Tag Archives: Sustainable Flatbush

Reminder: Greening Flatbush this Sunday

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Update 2008.02.25: Read about this event.

Just a reminder that this Sunday, February 24, from 1:30 to 4:30pm, the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush is hosting Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are at the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard [GMAP]. We’ve got a great lineup of speakers, demonstrations and workshops on a range of topics, including community gardens, gardening in containers, composting, street trees and community-supported agriculture.

The event is free, but space is limited. There are still openings available. To register, email greeningflatbush@gmail.com.

Here’s the press release we put together for this event:

Brooklyn, NY — Sustainable Flatbush sponsors “Greening Flatbush”
Sunday, February 24

On Sunday, February 24, residents and other members of the greater
Flatbush community can learn what they can do to beautify and improve
the environment of their neighborhood.

“Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” is an afternoon of short
lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on topics ranging from
planting and caring for street trees to composting with worms in your
kitchen.

“Garden is a verb,” says Chris Kreussling, co-chair of the Gardening
Committee of Sustainable Flatbush, which is sponsoring the event.
“It’s not just a place you visit. It’s something you do.”

“Hearing about what others are already doing can inspire people to
work with their neighbors to take
action,” says Kreussling, who also authors a local gardening blog,
Flatbush Gardener. “We want to build community through gardening.”

Greening Flatbush is Sunday, February 24, from 1:30 to 4:30pm at the
Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard.
The event is free, but space is limited. To register, or if you have
questions about this event, please email greeningflatbush@gmail.com.
For directions, see the Flatbush branch web page on the Brooklyn
Public Library Web site, http://www.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/.

Sustainable Flatbush provides a neighborhood-based forum to discuss,
promote and implement sustainability concepts in Brooklyn and beyond.
For more information, visit http://sustainableflatbush.org/.

It felt weird to quote myself, but hey, a girl’s gotta do and all that. I don’t know to whom “Garden is a verb” can be first attributed, but I’ll acknowledge here that I cribbed it from the sidebar of those rockin’ gals at Garden Rant.

Sunday, February 24: Greening Flatbush

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Update 2008.02.25: Read about this event.
Update 2008.02.22: See the reminder for the latest info.

GreenBranches, a project of the Horticultural Society of New York, at the Flatbush branch of the Brooklyn Public Library
GreenBranches, Flatbush Branch, Brooklyn Public Library

On Sunday, February 24, residents and other members of the greater Flatbush community can learn what they can do to beautify and improve the environment of their neighborhood.

“Greening Flatbush: Garden Where You Are” is an afternoon of short lectures, demonstrations, and workshops on topics ranging from planting and caring for street trees to composting with worms in our kitchen.

Greening Flatbush is Sunday, February 24, from 1:30 to 4:30pm at the Flatbush Branch of the Brooklyn Public Library at 22 Linden Boulevard [GMAP]. The event is free, but space is limited. To register, or if you have questions, please email greeningflatbush@gmail.com. For directions, see the Flatbush branch web page on the Brooklyn Public Library Web site.

Sustainable Flatbush provides a neighborhood-based forum to discuss, promote and implement sustainability concepts in Brooklyn and beyond. For more information, visit their Web site.

Flatbush Branch, Brooklyn Public Library
Flatbush Branch, Brooklyn Public Library

Summary of the Kickoff Meeting of the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush

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Updated 2007.11.30: Added the complete list of ideas which came out of the brainstorming session.

Last night I hosted the kickoff meeting for the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush. Clockwise from lower left in the photo are Mela, Anne, Lashonda, and Bruni.
Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee Kickoff Meeting

At the end of the evening, I asked if someone was willing to co-chair, and Bruni volunteered. She will report to the general meeting next Monday. What follows is my summary of how the evening went.

We opened with some quick introductions, everyone helped themselves to tea and cookies, then we settled in for a quick brainstorming session. As you can see in the photo above, my little card table wasn’t big enough to hold all the ideas we generated in just a few minutes. Next time I’ll use a bigger table.

