Grow to Learn and Governors Island Teaching Garden

As part of GrowNYC’s Greening department, both Grow to Learn and the Governors Island Teaching Garden aim to use urban gardens as a space for exploration, experiential learning and community building. Grow to Learn is the citywide school gardens initiative for New York City. We work with public and charter schools to ensure that gardens are sustainable teaching resources in the long term, responsive to each individual community’s vision and needs, and transformative for student learning in the cafeteria, classroom, and beyond. We believe that school gardens can be incredible tools for schools looking to develop the kind of holistic programming and real world connections they need to meet the varied needs of their students. Governors Island Teaching Garden is an 8,000 square foot urban farm that features over 60 vegetable beds, an outdoor kitchen, a solar oven, a high tunnel, fruit trees and several rainwater harvesting systems. The Teaching Garden aims to engage, excite, and educate its visitors in all aspects of urban farming. NYC students can take field trips to the garden to learn about where our food comes from by participating in planting, watering, harvesting and cooking the garden's wide array of produce. Field trips are free for NYC public schools, and we focus on neighborhoods with high poverty, low consumption and limited access to fresh fruits and vegetables.