Situated on the green roof of Riverbank State Park, atop the waste water treatment facilities of the Department of Environmental Protection, The Greenhouse & Education Center at Riverbank State Park offers a state-of-the-art greenhouse, a fully-fitted kitchen-classroom space, a hands-on learning garden, and a pollinator-filled native plant garden. At the Center, the Hort offers an array of programs to engage community in cultivating people-plant connections through gatherings in arts, healing, cooking, and gardening that nurture the transformative power of being in relationship to plants. Mallory Craig serves as the Greenhouse Education Center Manager, curating public programs and events, supporting educational programs such as school partnerships and internships, and developing workforce development programming and therapeutic horticulture programs taking place at the center through direct facilitation or coordinating with partners.
Public Programs:
Free drop-in workshops facilitated by artists, food-workers, healing practitioners, farmers, culture-bearers, land stewards, and storytellers at the service of cultivating joy and connection to plants.
Art & AgriCulture
“Another thing we lost is culture. . . look at the word agriculture. We lost that connection. And so now it’s going back to the culture of agriculture. Why do we grow the food that we do?” - Karen Washington
Why do we grow the foods we do? How is culture tied to our local foodways and agricultural systems? What stories of nourishment are you hungry to tell? What creative acts are you being called to digest?
In this free, drop-in, weekly series, participants explore various techniques and practices introduced by visiting artists who lead us in expressing our relationship to food, agriculture, and the histories and stories that shape how we connect with our foodways.
Through various artmaking techniques such as bookmaking, printmaking, collage, sculpture, natural-pigment making and painting, alternative photography processes, and more, participants create artwork that begins to answer the question: Where is the culture in agriculture?
Recipes & Rituals for Community Care
What does it mean to heal in community? What does it feel like when we extend care to ourselves and the collective? How do plants and our local ecologies care for us? How can we care for the plants and local ecologies in return?
Each Wednesday, we weave in rituals and recipes into their own self-care and community care practices through weekly explorations in herbal arts, somatic movement in the greenhouse and garden, folk remedies, and other wild-crafts and meditative activities that foster a deeper connection to plants to care for the body, mental health, and our own communities.
Participants are guided by a guest herbalist, healing artist, or wellness practitioner to help them create their own toolkit and apothecary for self and communal care.
Sauté Sizzle Savor & Cookbook Club
Every Tuesday, we come together around the table to be guided by a guest food-worker, chef, artist, farmer, or culture-bearer who helps us unpack our CSA box and lead us in making a collectively-crafted meal as we deepen our relationships to the crops that regional farmers are harvesting while in conversations that help us reimagine our relationships to food and farms.
In these weekly sessions, we invite participants to gather and build community as we share recipes, food stories, and helpful tips for how to cook with the plants that are in season. Each week, participants can expect to be guided by food-workers, culture-bearers, chefs, farmers, elders, or food-system thought visionaries who will lead us in both cooking class and critical conversation that has us consider how we share the foods we grow in community.
During June - November, our ingredients are sourced from our local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) and participants are invited to come together around the kitchen table to share in the harvest of the weekly share. Through cooking this share collectively, participants learn about ways a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) model can support a more equitable food system through learning how in CSA models community members and farmers build a reciprocal and mutually-beneficial relationship—community members support farmers by sharing the risk and paying upfront so that farmers can focus on stewarding the land while farmers provide community with healthy, organic, and sustainably grown produce at an affordable price that goes directly into the farm's pockets.
After class, participants are invited to stay for the Cookbook Club—an informal time and space set to share recipes and stories from the kitchen.
Family Farmacy
Food is medicine! Spanning across the Greenhouse Education Center’s learning garden, greenhouse, and kitchen, families are invited to learn the art of gardening, herbalism, and kitchen-skills to support healthy and happy bodies, minds, and hearts. Each week families will be welcomed into this drop-in program to craft their own home remedies, meals, and garden-inspired artworks.
Supporting families is the core of this program, and caregivers are encouraged to explore and learn along with children. In centering families, Family Farmacy aims to ignite the co-evolution of intergenerational learning, healing, and teaching. Through hands-on, sensory, and open-ended activities in the kitchen, greenhouse, and garden we are able to explore themes of food sovereignty, environmental stewardship, community and ecological connectedness, and mental and physical wellbeing in digestable, developmentally-appropriate ways.
Art in the Garden
Grounded in the garden, join us to critically and creatively engage in a diversity of artmaking techniques that open us up to deeper dialogue on place, our relationships to our lived environments, ecological concerns, and contemporary culture. Learn meditative and mindful drawing, printmaking and sculptural techniques, scientific observation with plant portraiture, and other various practices from botanical and ecologically-focused contemporary artists to create works of art to nurture your relationship to the garden.
Immerse yourself in the learning garden, greenhouse, and across Riverbank State Park's green roof overlooking the Hudson River to create artwork that is rooted in place and in partnership with plants.
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Gay in the Garden is a program stewarded by Diego Martins that meets the 1st and 3rd Sundays of each month and is a space for queer folks and their allies to come together for collective tending, harvesting, garden care, art-making, and queer-centered community-building. Gay in the Garden holds space for participants to show up freely and authentically in the sanctuary of a garden.
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In partnership with the Department of Probation’s program YouthWRAP (Weekend Restorative Assistance Program) the Greenhouse & Education Center invites young people involved in the justice system to fulfill their community service hours through a paid program rooted in therapeutic horticulture and a rigorous horticultural skills training.
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The greenhouse offers regular field trip opportunities that support teachers and students in academic learning, expanding environmental & climate awareness, and motivating youth to advocate for environmental, social and food equity. Therapeutic horticulture and social-emotional learning is also central tenants to all field trips. Students and teachers can choose from field trips such as: Climate Action in the Garden, Rooted in the Kitchen, Sustainable Self-Care, and City Farmer.
The Greenhouse Education Center is built on co-creation, collaborations, and relationships!
Our free weekly public programs are made possible through the collaboration and partnership of the following artists, culture-bearers, foodworkers, healers, farmers, and overall wonderful humans: Kraig Blue, Jiji Kricorian, Tato (Tamar Giligashvili), Miriam Aristy-Farer, Jaleeca Yancy, Kim Caban, Junell Banks, Fanaye Kebede, Flo Glo, Shenna Hurt (OloriVybez), Odalys Burgoa, Sharron Canon, Susan Kricorian, Brandy Cochrane, Rinku Bhattacharya.