Climate Week at Caravan of Dreams #7 · Cleaned Transcript
September 23, 2026 · Caravan of Dreams, East Village, NY
An evening panel and visioning workshop in the Dream Room, recorded on the house mic. This is a cleaned and condensed transcript: filler trimmed, crosstalk smoothed, the shape of the evening kept intact. The small-group conversations were not audible on the recording, so the workshop appears here as its instructions and its share-back. Names and places spoken from the stage were checked where a source exists; where none does, they stand as the speaker said them. The hosts and panelists are named; people speaking from the floor and from the tables are not. It is not verbatim.
Download as .txtBen · Thank you all for choosing to invest your evening here with us. My name is Benjamin Von Wong. I am the curator of this little project, along with a community called Dear Crisis. We are hosting twenty-five events over the course of this week, right here at Caravan of Dreams. Caravan of Dreams is New York's oldest vegan organic restaurant. It has been around for over thirty years, and we only discovered it six months ago. We heard it was in financial difficulty, and we just started hosting little gatherings like this one, in this very room. As Climate Week swung around, we thought: why not use this moment, when so many amazing people come from out of town, to cross-pollinate between the outside world and the ecology of New York City? The question we hosted these gatherings with is what would happen if we used this opportunity to plant new seeds in that ecology. This is one of the events born out of that.
If you have been to Climate Week you will know you spend most of your time running from one place to another. I think of it like chasing butterflies. Chasing butterflies with a bigger and bigger net is one way of doing things. Another is to plant the food the butterflies want to come to, sit, and wait for the amazing humans to show up. So in this case you are my butterflies. Isaac and I met through these community gatherings. They began because I had just moved to New York and I wanted friends, and hosting is a really good way of bringing like-minded people together, because you control the subject matter and the rest emerges. At one of the Islands of Coherence dinners we had been hosting, Isaac, Laura and Becca were there, and decided to bring this project to life. Food should arrive around quarter past seven, which fits the programming, and there is water, tea and sparkling water over here. This whole project at Caravan of Dreams has been community powered and volunteer run. When we came in there was no stage, no screen, none of these flowers or this lighting. We wanted to leave this place better than we found it, and we hope you leave this space better than you found it too.
MacDonald · Thank you so much, Ben, and thank you all for being here. My name is Isaac MacDonald, and I co-produced this event with Laura and Becca. At those dinners we did a lot of visioning. People would imagine the future and talk about what they wanted in their communities. Often it was a communal gathering space where people could connect across generations. Or a place to learn about local food, or to address food insecurity. Or islands with batteries and solar. One thing we kept identifying was that the through line was not an imaginary place. It was assets that already exist in neighborhoods, some of them modeling these things in different ways, maybe not all of them at once. Those places were community gardens. Each of us is involved in our local community garden in different ways, so we convened this: how do we learn what is already happening, so we don't try to blank-slate over existing practices and community places? And how do we imagine a network that is regenerative and connected, whether its centers are places that already exist or new ones we could build?
So tonight we learn from an amazing panel about what is happening on the ground in New York City's community gardens, historically and right now. Then we go into a collective visioning exercise around the tables, where each of us shares our visions for community gardens. For those of you who answered on the registration form what you imagine for the future, some of that will be filtered in. Hopefully we make some new connections and eat some delicious food. Our panel: Daniela Sweet-Coll, co-founder of the BJH Garden Club. Anthony Reuter, assistant director of programs at NYC Parks GreenThumb. And Ena McPherson, who has founded and led community garden projects across Bed-Stuy and other communities. Maybe you could each start by sharing a little about yourself and the work you do.
Sweet-Coll · Hello, I'm Daniela. I co-founded a street gardening collective in Crown Heights called the BJH Gardening Club. It's named after the apartment complex that birthed it, the Brooklyn Jewish Hospital apartment complex, which is one hundred percent rent stabilized. We garden exclusively in the tree beds around the complex, and we've established a native pollinator corridor along the sidewalk.