Next we reviewed everything each of us had written while grouping and clustering the cards. For example, we had clusters for ideas related to composting, schools and youth, gardening techniques, street trees, and community. This sparked more discussion, questions and answers, and more ideas.

The strongest theme to come out of the meeting was “community.” Each of us feels strongly about the connections between community and gardening. I talked about my experiences with the Daffodil planting on Cortelyou Road. Bruni talked about her experiences with a community garden, and the community of gardeners, in the East Village. Others talked about their desires to organize people in their buildings, and on their blocks.

We decided to focus on a single near-term action: a public community meeting in late February. The idea is to get people excited about the possibility of doing something with their building, their block, their neighbors in 2008, and connect them with opportunities to learn more and organize. I’ve contacted BBG’s Brooklyn Greenbridge to see if they can do a Flatbush-oriented version of their “Greening Up Your Street” program. Even if not, we’ll be able to put some kind of program together.

We don’t have a date yet for our next meeting. We’re thinking it might be sometime in January. When we have a date, it’ll be announced here and on the Sustainable Flatbush motherblog.

I’m inspired by this definition of community gardening:

What is a Community Garden?
Any piece of land gardened by a group of people.
– American Community Gardening Association

By this definition, we can create “Community Gardens” everywhere:

  • Tree pits
  • Median strips
  • Planter boxes
  • Grounds and foundation planting areas of apartment/coop/condo
    buildings

Imagine turning our streets into community gardens …

I’ll close with this photo. This shows the state of our table workspace after we had done the grouping and clustering. Visit the Flickr photo pages for this and the opening photo; they have notes with the text from some of the cards. This photo also shows that my home-made, from scratch, double Callebaut bittersweet chocolate chip cookies were well-received.
Sustainable Flatbush Gardening Committee Kickoff Meeting

The crayons were popular. I also ended up with some nice drawings and doodles on the paper covering the card table. I’ll have to get some photographs of those as well.

Ideas

Here’s the complete list of ideas, in alphabetical order, which came out of our brainstorming session.

Adopt a tree
Apartment building gardens/landscaping
Aromatic gardening
Assisting renters in taking/using green space in or around buildings
BBG/Brooklyn Greenbridge
Benches around tree pits (wood benches)
Brooklyn College Garden
Buddy gardening
Build community
City repair (Portland model)
Community composting
Community garden
Compost
Demonstration gardens
Donate food grown to families with food challenges
Educate neighbors about types of trees in neighborhood
Engage youth/children
Find neighbors with farming experience
Food, not lawns
Gardens/farms in schools
Green roofs
Ground cover for older tree pits
Grow food
Guerilla gardening
Highlight/profile local gardeners
Kids education (PS 139, PS 217, and at other local schools)
Lawn care practices
Library Plaza Garden
Million Trees NYC
Planting in Newkirk Plaza
Public composting
Rain barrels
Rain gardens
Red Hood Community Farm
School compost
Sponsor a tree
Street arboretum
Tree signs
Vermi-composting
Window boxes
Xeri-scaping

Monday, 12/3: Sustainable Flatbush December Meeting

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This month’s Sustainable Flatbush general meeting will be next Monday, December 3, from 7 to 9pm.

At the meeting, Gardening Committee co-chair Bruni will report on last night’s kickoff meeting and our plans for a public community event sometime in late February 2008.

Related Posts

Gardening Committee Kickoff Meeting

Monday 11/26: Kickoff Meeting for the Gardening Committee of Sustainable Flatbush

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At last week’s Sustainable Flatbush Town Hall Meeting, six committees were established to focus on different areas:

  • R3 (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle)
  • Livable Streets
  • Energy Efficiency
  • Businesses
  • Schools
  • Gardening

Next Monday, November 26, at 7pm, the Gardening Committee will have a kickoff meeting.

