possible when able-bodied folks are forced to work for two to twenty cents per hour for the profit of an institution. As a direct reflection, many people view our state of hyper incarceration as a form of enslavement. Solitary Gardens will illustrate the evolution of slavery into mass incarceration by building the garden beds (which look like prison cells) out of the byproducts of those chattel crops.”

Like nature itself, Solitary Gardens grows from the ashes of its own history, drawing on the storied tradition of nature as restoration. Both by using “the chattel crops” and by encouraging the Solitary Gardeners to grow what they want, the plants become a means to literally and figuratively overcome.

As sumell explains, “Plants are grown only in the negative space of the cell where one has mobility. This serves to show what little space for movement exists within a solitary confinement cell, since most of the space is already taken up by a bed, chair, desk, and toilet/sink combo. From a small area of space comes the larger-than-life presence of plants which overcome the entire cell, transforming it from a place of confinement to a place of limitless transformation and growth. This reflects the potential for our society to dream far beyond what we imagine is possible.”

To learn more about Solitary Gardens, visit their website.

The post How <em>Solitary Gardens</em> Imagines A Landscape Without Prisons appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

As Editor-in-Chief Molly Beauchemin previously noted in her short piece on the symbolic import of flowers at the September 11 Memorial in New York City, “The fact that people still leave flowers at the sight of a tragedy speaks to our very human capacity for empathy: despite our unfathomable loss, hope prevails.” Flowers, as it turns out, are vehicles for expressing both grief and strength. They are symbols of hope as much as they are of perseverance.

Fashion, of course, has always been intimately coupled with this kind of cultural symbolism. As Pergament later notes: “Flowers will always come into fashion when political indifference falls out of it. We look to these bursts of color and joy when the world turns dark. And the darker the turn, the more significance our flowers assume.” She observes. “They lift us up when our leaders fail to.”

Read Allure‘s full article here, and check out our own gallery of inspiring flowers, below.

The post <em>Allure</em> Explores How Flowers Became a Powerful Symbol in Times of Resistance appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Founded in 2014 in Jackson Heights, Queens, Pa’lante Green Cleaning (“pa’lante” means “forward” in Spanish) is part of a growing renaissance of worker-owned cooperatives currently operating in NYC. Beyond offering high-quality cleaning services, their work builds a more equitable system, both economically and environmentally.

“I would love people to understand better is what it means to work in a cooperative and to be a worker owner specifically. Being a worker-owner is a really powerful and beautiful thing,” Gutierrez tells us. “We feel proud of our work, and if people hire a worker-owner, the owners of the business are doing the cleaning in their houses, and are incentivized to work hard and to do a good job because we know this is how our business grows and this is how we get recommendations. Working in a cooperative means working as a team. It means working for living wages, and it means working in an environment that’s free of exploitation.”

Though coops are nothing new (some of our favorites have been around since the 1970s), they are an increasingly attractive option for workers fed up with an unlivable federal minimum wage and intense income inequality. (While tech businesses and startups have offered some alternative business models, in many places these can further exacerbate tensions.) In New York– where gentrification and inequality are most acutely felt–, coops have become an achievable option, in part thanks to NYC’s Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative, which devoted $1.2 million to supporting worker cooperatives and in the first year doubled the amount of coops in NYC.

In NYC, green cleaning worker cooperatives in particular have become a burgeoning industry. Historically, the cleaning industry has been one dominated by women and immigrants– two groups particularly vulnerable to lower wages and exploitation. In addition to Pa’lante, Si Se Puede! Women’s Cooperative, We Can Do It!, Ecomundo Cleaning, and Bioclassic Cleaning all offer green cleaning services and are entirely worker-owned.

“I like to see the other cooperatives in the city being green– offering high quality services to their clients without damaging anyone’s health,” Gutierrez adds of the other cleaning cooperatives. “That’s something that we want to see more of… We’re really not trying to compete with the other cooperatives, but to unite. And if we unite, we know that we can achieve goals together, because before we were working the cooperative, we all have faced situations of exploitation by different companies.”

In addition to the systematic change worker cooperatives engender, they support the success of individuals as well.