Reuter · Hi everyone, I'm Anthony Reuter, assistant director of programs at GreenThumb. We are the community garden program of the Parks Department here in New York City, and we work with over 560 community gardens. We provide material support, technical assistance, education programming and fun events. In my current role I help manage our public programming.
McPherson · Good evening, everyone. Ena McPherson. I've been a gardener since I was a child. I never gardened publicly; I started in my backyard. Then I moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, my whole life changed, and it exploded. I never intended to be the founder of any gardens. I just wanted to garden. As a result I'm the founder of, and involved with, four gardens in Bed-Stuy, and I coordinate efforts and agitate and resist in all of them. I advocate across New York City, and I work closely with GreenThumb. Anthony knows me very well. He started as a coordinator and moved up rapidly through the ranks, and he represents the young voice and the elevated thinking at an old agency.
MacDonald · Daniela, you've built this community of people gardening in tree beds. Could you show us what you've built, and then talk about why you built it outside the GreenThumb system, the current system of community gardens?
Sweet-Coll · These are a few photos of our work. We started largely out of a tenant organizing effort in the complex. We're owned by Alma Realty, a famously horrible landlord, which Laura also used to have. They're really neglectful, there were a lot of issues in the buildings, and there was a huge amount of turnover during COVID. A previous tenant organizing effort had been splintered by the departure of many people. So I was trying to organize, and I was finding it really hard to get people in the same room. The thing that changed that was street gardening. There were these empty plots in front of the building, and there was a desire, I think, for people to get together and work on something together. To me it was the little side thing I was doing to get people to learn how to work together for the tenant organizing. Then it took on a life of its own, separate from the work in the complex.
These are some of the beds we've worked on. We currently steward forty trees actively, and I want to say twelve or thirteen fully established native pollinator gardens in those forty beds. This is a before and after. I'm kind of anti before-and-after, because it's the in-between and the after-after that really matter, but it gives you a sense of the neglect that happens in these public spaces, which are owned by Parks and which anyone can garden in. People don't really realize that. This bed is in front of a community fridge on the corner of Classon and St. Marks in Crown Heights. People come here every day to get food for their families, and they were looking at this thing, which had dead rats in it, amongst other really disgusting things. I think it helps people feel a sense of ownership over public space, and a sense that they are cared for by their neighbors.
This is a map we made. We also use the New York City tree map to log our care, but this map lets us take photos and be more interactive with each other. One of our neighbors is a software developer, a great person, and he made this amazing map for us. It has been really useful for helping us connect. In a community garden you're more face to face with people, but this work is so public and so spread out. And this is a monarch, never before seen on our block, found by two extremely cute twin boys.
MacDonald · You could have brought people together at a local community garden. Why the tree beds?
Sweet-Coll · For me it was about the hyperlocality of it: people working immediately in front of where they live, often with people they live in the same building with. That felt like it furthered the goal of neighbors working with neighbors in a way a community garden might not in the same way. Not that it can't; it's just different. Community gardens also have varying levels of accessibility, for good reason. Some are not open all hours of the day. In some you can't participate in the same way right away; you kind of ease your way into participation. This is no barrier to entry. Anyone can garden in a tree bed. It's owned by New York City Parks, and they encourage you to garden in them. It also means, as Ena and I were chatting about earlier, that it gets really abused. I think of it a little like one of those little Zen sand gardens where you pull the rake over, it gets messed up, and you do it again, and it gets messed up, and you do it again. But it was important to me that it be close to where I live.
MacDonald · Anthony, you help run the nation's largest urban gardening program. What do you focus on, what is at the cutting edge right now, and what are the big challenges in your network of green spaces?
Reuter · Thank you, Ena, for saying I'm young. I've been at GreenThumb for almost eleven years, so I'm not necessarily young at GreenThumb anymore, and I've seen it change a lot. When I started we were an extremely small program of the Parks Department, a staff of fifteen or twenty people. We're now a staff of about fifty. When I started, I think most gardeners would say GreenThumb was probably unresponsive to anything they ever needed: told them to fill out paperwork and never followed up, did occasional workshops, gave out materials as it could. Over ten years we've staffed up and become more responsive to gardeners' needs. We've been able to help them through conflict and transitions in their garden groups, and to provide programming that brings new people into the gardens and attracts a younger group of people.
