Friends,
One thing that community gardeners in NYC sometimes forget, is that over the
last three decades, tiny lot, by tiny lot, we've redeemed for our city, with
our backs. labor, and political activity, green acreage equivalent to the 843
acres of Central Park!
And unlike the private contractors who walk away from a job with cash in hand
once the plaque with the Mayor, Borough President and City Councilperson's
name has been attached, we maintain our properties during the season, and even
shovel the snow in front of them during the winter!
Over the last three decades we've had a Cornell Agricultural Extension in
NYC. The first agricultural agent is still on the job, Mr. John Ameroso, who
started during the late 1970s and has been doing amazing work of late finding
small tracts of land, outside of the city for some residents to market garden
in
conjunction with the Council for the Environment's "New Gardener Program."
In the early years, John did amazing work with all of us in the days before
Green Thumb, and I was honored to serve as a judge with him at a community
garden harvest fair in Brooklyn last summer. A very nice and knowledgable guy.
All
the Cornell ext. folks in the city are nice folks, but we don't see them as
often out here in the gardens as much as we'd like. Funding and organizational
priorities laid out by someone out of town, I imagine...
Maybe I've not been paying attention, I've never seen those nice folks from
the East 34th Street Cornell Agricultural Extension talk to us about setting
up a Master Gardener Program, akin to those many other counties of our state.
In most of the states of the union, and in suburban counties like
Westchester, to earn master-gardener status, amateur gardeners must take 75
hours of
coursework, pass a rigorous test and then promise to give back 100 hours of
community service to help others learn about gardening. For many surburban
gardneners, those 100 hours of service are a pain-in-the-butt, but for us, 100
hours
are but a part of what we put in yearly as volunteers in our community gardens.
After those 75 hours of classwork, master gardeners are an amazing
horticultural resource in any community. For our Parks and Gardens, a modestly
funded
master gardener program producing 50 - 100 graduates yearly, would yield
amazing dividends for our city.
A Master Gardener program, run by the Cornell Agricultural Extension, in
conjunction with other agencies would be the kind of thing that would benefit
New
York City's thousands of community gardeners by training more locally based
gardening experts based in our communities. Certainly, this would help our
gardens really bloom, and keep so many community gardens and neighborhood based
greening groups in a position to be up on best practices. This would be really
important when issues like soil testing come up in gardens sited on
brownfields.
Funding: In our current financial envirionment, funding and/or oranization of
a NYC Master gardener program could be cobbled together by coordinating some
already existing resources, classroom time, public gardens and instructor
hours from the Cornell extension, the NY Botanical Garden, the Brooklyn
Botanical
Garden, The NY Horticultural Society, the NYC Parks Dept through the Parks
Council and Partnership for Parks, Green Thumb, Green Guerillas, NY
Restoration,
the NYCHA gardening program, as well as the odd class given at one of our
CCNY, or private University facilities.
The plus side for all of the organizations above is that having more Master
Gardeners out there in the community would create for them a high quality
volunteer base to call on, that has already been trained for special projects.
Imagine being able to call on 50 master gardeners one weekend to create a
garden around a playground, and know that it would be maintained by gardeners
helped by the local master gardener in that community. Or to suddenly be able
to
put the call out for folks in the community to help when funding cut have made
funding for zone gardeners impossible for botanical garden and parks - sort
of like volunteer firemen.
Food Security: Training 50 - 100 Urban Master Gardeners a year to send out
into our communities would make best horticultural practices available to
community gardeners in a systematic fashion, especially on how to grow as much
food
for our neighborhood's hungry, food pantries and soup kitchens. The will to
do so is there, so are gardens, many which have been "saved" and are fallow.
Having master gardeners trained up from food insecure communities in our city
could be an extraordinarily helpful, and in the long run, cost effective thing
to do.
Job Training: The actual cash that it would cost to train,let's say 50 - 100
master gardeners a year in all of our 5 boroughs, might also be covered by a
jobs training grant - these are folks who would be hireable for work with
landscapers and might even be able to set up their own horticultural
landscaping/architectural businesses, employing New Yorkers in their own
communities -
instead of those pick-up trucks from New Jersey and upstate, that bring our NYC
generated dollars back to their communities.
How About a NYC Master Gardener Program?
Everbest,
Adam Honigman
Volunteer,
Clinton Community Garden
