September Happenings
Upcoming events
All of our events are free and open to the public.
At garden meetings, you can meet other garden members, learn how to get involved, and become a member. At garden workdays, all are welcome, no experience necessary. Tasks include pruning, weeding, composting, and repairs.
- Sunday September 6, 11am-12pm: Garden meeting.
- Sunday September 6, 12pm-2pm: Garden workday.
- Saturday September 12, 11am-1pm: Monarchs and Milkweed: Creating and Connecting Habitat for Monarch Butterflies. The monarch butterfly is one of North America’s most iconic and beloved species. With vibrant orange-and-black wings, the butterflies can be observed in NYC’s parks and gardens from late spring until fall, when they take to the sky for a remarkable migration, traveling south to the mountains of Mexico, where they will spend the winter. Unfortunately, monarch populations have declined significantly in recent decades for a number of reasons, including the loss of milkweed plants — the only food monarch caterpillars eat. But there’s good news: we can help monarchs by planting native milkweed species and restoring and connecting pollinator habitat throughout their migratory flyway. During this workshop, learn about the monarch’s life cycle, its impressive multi-generational 3,000-mile migration, and how to help them thrive in NYC green spaces. Attendees will be able to take home native milkweed or butterfly nectar plants for their gardens.
- Saturday September 19, TBD: 15th Annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival. Multi-day celebration with arts and music performances in community gardens across the Lower East Side. See lungsnyc.org for up-to-date schedule.
- Sunday September 20, TBD: LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival. See lungsnyc.org for up-to-date schedule.
- Sunday September 20, 11am-12pm: Garden meeting.
- Saturday September 19, 12pm-2pm: Garden workday.
- Saturday September 26, 11:30am-2:30pm TBD: NYC Anarchist Book Fair workshops. The Anarchist Book Fair is a multi-day, multi-venue event bringing together tabling, workshops, and performances from publishers, writers, designers, artists, musicians and other activists. Workshops may include topics such as community health and bodily autonomy, anarchist pedagogy, anti-capitalist art, and urban ecology. See anarchistbookfair.net for up-to-date schedule.
- Saturday September 26, TBD: LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival. See lungsnyc.org for up-to-date schedule.
- Sunday September 27, TBD: LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival. See lungsnyc.org for up-to-date schedule.
Some things we worked on last month
- Site analysis and plant identification in preparation for a new native plant garden.
- Beginning the artist-in-residence program, Kotodama: Weaving Words and Nature. Artists have created natural dyes and inks using plants in the garden. They are inviting visitors to contribute a word that expresses hope, wish, memory, or feeling you want to carry with you to the collective Accordion Book of Kotodama.
At the Garden
Joe-Pye weed is blooming! Lots of cool plants native to New York, such as New York ironweed, pokeweed, milkweed, and jewelweed, have common names with the word "weed" in them. The word "weed" does not have any botanical significance, but simply means a plant that is unwanted in a particular location. Because these native plants would often self-seed among the crops of early European settlers, they were given these unfortunate names, but they are pollinator-friendly plants that are very much wanted in our garden.
See you at the garden,
Catherine