One of the most difficult things about community gardens in New York City is that they have been stewarded for a very long time by a smaller group of people, and we've been trying to increase the number of people involved. So a big focus in my role is programming that's exciting to people who don't already know about community gardens, a low-risk way for them to come to the space. We plan volunteer events as a first step for people to get involved at a garden. We plan really fun public programming, like our Harvest Fair, next Saturday, October 3rd, at Von King Park and Hattie Carthan Community Garden: a family-friendly event where you can learn more about community gardens and do fun workshops. We're really trying to bring in younger people because the gardens are fully volunteer run. They can't exist without these groups of volunteers maintaining them. We're still a small staff. There's no way we could go around and open 560 community gardens to the public and make sure they're maintained. What I'm most excited about is continuing to grow the number of people who know we exist, who want to get involved in their local garden, and who see that garden as a public space they can use.
MacDonald · Ena, you've been a long-time resident, activist, gardener and advocate in Bed-Stuy. What did it take to found a garden, and what have you seen change and stay the same in the community garden movement?
McPherson · I want to pick up what Anthony touched on: creating programs to bring people in. What he's not saying is access. It's a huge problem in these gardens, and mainly because of stakeholders like myself. We created the movement from day one, and we have a hardcore sense of ownership. It's been famously said that old community gardeners are nasty. No, really, it's a fact, and it's an outgrowth of all we went through to create this movement. Sustainability and climate work began in community gardens. We created the blueprint.
How I found a garden: I saw a vacant lot around the corner from where I lived, and I was attracted to it. I thought it was privately owned. After investigation it turned out not to be. Because of my experience with GreenThumb we worked very closely, and yes, the agency has leveled up quite a bit in being more responsive, and we get a lot of resources. But it's a symbiotic relationship. The agency exists because of our work. GreenThumb was created on the work we forged in the early days. So we are partners, and we're not supplicants. We go in not on our knees but with a handshake. We work together in a very cohesive way, because we want the agency to succeed: if they fall, we fall. We work with Green Guerillas and with GrowNYC too, and when GreenThumb doesn't have the funding we've gotten quite a bit from GrowNYC.
It was not easy. When you find the space and you want to establish it, you literally walk down the street and ask every person, stop at every bodega, every store: would you support us? They say yes, in concept, but they're not really going to help you physically. All four of our gardens were women-led. The founders were all women of a certain age, fully employed. I was fully employed when I started both gardens. Somehow it happened, by sheer force of determination. People in the neighborhood see what you're doing, and after a while they buy into it. You try not to shame them, but you ask, and you work so hard, and eventually they help. We know, because in 2015 they tried to take Tranquility Farm away from us. We had a license and were fully established, and they came back and said they wanted it back. We said no, and we fought. The community really stood for us. They wrote letters, they called, they showed up at everything. We had children there. I love to see the kids involved, because that's the core of community.
Agriculture is the best way to build community, I think, because it brings out the best, even in the hardcore guys passing by. You see how they soften when they come into the garden or see what you're doing. They'll call over: what you're doing, that's awesome. I'm biased, but I think it brings out the best in humanity. You can do this until you're disabled. You're in a wheelchair, wheel me up to a raised bed.
MacDonald · Thank you for the context and the history, how community gardens came from reclaiming urban space that was abandoned. Let's go into the future. When you imagine the community gardens of the future, what do you imagine, and how is it different from the community gardens of today?
McPherson · I want to say there is no technology, there is no magic in gardening. It's good soil. Earth, not dirt. Good soil, plants, and water, rainwater or hand water. I'm not a great advocate of rooftops, though I saw a proposal for a rain garden on top of a bus stop; in concept it may not work, but just the idea of planting something and interacting with a plant, even house plants, has virtue. I don't know what the future will look like, but I hope all you young people will tap into agriculture as a science and a practice. Whatever you do, it enriches and nurtures it. Know the name of a plant. Don't just plant and say it has blue or yellow flowers. What is its origin? What is its Latin name? How do you take care of a plant if you don't know its name?
