Part of the reason Central Park in Manhattan is so famous is that, for a long time, it was the only real green space in the borough. Before the island’s edges were slowly reclaimed for leisure, there was nowhere else to spend time away from the streets. Back then, the rare sight of a community garden on the Lower East Side was a pull—you could practically smell the oxygen, while instinctively crossing the street to walk in its shade.
The 6&B Community Garden (on Sixth Street and Avenue B) began life in the early 1980s; still going strong, it does more than emit cooling vapors into the hot city streets. Children go there to learn about cooking, in an area that is not only low on parks and trees, but easily accessible, unprocessed food.
Briar Winters and Michael Mangieri recently spoke to us about the why and how of their outdoor program for kids (run with educator and former garden president, Barbara Caporale). They are local residents who met while working in New York’s kitchens, both with experience working on small farms. Briar now has an apothecary studio, while Michael is a chef—together, they are tackling issues of food equity in the most enjoyable way.
Photography by Valery Rizzo for Gardenista.
Why did you get involved with 6&B Community Garden?
Briar: I’d been in the neighborhood since 2002 and then when Michael joined me there in 2008, we started really thinking about putting down roots in the community, and becoming involved with the garden felt like a great way to meet our neighbors and be a part of something good.
Michael: Briar and I decided that if we weren’t going to move out of the city for an agrarian life, then we would find a community garden to get involved with in our neighborhood. We had often visited 6&B and when someone invited us to apply for a plot we leapt at the opportunity.
How did you take the step to teaching?
Briar: Part of the beauty of being a part of our garden community is that it truly creates a space for all of us to contribute in whatever ways we find meaningful. We have artists, educators, craftspeople and more who lead workshops; all our events are completely free and open to the entire community.
Michael: We were beginning to be very interested in food justice, and found common ground in that with Barbara [who had recently graduated from Farm School NYC]. We took a few workshops with Edible Schoolyard and with a little trial and error found that our experience from restaurant kitchens was very useful for designing and leading hands-on workshops for kids.
Briar: Barbara worked on some grants to get the basic equipment we’d need to start, and Michael and I took a few workshops for educators put on by Edible Schoolyard at their wonderful demonstration classroom and garden in East Harlem—and then we were off!
Part of the idea of food justice is about availability of culturally appropriate food. How do you approach that?
Briar: A big part of our program from the beginning has been an emphasis on encouraging our members to share family recipes and foods from their cultures that are meaningful to them. If we can, we try to have the garden member who shared the recipe join us at the workshop to give a little background to the kids before we start. Maybe a story, or a memory of how they remember the dish being prepared when they were young, and how they like to make it now. Whether it’s an everyday dish or something for a special occasion. It really helps to make those connections, and parents will say to us that they’ve never known their child to like this or that vegetable, but the combination of hearing about the dish from someone, and harvesting the ingredients themselves is enough to get them to try something new. Pretty magical!
Michael: In the kids cooking series we try to highlight the cultural diversity of our garden community. We established a tradition of celebrating Mexican Independence Day in September, joined by our friend Paula Jiminez who contributes recipes. In the past we also hosted the chef-owner of a local Mexican restaurant. In other workshops we’ve collaborated with garden and other community members from Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and Thailand.
Briar: By sharing cross-cultural food traditions and recipes, we try to help NYC live up to its reputation as a place where people from all over the world come together, and where we are all the richer for it.
Briar: The last few seasons we’ve gotten some starts from Rise & Root Farm, which offers a wide variety of different cultural offerings, and have also partnered with Christina Chan from Choy Division to also offer some Asian vegetable and herb starts, like the Korean Kkaennip. We also tried several different types of cucumber from her this season.
How do the children, in turn, teach their families?
Briar: The program isn’t just for kids, but also their families, and by bringing in our membership, whether they have kids or not, we are really leaning into the idea of the garden as an intergenerational space. We want to help cultivate the next generation of gardeners, cooks, and stewards of the community. We’ve had our members share ideas with us about what they’d like to see grown for a particular dish we could make, and so we search out seeds or starts for those.
Do you get repeat customers?
Briar: The kids join us in the spring to help plant seeds, and many of them return throughout the season to help us keep everything watered and thriving.
How does the learning continue after a workshop?
Briar: Everyone leaves with a recipe card and we also provide extensive info on how people can get enrolled in food assistance programs and get Greenmarket Bucks to buy fresh local vegetables, too. We want to be a part of helping everyone access healthy food.
Cooking with kids—why do you find it so enjoyable?
Briar: It’s really beautiful to see all the enthusiasm, the willingness to try new things, the way they cooperate and share tools and help each other. I think for city kids, to just spend the afternoon outside in the garden is a real treat, and we feel the same way. The days we do the workshops have a lot of joy; garden members stop by to try a bite of whatever we made, and everyone enjoys seeing the garden full of youthful energy!
Michael: The best part for me is always picking food with the kids at the beginning of the class. Some of them are super eager and love to yank the garlic out of the ground with gusto. Some of them are a little shy and need more gentle attention. But it’s usually the most quiet children who will come to say a very heartfelt ‘thank you’ after the event is over. I like to think that giving them an opportunity to get messy outside with plants might positively influence their relationship with food for years to come.
The workshop has turned out risi e bisi, squash blossom quesadillas, Chinese dumplings (jiaozi), in a wide variety of recipes. Briar: “We’re working on compiling them into a self-published cookbook over the next year or so to help raise funds for the program. It’s been so fun to look back over everything.”
Do you use all the food you grow?
Briar: We also donate around 30 pounds of collard greens per year grown by the kids to our local soup kitchen (Trinity Lower East Side). We’re really trying to model the idea of food justice in community gardening—even in a small scale way.
“We are prepping for the next one this coming weekend,” says Briar. “We’ll be making a potato and onion curry using a family recipe from one of our garden members who is from Bangladesh, and we’ll be harvesting potatoes from the growing beds. I can’t wait.”
Summer Rolls
Makes 10.
- 20 rice paper wrappers (use two per roll)
- 1/2 cup of mint leaves
- 1 large cucumber, julienned
- 1 large carrot, julienned (and/or other crunchy vegetables)
- handful of cilantro and thai basil (if available)
- 4 scallions, cut into 4-inch sections and green parts only
- 1 head of red leaf letttuce; remove the core and clean
- 12 oz vermicelli noodles, cooked
Take a large bowl of hot water and dip the rice paper wrappers (two at a time) into the bowl for two-three seconds. Place them on a plate or cutting board; the rice paper wraps will continue to soften.
Add a small handful of vermicelli noodles on the bottom third of the rice paper. Add a couple of sprigs and slices of cilantro and mint, plus cucumber, carrot, scallion, and lettuce.
Roll the bottom of the rice paper away from you, to cover the vegetables. Once it is tightly rolled halfway, fold in the sides and continue to roll. Repeat with remaining vegetables.
Serve rolls immediately or keep covered at room temperature for up to two hours. Serve with hoisin dipping sauce.
See also:
- Shopper’s Diary: Marble & Milkweed’s New York City Studio
- Groundwork Hudson Valley’s Science Barge: A Floating Educational Farm in Yonkers
- How to Start a Community Garden (In 5 Steps)
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