Garden Kitchen Lab - additional gardening hours

We operate six gardens that serve as educational venues for children to learn about horticulture, sustainability, nutrition, cooking, budgeting, culture, science, and entrepreneurship through the planning and care of a local and organic garden. Seasonal activities include:

• Garden planning, planting, and digital documentation in the spring,
• Harvesting, wellness, and cooking classes in the summer,
• Seed, herb preservation, and chemistry through culinary activities in the fall.

We opened our sixth and largest garden in the Hunts Point section of the Bronx in the spring of 2021. We transformed an abandoned 5,000 square foot lot behind the Hunts Point Recreation Center that now boasts 14 large cedar raised beds, along with wood and metal trellises for growing plants.

Since its opening, Hunts Point has been overwhelmingly successful and has become GKL's flagship location. As our largest operating garden, it welcomed 160 children in 2022 and in 2023, triple the amount of children than other locations, and produced enough to stock a weekly food donation table where neighborhood families in need could pick up vegetables, fruit and herbs. We estimate that over 1,000 meals were made with this produce.

We are seeking $6,122 of additional funding to increase the number of gardening hours in 2024 and support the growing needs of the garden.

Specifically, gardening support program objectives are:

• Ensuring ongoing maintenance, including opening and closing the garden, watering, weeding, cleaning garden debris, and harvesting produce (bok choy, cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, collard green, and different types of tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, onions, lettuces, basil, thyme, mint, lavender, rosemary, carrots, and beets),
• Coordinating gardening volunteers and managing gardening equipment,
• Organizing and staffing a weekly food distribution table in order to donate surplus harvest to neighborhood families in need.

Our mission is “to set the next generation on a healthier path for life by seeding in them the ‘wonderment’ of nature, science, and food as culture.”

The hands-on activities that we offer help children understand the connection between food, nutrition, health, and the environment. And the surrounding communities can see that gardening, sustainability, and responsible food production are possible even in urban settings.

More information about all six of our locations, as well as numerous pictures of the activities in the gardens, can be found at www.gardenkitchenlab.org or on our Instagram page @gardenkitchenlab .