Nothing lasts forever. I've had a little dust-up with GreenThumb, Anthony, over the metal containers they're fostering, and I'm going to speak very strongly. We had a hard time with the soil when we started gardening. We had to test it for contamination; that was the first thing we did. People came down from Cornell to walk the land and test our soil. I wanted to grow in the ground and they said no, we had to grow in raised beds. And now they want us growing in aluminum. There is no narrative that can convince me that's sound. I want the agency to step up and lead the way in sustainability. You cannot lead with the argument that aluminum will last twenty years and wood will last ten. I know its root. It's capitalism. But find a way. Anthony, they're relying on you as a young person there. I walked into a garden last Saturday and saw people putting together aluminum beds, and it's triggering.
MacDonald · I'm going to pause you on the aluminum. Our action item is to tell Anthony: no aluminum beds.
Reuter · I actually don't think the community gardens of the future look much different than they look now. I don't think they need to change that much, except to be more open. That's one of the things I'm most focused on: seeing those gardens more open, more active, more people using them, because they're super important third spaces. They're one of the few places in New York City you can go that's free, where you don't have to be doing anything except hanging out. Parks and community gardens are where you can just do whatever you want. What's different about a community garden from a park is that it's run by the people in the neighborhood, so gardens can look wildly different all over the city. A lot of the gardens in Bed-Stuy grow a lot of food. They're very food-production focused. When I was an outreach coordinator in my early days at GreenThumb, I worked with the gardens in this neighborhood, the East Village, and they have a very different focus. They're not really growing food over here. They're growing community: planning events, putting on performances, spaces for everyone to show their talents, and growing stuff too.
Sweet-Coll · I feel like I've learned a lot hearing from people whose focus is the more formal community garden structure, and I agree with everything you both said. I'd add that there's a lot of public space we don't think of as ours. Community gardens can improve by being more open, so people feel they're theirs and don't feel they have to be a member or have some official stake. Anywhere there's dirt can be your garden, can be a community garden. People in New York always say, I really wish I had outdoor space. I'm like, you have outdoor space. You just get to share it. You don't have to share it; you get to share it. And that is really special. I would not recommend growing edible things in a tree bed, but there are a lot of other things you can grow, things other species can eat, as you see in this photo. When I think about community gardens of the future, I think about changing our relationship to land in an urban context: thinking of ourselves not as people who happen to live on top of land, but as part of it, and as stewards of it.
Q · Who owns the gardens, and what is the longevity of that?
McPherson · When I started, two of our gardens were already protected, saved through advocacy. But all gardens in the beginning are owned by HPD. New York City is the biggest landlord, however it acquired the land. HPD works closely with GreenThumb. Tranquility Farm was HPD's. Because of our experience with the other two gardens, Edie Stone, the former director of GreenThumb, advocated with the agency to get us a temporary license. Every garden in New York City started out on land under the jurisdiction of the city. Most gardeners don't know that. GreenThumb can advocate because they're a reciprocal agency. We couldn't approach HPD, but GreenThumb can, on our behalf, and they do. So it's a partnership. And once we're protected, well, eminent domain trumps everything. But for all intents and purposes, once you see that leaf on the fence, we are saved.
Reuter · I'll just add that of the 560 or so gardens in our network, about 330 are Parks property now, and that number has increased over the years. There was a lot of organizing in the nineties to save many of the gardens in a variety of ways, and you can read much more eloquent words about that work some other time. The rest either sit on other city agencies' land, where we've built relationships but they don't want to transfer them to Parks, or they're on land trust property. There's a handful of land trusts in New York City that own community gardens.
McPherson · And let's interject about the land trusts. Those gardens were acquired because the city couldn't afford to buy them. Bette Midler stepped up with her organization and bought gardens, and the Trust for Public Land acquired gardens too. They created the land trusts, the Brooklyn Queens Land Trust, the Manhattan Land Trust, the Bronx Land Trust, because they're not mandated to run gardens. So let's not discount the participation of NYRP and the Trust for Public Land. Without them, those gardens would have gone the way the city couldn't afford.