There are three main items on the agenda:

  • Brainstorm ideas about what the committee can do. Sustainable Flatbush’s mission is to educate, advocate, and act on issues of sustainability in our area. What are our ideas for how gardening relates to that mission?
  • Identify a couple of things we can do immediately, especially over the winter
  • Identify co-chairs for the committee who will coordinate with the other committees and larger organization and recruit and support committee members.

If you want to attend next Monday’s meeting please email me at [xrisfg at gmail dot com]. I’ve setup a Google group for committee planning. If you can’t attend next Monday but want to help with gardening committee planning, let me know as well.

November 12: Sustainable Flatbush Town Hall Meeting

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This is listed in the sidebar Calendar, but I wanted to highlight this community meeting happening next Monday.

Sustainable Flatbush is about to enter an exciting new phase of our activities in the neighborhood, and we’d love for YOU to be involved! Please join us:

WHAT: Sustainable Flatbush Town Hall Meeting
WHEN: Monday, November 12th at 7pm
WHERE: 462 Marlborough Road (between Ditmas and Dorchester)

Longtime Flatbush resident Mark Levy has come onboard, bringing his history of commitment to the neighborhood and experience as a community organizer and environmental educator. He has also kindly offered to host this meeting at his home. Thanks Mark!

We will form committees geared toward specific activities and service projects, establish leadership roles, and set some new goals for 2008. To give you an idea of what’s in store, here are some of the proposed committees:

• RECYCLING/WASTE REDUCTION
Focusing on recycling education and promotion, as well as other methods of reducing waste in our homes and businesses, from composting to blocking unwanted fliers.

• SUSTAINABLE GARDENING
Sharing knowledge and resources on sustainable approaches to all forms of urban gardening, from yard landscaping to street tree pits to organic farming. We will also be actively involved in the new neighborhood community garden.

• TRANSPORTATION/LIVABLE STREETS
Working with Transportation Alternatives and other Livable Streets advocates, we will bring a local perspective to the citywide discussion of such issues as traffic calming, congestion pricing, public transportation improvements, and infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists.

• ENERGY EFFICIENCY/ALTERNATIVE ENERGY AND FUELS
Let’s talk about how to save money by using less energy in our homes and businesses, and how to incorporate alternative energy sources such as biofuels and solar power into the landscape.

• LOCAL BUSINESS OUTREACH
Helping neighborhood businesses to adopt sustainability practices that improve their “Triple Bottom Line”: People, Planet, and Profit.

• LOCAL SCHOOLS OUTREACH
Implementing environmental education and practices in our local schools.

Hope to see you there!

Event, June 15, Sustainable Flatbush: Urban Permaculture

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Flyer for Sustainable Flatbush #3: Urban Permaculture
The subject of June’s Sustainable Flatbush event is “Permaculture and its Applications in an Urban Environment”:

Featured speakers Joan Ewing and Wilton Duckworth are former Flatbush residents now living in upstate New York, where they host permaculture workshops, including a recent design intensive with Geoff Lawton of Permaculture Research Institute of Australia and Ethan Roland of Appleseed Permaculture.

After screening Lawton’s film “Greening the Desert“, which documents the transformation of a salty, arid expanse of sand into an abundant food forest, Wilton and Joan will discuss how permaculture concepts can be applied to NYC’s unique challenges and possibilities.

Before and after the talk we will enjoy music from resident DJ Drummerman, visuals by Keka, Vox Pop’s lovely assortment of food and drinks, and scintillating conversation with smart, charming people.

Event Details

Sustainable Flatbush Event #3
Friday, June 15th, 8pm until midnight
at Vox Pop Cafe/Bookstore
1022 Cortelyou Road, Flatbush, Brooklyn
Q train to Cortelyou Road, walk 5 blocks west to Stratford

Note: Vox Pop is also the location for the first Brooklyn Blogade Roadshow meetup on June 24.