Programs at the Friends of Brook Park Community Garden
Children from the Building Bridges to the Outdoors program planting at Brook Park. Photo: Sara Stathas
Urban Agriculture
Urban agriculture, urban farming, or urban gardening is the practice of cultivating, processing, and distributing food in or around urban areas. Urban agriculture at the Friends of Brook Park Community Garden also includes animal husbandry, urban beekeeping, and horticulture. #Landback
Head Gardener and Park Manager Danny Chervoni with one of the first chickens to arrive at the park. Photo: Lily Kesselman
Brook Park Chickens
Our volunteer-run chicken coop was launched by the Friends of Brook Park in collaboration with Lily Kesselman back in 2011. The project was initiated with a grant from Just Food’s City Chickens Project and Citizens Committee NY. The first chickens were donated by Queens County Farm.
Friends of Brook Park Community Garden hosts approximately 5000 student visitors each year. Photo: Sara Stathas
School Groups
Friends of Brook Park Community Garden provides a safe educational experience for school groups accompanied with teachers, parents, and instructors. Children can learn about the environment, Indigenous Peoples, and more. Pre-COVID-19, the garden welcomed close to 5000 children annually.
““When we have [Youth] restoring community gardens or harvesting vegetables to sell at the local farmers’ markets, they stop thinking of themselves as the problem, and start seeing themselves as part of the solution.” - Ray Figueroa, Program Director, Brook Park Urban Youth Farm Project”
Advocacy
Friends of Brook Park is a community environmental based group that includes local Mott Haven residents and hundreds of volunteers who have become family over the years. We care about what happens in the community, around the South Bronx, in NYC, and around the world. We have been present at the forefront of actions against Fresh Direct, supporting justice for Immigrants, calling for Climate Action, and for public access to the Bronx Waterfront.
Arts & Event Space
Friends of Brook Park hosts various art programs, exhibitions, cultural events, and educational workshops annually. Over the years we have hosted, co-hosted or provided space for hundreds of cultural and educational programs like Bronx Green Up with the NY Botanical Gardens, El Gran Sancochazo, United Nations Indigenous Peoples Day, Mission Helping Hands, Taíno Children’s Areito, and many other community based programs.
Urban Youth Farm
In collaboration with with Small Axe Peppers, the Friends of Brook Park Urban Youth Farm is community-based Alternatives To Incarceration program led by Ray Figueroa. Evidence shows that programs like this reduce recidivism (i.e., re-arrest and re-incarceration) among youth.
Make a donation.
The Friends of Brook Park administers the community garden located at 141st and Brook Avenue in the South Bronx, NYC. Friends of Brook Park Community Garden is an oasis in a landscape of concrete buildings and focuses on getting the community back in touch with the land via organic urban agriculture, the arts, and culture. Please consider supporting our programs and work.