Q · (a host invites a master gardener from Prospect Heights Community Farm to speak to the future of gardening)
A · I'd echo what Anthony said. Community gardens will probably look quite similar in the future to how they do now, perhaps a little more tropical. It's getting warm enough that some of us joke we're just waiting until we can grow mangoes in New York. The things that used to die off are living well and happily through our winters. So there's a climate change element, but it's also an opportunity to grow edible foods we haven't been able to grow before, and I always love a good experiment. It means more ways of engaging our environment, of helping it or improving it for ourselves and for our insects, pollinators and birds, who are residents of New York as well.
Host · We're going to transition to hearing from us, and a little bit of work in the room. I like to start with some individual reflection before everyone talks. On the back of your list of speakers there's a blank page that says One Potential Future. Take two minutes to think about one potential future for community gardens that you would be excited to participate in. We've heard a lot about the desire for more people to get involved in the current model; let's do some visioning of what you hope the community gardens of the future will be.
Host · As the food comes in, turn to a neighbor and share your vision. What's the future you're excited to be in?
Host · I'm hearing some really generative conversations already. Next we get into small groups; you've mostly formed them already. The speakers will come down and join some of them. We asked many of you at registration what you imagined for the community gardens of the future, and the answers fell into four big categories.
Food abundance: meeting neighbors' needs, food sovereignty and knowledge, community harvest and exchange, reliable free food.
Living infrastructure: hubs for climate resilience before, during and after disasters, distributed solar, stormwater management, cooling spaces, climate-responsive plants, blending the boundary between garden and street.
Neighborhood commons: intergenerational, culturally relevant third spaces, exchanging knowledge and tools. What if you needed a folding table, or a power tool, and you could borrow it from your community garden and bring it back? Places for gathering.
Havens for health: mental and physical health, connection to the earth, foodways, herbal medicine, sensory refuges.
Host · Each group picks two of these, or one plus your own idea, and mashes them together. Then: what specific things are there? What's already happening that we can build from? By the end I'll ask each group to fill out a little mad lib.
We believe in a future where community gardens provide ____ and ____. We draw inspiration from ____. To realize this vision, one key component is ____, and the first step is ____.
Host · Groups of four, or whatever feels natural, but not too many. We have about thirty minutes left.
Host · You should be wrapping up inspiration from other places and zooming in. What is one thing in your discussion you want a game plan around? What would need to be true to bring it to life, what's standing in the way, and what's one step you'd propose to the room? That's your next fifteen minutes.
Host · Each group has a mad lib. This mad lib is your ticket out of this event. In the next five minutes, fill it out, and pick someone to share it with the group.
Group · We believe in a future where community gardens provide havens for health. We draw inspiration from students and elders. To realize this vision, one key component is breaking the boundary of the garden: the fence of the garden, and also the metaphorical boundary. Inviting people in, making it more accessible and welcoming, so people come back. The first step is to take a tree walk with your neighbors, and to label the trees with a link to the NYC tree map: know the name of the tree, identify with it, find out the last time it was cared for or watered, and establish communion with the tree.
Group · Ours was similar in a lot of ways. We were also thinking about neighborhood commons and havens for health, and one consensus that emerged was the need for clear signage, and more public information about where the gardens are and when they're open. There should be someone on the street with a microphone explaining that the gardens are open. So our first step, quote, is telling GreenThumb what to do. We also had the idea of a community work day to invite people who aren't in the know. And we talked about gardens as spaces for ritual and community gathering, used for things other than gardening, with prompts to the public about how they might use the space, because people walk by and think, I don't know if I can go in there, or why I would.
Group · We focused on living infrastructure and neighborhood commons. We drew inspiration from programs the city already runs to distribute things, like rain barrels, to people's community garden spaces. We talked about the need for more resilient infrastructure, especially in natural disasters like a loss of power. One thing that came up was solar infrastructure in community gardens that the neighborhood could use. Apparently that process has only happened once; it took six years and was very expensive. So our first step is a replicable solar kit that is pre-approved by the necessary agencies. It's an extremely technical first step, and none of us at this table is probably going to do it. Anthony, maybe.
