Community gardens not only beautify neighborhoods and provide avenues for recreation and camaraderie at the local level; they also provide an opportunity for people of any age to connect with nature and learn about about health and nutrition. They help communities grow.

In Bedford-Stuyvesant, the Hattie Carthan Community Garden created a children's garden to bring nature to a densly urban neighrbohood. Today, the garden provides students at the neighboring elementary school with an interdisciplinary way to study science, art and nutrition so they can connect to nature and learn about better, healthier, choices.

Throughout the borough, smaller neighborhood gardens have received micro-grants to support a host of activities-- from buying a weed whacker to sponsoring a senior’s day to purchasing a shed to repairing a mural to buying pizza for a community clean-up day.

With one of the Brooklyn Community Foundation's micro-grants, the Sunshine Garden, P.S. 107 (John Kimball Learning Center), the school was able to jumpstart the garden's creation with tools, seeds and a trellis. The students devised a planting schedule, watched the plants grow, welcomed produce farmers to their classes and learned from the school’s resident chef how to use the results of their labor.

Critical exposure at this young age has also helped on a much bigger scale. Inspired by the President's commitment to community involvement, parenting and leadership, in a first grader planted a “leaf” from the White House in the gardern. The energetic science teacher who manages the project has also created  container-based, organic cornucopia of vegetables, fruit, flowers and herbs.

Your contribution to our Green Communities Fund can also-- literally--help children grow throughout Brooklyn.