Highlights of Fiscal Year 2006
- Moving to our beautiful, functional, light-filled and welcoming new headquarters in June. After more than 60 years at our previous location, HSNY moved to 148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor.
- Creating new library reading and learning gardens in Flatbush and Brownsville, Brooklyn, and planning the installation of new gardens at the Stone Avenue Branch in Brownsville, Brooklyn and the Brooklyn Heights Branch in Brooklyn, and at the Whitestone Branch in Queens, our most detailed and integrated interior/exterior garden project to date.
- Receiving the New York City Art Commission Special Recognition Award for the GreenBranches program for installation of library gardens and for HSNY programming for children and adults. Pictures of the gardens and models and plans for the new gardens were presented at an exhibit at the Van Alen Institute and are currently on display in City Hall at the Art Commission.
- Presenting over 75 plant and garden Community Workshops for adults in low-income neighborhoods.
- Collaborating with many non-profit agencies such as The Bridge, a residence for homeless women with mental illness, and the Kingsboro Psychiatric Hospital to design therapeutic gardens that meet special needs and to provide programming for their residents.
- Working with the Federation of Employment Guidance Services (FEGS) to bring the concept of HSNY horticultural training to help economically disadvantaged out-of-school youth.
- Teaching Apple Seed classes in-school and after-school with support from The After School Corporation. In the 2005-2006 school year, Apple Seed classes for 680 third and fourth graders were taught in 12 schools in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
- Bringing the Read and Seed program to seven libraries over the summer so that 903 children enjoyed the structured program which took place over eight weeks and which is designed to improve literacy and develop writing, reading and listening skills through garden activities, reading, and art projects.
- Partnering with the New York Botanical Garden so that students in their horticultural therapy program may now do their internship with the HSNY program at Rikers.
- Presenting our work in horticultural therapy at the Northeast Horticultural Therapy Conference in New Jersey and also at the National Conference in Portland Oregon, sponsored by the American Horticultural Therapy Association in June 2006. HSNY not only sent the GreenHouse director and the horticultural therapist who works with GreenHouse/GreenTeam to the conference but also some the GreenTeam ex-offender interns who have benefited from the program.
- Telling the story of the HSNY GreenHouse on Rikers Island and the GreenTeam in a documentary directed by Alexandra Isles, The Healing Gardens, shown on PBS. The documentary is about garden projects in New York that have demonstrated their therapeutic benefits for individuals and community-building power for neighborhoods.
- Presenting the American Society of Botanical Artists juried New York show and also curating two well-reviewed and attended shows of contemporary art inspired by horticulture, Breaking Ground last summer and The Impossible Landscape in the winter.
- Presenting through our Library a series of Booked Tonight lectures by authors like Virginia Small, Rose Wallinger and Stephen Scanniello, and also the Library’s spring reception and fundraiser which included a lecture by Susan Tamulevich on the history of the flower pot.
- Inviting our friends to enjoy our special events which included a lecture by House and Garden Editor and Chief, Dominique Browning, on The New Garden Paradise: Great Private Gardens of the World. The 12th Annual Fall Luncheon honored the Dowager Marchioness of Salisbury for her work restoring the gardens of Hatfield House and our spectacular Flowers and Design benefit in the spring honored renowned interior decorator Bunny Williams.
A copy of our IRS Form 990 may be viewed at www.Guidestar.org.
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