Host · Anthony's going to regret coming to this event. The goal is not to give Anthony things to do. It's for us to do them.
Group · We believe in a future where community gardens provide food abundance and neighborhood commons. Our vision is communal fruit trees, or a food forest, at the center of it, with fruit preservation workshops, grafting skills and fruit tree care, so people can contribute as well as take. Ideally there are communal harvests and cooking and meals together, so it's a full-circle experience. We draw inspiration from the garden some of us garden at, Prospect Heights Community Farm, and its victory gardens: the abundance from extra beds goes out to the community, to whoever needs it. And from a food forest one of the hosts mentioned. One key component is publicly accessible fruit trees, and the first step is finding a place to plant a set of fruit trees.
Host · A little add-on inspo: I was hearing about people in the Bay Area grafting fruit onto existing street trees. They're so good at it that the city can't tell where the new fruit is, so they're turning non-fruiting trees into orchards.
Group · Our two categories were food abundance and neighborhood commons. We drew inspiration from a community garden in Bushwick, and from the Bronx River Foodway. To realize this vision, one key component is communication, sharing community and cultural values so we get an idea of where each other are at, then meet halfway or find common ground. The first step is a harvest block party, where we all harvest together and have a block party.
Group · Ours is similar. We believe in a future where community gardens provide neighborhood commons and social infrastructure, which was our own idea. We drew inspiration from the BJH collective, from community gardens in other parts of the world that have their own sustainable economic systems supporting community participation, and from group chats. To realize this vision, one key component is centralized communication, so many different community gardens and the people in them can talk to each other and start organizing as a collective. So the first step is making a group chat. We don't need to change our behaviors. We can keep partying and group chatting.
Host · Thank you all for working through this and seeing the synergies between the groups: how do we break down the walls, get more people involved, make sure the doors aren't locked, communicate better, and address the technical barriers so these places can look the way we want? My hope is that the community gardens of the future are sort of within us. I draw a lot of inspiration from the three people on the panel. Let's give them a round of applause. The difference between them and you is that you just haven't been in the gardens as much. So my hope is this is a little seed of inspiration, and that we all go out and start building the gardens we're excited about.
McPherson · Thank you for calling that out. It's great to see the interest of the younger generation in sustainability and agriculture. It's really affirming. I gardened since I was a child, gave it up, and came back to it as an older woman.
Reuter · A plug: LUNGS, the Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens, is running its harvest festival across the gardens in this neighborhood over these two weeks, with events and performances, so there are a couple more days. One is a volunteer event at a garden in the neighborhood on Friday, but space is limited and it's full right now. And on Saturday, October 3rd, we're doing the Harvest Fair at Herbert Von King Park in Bed-Stuy and the Hattie Carthan Community Garden across the street, from 12 to 4. There'll be a fresh chef contest, with people cooking and competing on who makes the best dish, games all over the park, a tractor in the garden you can take photos with, a tea ceremony, and a whole bunch of fun stuff.
McPherson · It's the most iconic garden, named for the environmentalist Hattie Carthan. That's her footprint, Marcy, Clifton and Lafayette. Come on down.
Host · A couple of logistical announcements. If you ate, please pay for your food on your way out; there's a register, and you can give your number or tell them what you had. There are goodies here that Anthony brought from GreenThumb, printed maps of the Lower East Side's community gardens made by a researcher, Helen Avery, and seeds, if you'd like to start your next little garden or turn your tree bed into one, the way Daniela does. And there's a pop-up on the right that asks what you can offer to build the community gardens of the future. Write your answer and leave it in the green shadow box on the bar. If you borrowed a pen, leave it on the table. You're the last event of the night, so this room is yours; stay and chat with the people you met. A huge part of the magic is the people you connect with because they share the same interests. Big thank you to Ben and to everyone who helped make this possible, and a big shout-out to Becca and Laura.