“It’s a good experience for mothers because it offers you the flexibility of being able to take care of your family while working toward something bigger,” Gutierrez maintains. “When I started off in the cooperative I had a serious problem: my first son was going off to college and I didn’t have any money to be able to pay for him to go… But with the work that I started getting through the cooperative, I was able to support him and ended up graduating from university.”

Gutierrez reflects, “We really work without any distinction in terms of race or other factors. We all came to this country to try and achieve our dreams, and that’s what we’re trying to do in the coop is to unite to be able to achieve our dreams.”

To learn more about Pa’lante Green Cleaning, visit their website.

Need to do a little light tidying at home? Try making your own sage and lavender cleaner.

The post Pa’lante is the Worker-Owned Green Cleaning Coop You Should Be Using appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

At the beginning of the semester at the Arturo Toscanini school in Brooklyn, 5th grade students had the opportunity to “plan their salad” beginning with red leaf lettuce, kale, and mizuna seeds that the children planted at the beginning of spring.

One of these classes took place in the school’s beautiful on-site greenhouse, and the other was outdoors in the garden, where students prepared the beds for planting. Each student was given their own bed to take care of in the spring, and so during this class they mended the soil, sifted compost, added compost to the beds, weeded the beds, and several other tasks that ensured each child’s connection to the land from which they would eventually eat. In a kitchen class that bracket’s the school’s gardening class, the students have two dedicated periods in which they’ve done everything from making pizza (with peppers and tomatoes grown in the garden) to sushi, smoothies, spices, and more. With back-to-back gardening and cooking classes (the former of which often involves tasting, one student’s proclaimed “favorite part”) each student is able to see the cycle of growth from seed to table in the course of a single semester– which is particularly powerful in an urban environment with no visible farms in sight.

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

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Later in the semester, just as leafy greens started to emerge lushly from the soil, students reconvened in the on-site gardens to plan what salad dressings they would like to pair with their salads. This is when the culinary aspect of Edible Schoolyard’s mission comes into play, because, to quote the great guerilla gardener Ron Finley, “when kids grow vegetables, kids eat vegetables” (which is true: according to one study, kids are five times more likely to eat vegetables they grow themselves). Thus, after a long semester of waiting, the salads were harvested and served– and nobody was happier about it than the kids.

The post Edible Schoolyard NYC’s Delightful “Seed To Salad” Approach appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Which is where BK ROT comes in.

Founded in 2013, BK ROT is a community supported compost venture that picks up food scraps from residential and commercial locations around Brooklyn. In addition to their obvious environmental dimension, BK ROT also creates sustainable, year-round jobs for youth by sending them out on bikes to collect the organic waste; in this way, BK ROT’s work situates itself at the intersection of social and environmental justice.

“The project recognizes the history of waste mismanagement in New York City’s predominately Black and Brown neighborhoods– the incinerators, the industrial run off, the lack of sufficient trash collection, and the exclusion of people of color from city sanitation jobs in the past,” Sandy Nurse, BK ROT’s founder, explains to us of the organization’s mission. “It also acknowledges the youth in these neighborhoods grow up experiencing disproportionately higher asthma rates, lack of sufficient access to health services, and higher unemployment rates.”

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

Photo: Andreana Bitsis

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With more and more individuals and organizations looking for ways to engage and take action (as the United States government continues to dig in its heels regarding Climate Change), the connection between compost and environmental justice is becoming an increasingly relevant one.

“Composting is one of the most important acts an individual or a community can do for our planet. We strip over 1″ of top soil a year off the Earth’s crust and we don’t replace it. Building soils through composting is so critical in fighting Climate Change and supporting the ecosystems that sustain us,” Nurse explains.

But as Nurse emphasizes, it isn’t just a matter of protecting the environment, it’s about rethinking the systems and mechanisms that have brought us to this point.

“Environmental justice is a framework that departs from large main stream environmental movements by centering anti-colonial and anti-racism principles at its core,” Nurse continues. “It asks us to address not only the harm we have done and are doing to this planet, but to recognize the communities that have been the most devastated by the social, political and economic systems created to extract and destroy. It is a call to action to center the leadership of those communities, to follow their ancestral wisdom and guidance, and to work with them, not over them.”

