On September 20, both planning and affairs students came together to volunteer at the Highland Park Children’s Garden in the Cypress Hills section of Brooklyn. Aside from being a functional community garden with its own compost, the garden’s rich history of being one of the oldest urban community gardens in New York City made this an appropriate location for GUAPA’s first volunteer event of the year.
Since it was a small group, it was a great opportunity for new and old, planning and affairs students to get to know each other better. We helped prepare the garden for the fall by cleaning up plots that were consumed by weeds and by trimming overgrown trees and bushes. However, the highlight of our day was when we all collectively helped to hang up artwork that was done by the local public school children. The gardeners had been waiting quite some time for the artwork to be re-installed and they were ecstatic that we were able to help them display the creations once again.
A 1936 photo of the garden from the NYC Parks Archives: http://on.nyc.gov/1yraQiz
Written by Melissa Alke. Photos by Jeremiah Cox.
