“From coastal resiliency and sustainable green practices to the preservation of affordable housing, world-class public art, and vibrant, year-round programming in award-winning public spaces, Battery Park City leads the way in many of the measures that makes cities livable."

Raju Mann

President & CEO
  • 03/31
  • Community
  • Environment

Battery Park City’s young gardeners are ready for spring!

Though the weather outside may not yet feel like spring, Battery Park City’s enthusiastic gardeners are already hard at work planting in Rockefeller Park’s Children’s Garden. The dozen eager participants in the Early Spring Gardening class, many of whom are returners from last year’s program, got their hands dirty this past Tuesday planting the first peas along the garden’s edge.
 
Since the Children’s Garden was covered with snow for the first session (March 21-the second day of spring!), the gardeners met at 6 River Terrace. The topic of study was the relation between the Earth and the Sun — especially regarding the first day of spring. The gardeners painted a giant sun and learned how tiny they would be if our entire Solar System shrunk to the point that the sun was only five feet wide! This week, the class used the Battery Park City Esplanade to measure the relative distance between the earth and the sun, if each were a billionth of its size.
 
The children have also been excited to find little bits of nature along the Esplanade. The ducks have returned to the ponds, flowers are starting to sprout, and worms are crawling about. In fact, this week the class rescued several worms that had found their way out onto the concrete and returned them to the soil!

The gardening class, however, was sad to discover inordinate amounts of dog waste in the children’s planting beds, which is very harmful to the plants and flowers trying to grow there. So the class spent the last bit of its session creating signs to place in the garden, and would like to remind dog owners that–while they all love dogs–the space is a children’s garden, not a pooch potty!

This young gardeners now look forward to planting early spring vegetables in March and April; planting annuals in May–as well as tomatoes, beans and cucumbers to be harvested in late summer; and observing the creatures — birds, insects, arthropods, worms and other creepy crawlies — that live in the garden. Finally, they will explore artistic ways to appreciate the garden through drawing, painting, poetry and nature journaling.
 
All are excited to see some beautiful flowers and plants beginning to spring into form in the children’s garden at Rockefeller Park!
 
Early Spring Gardening runs through April 25. Contact registration@bpcpparks.org for more info. 

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