In the three years since their founding, the response to BK ROT has been overwhelmingly positive. Since 2014, they’ve expanded to serve 97 unique households in total, collected an average of 5,000/mo in 2016, and generated over $30,000 in income for their workers. The compost they produce at their No Waste Lands site on Myrtle Avenue in Brooklyn is sold to local residents, schools, non-profits, and community gardens, and is stocked at small businesses like GRDN, The Sill, Sprout Home, and Supercrown Coffee.

Currently, BK ROT only serves Bushwick and BedStuy (at an extremely affordable $20 a month for residences) but Nurse affirms they are looking to expand.

But that doesn’t mean she isn’t pleased with the way things currently stand. As Nurse reflects of BK ROT and the ecosystem it has created, “We’re really lucky because our clients are really excited to be composting locally and supporting local youth. They’re really committed to building sustainability and a hyperlocal economy.”

To learn more about BK ROT or to sign up for their services, visit their website.

Curious about other ways you can use food scraps? Try making a facial steam from plants you would otherwise compost. 

The post Brooklyn Now Has An Uber-Style Service For Compost appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

On Saturday, August 19, 2017 from 4 to 7 PM, the Green Worker Cooperative (GWC) is hosting a benefit on Swale, New York’s floating vegetable garden. Earlier this Summer, the barge was docked at Brooklyn Bridge Park; now the Eden-like island is anchored in the Bronx River at Westchester Avenue and Bruckner Boulevard. Cocktails and music will accompany the celebration of GWC, a South Bronx-based organization “dedicated to incubating worker-owned green businesses in order to build a strong local economy rooted in democracy and environmental justice.”

Swale is currently located at Concrete Plant Park in the Bronx. To learn more and RSVP for the benefit, visit the Green Worker Cooperative’s website.

Want to read up on Environmental Justice in NYC? Check out our profile of WE ACT For Environmental Justice.

The post Events We Love: Support Green Coops on NYC’s Floating Food Barge appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.

Reimagining the gap year as an opportunity for students to “grow food, develop community, and repair a damaged environment,” Warwick writes:

“The number of social, health and ecological benefits that can be gained from a year of working in common purpose is astounding. Breaking down social barriers by having people working together from all over the country will remind us how much we have in common. Working outside in nature is known to benefit us in body and mind – not just because I might be a bit of a hippy, but because peer-reviewed science shows that it does. We know that convalescence is faster, recidivism is reduced, learning is deeper and our minds are eased in nature.

“Learning where food comes from, growing it and eating it, will help tackle unhealthy patterns of consumption.”

Learning where food comes from, growing it and eating it, will help tackle unhealthy patterns of consumption. Rural communities will benefit from an influx of people. Villages might become more than dormitories once more. Hedges would be laid, drystone walls built, fruit harvested, weeds pulled, ditches cleared. The emphasis would shift from contractors’ tractors to people power. The threatened absence of seasonal workers from Europe, as we retreat after Brexit, will be catered for as well.

This would not be restricted to the countryside. Urban growing and community projects would also be up and running. The wonderful Oxford City Farm, just beginning to grow near my home, is one of many projects that could benefit from a tide of willing workers.”

Addressing the prospect of this labor subsidizing tuition costs and leading to a greater net interest in higher education (ideally related to the Environment), Warwick adds:

“In return for the work there is a reward – this would be the gateway to further education. Not only would you have the tuition fees paid, you would have also had a year to consider what you really wanted to do. Now it might be that you never want to set foot in a field again, ever. Or possibly it will be the way you find a calling and a connection.

“This is a chance to fight back against the enemy, because this is a war. We have just not woken up to the fact yet.”

This may seem far-fetched but I would never have predicted the progress that was made with smoking and plastic bags, for example. Yes, this is state coercion. But does that make it any worse than the corporate coercion that has helped create such an insular, unfit and unhappy society; that has helped create an ecological desert in the countryside? This is a chance to fight back against the enemy, because this is a war. We have just not woken up to the fact yet.”

Read the entirety of the article here, via The Guardian.

The post “What If All Students Spent a Year Working the Land Before University?” <em>The Guardian</em> Asks appeared first on Garden Collage Magazine.