New York City GreenThumb urban gardening program celebrates 40th anniversary with tree giveaway

GreenThumb supports more than 550 community gardens with materials and workshops to help them grow.

By Max Parrott
am New York
May 13, 2018

Excerpt:

GreenThumb helps provide them with lumber for raised bed planters, plants and workshops, but the new stewards have also taken advantage of materials, services and grants offered by an array of programs and nonprofits around the city.

Vulcain and Sowkey’s efforts seemed to be paying off. Community members steadily streamed in throughout the morning to pick up their trees.

“Wow, we only have one more Serviceberry left,” said Mathew Dain as he went to check on the tree inventory. Dain is a representative of the New York Restoration Project, a nonprofit that manages 52 community gardens throughout the city and completed an initiative to plant a million trees across New York in 2016.

Seasoned gardener Emily Jamison, 35, sees so much promise in the Discovery Garden’s space that she braves an hour and 20-minute commute from Astoria to work there. She is excited to experiment with new ideas for community outreach, she said, like herb gardens or “munching gardens” that members of the neighborhood could pick fresh vegetables from.

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