🌼 CALL FOR ARTISTS! 🎨
The LES Ecology Center and @makemeadows are curating a two-month exhibition that reimagines a community garden as a living gallery where art and ecology come together. The exhibition celebrates the diversity of urban nature and invites New Yorkers to take a closer look at native plants that help support a healthy, thriving garden. Often overlooked or removed, these plants play an important role in feeding pollinators, improving soil, and creating habitat for urban wildlife.
Set within a community garden, artists are invited to respond to the site as both setting and collaborator. Proposals should consider native plant life, seasonal change, and the relationships between plants, people, and place. Projects may evolve over time through weathering, growth, decay, or interaction (embracing the changing nature of the garden) or be designed to withstand outdoor conditions over the course of the exhibition.
We are particularly interested in artists whose work:
🌳 Engages with the environment materially or conceptually
🧠 Reflects or responds to ecological processes
🍂 Incorporates change over time
🧘 Invites audience interaction or quiet contemplation
Submit your proposal at the link in our bio!
Join us in celebrating Tompkins Square Park with a FREE bag-your-own compost giveaway! We’ll provide the compost and shovels—just bring your own containers or a cart to take home as much as you’d like. A limited number of wheelbarrows will be available to borrow for nearby greening spaces.
Sign up at the link in our bio!
NYC’s first-ever #UrbanForestPlan is here—and now the real work begins.
This plan reflects years of collaboration, and we’re excited to turn it into action through our street tree care program, stewarding the trees in our neighborhood to ensure they thrive.
We're grateful to @NYClimate and partners across the city for building a roadmap to a cooler, greener, more equitable New York.
Read the plan at the link in our bio!
We invite young people ages 14-25 to join us and @sixthstreetcc for Compost & Climate Justice Mixer and visioning session! We will provide a short workshop on compost and environmental justice in NYC and collage materials for creating a vision board. Feel free to bring your own craft materials as well. Light snacks and drinks provided.
📍Sixth Street Community Center
🗓️ Thursday, May 14th
⏰ 4:00pm–6:00pm
Sign up at the link in our bio!
🌷LES ECOLOGY CENTER MAY EVENTS 🌳
Looking for ways to get outside and get more involved in urban sustainability? We've got you covered. We have a busy calendar of events in MAY, so there are plenty of opportunities to show up, volunteer to care for your neighborhood, learn new skills, and get more connected to your community.
Here's what's coming up:
🗓️ 5/7 - Street Tree Canopy Care Volunteer Day
🗓️ 5/9 - Rituals of Release: A Tea and Composting Ceremony
🗓️ 5/10 - Mother's Day Street Tree Care
🗓️ 5/12 - Community Clothing Swap
🗓️ 5/16 - Tompkins Square Park Compost Giveaway
🗓️ 5/19 - Curbside Composting Q & A
🗓️ 5/19 - Systems, Tools, and Scales Workshop
🗓️ 5/26 - Curbside Composting Q & A
🗓️ 5/26 - Street Tree Canopy Care Volunteer Day
🗓️ 5/26 - Designing and Managing Community Compost Spaces Workshop
🗓️ 5/27 - Street Tree Sign Making Social
🗓️ 5/30 - Tree Leaf ID Walk
🔌♻️ MARK YOUR CALENDARS FOR MAY COMMUNITY RECYCLING EVENTS! ♻️🔌
We’ve got more opportunities this month to safely recycle your old electronics and textiles. All events are from 10am-2pm (unless otherwise indicated) and will take place rain or shine ☔☀️ Find complete details on our website.
DROP-OFF DATES & LOCATIONS:
🗓️ 5/2 — Jamaica
🗓️ 5/2 — Brownsville
🗓️ 5/3 — Woodhaven
🗓️ 5/3 — Windsor Terrace
🗓️ 5/9 — Bay Ridge
🗓️ 5/16 — Little Neck
🗓️ 5/16 — Dyker Heights
🗓️ 5/17 — Cobble Hill
🗓️ 5/30 — Hell's Kitchen
🗓️ 5/30 — Carnegie Hill
🗓️ 5/31 — Harlem
NYC now requires all residents to separate their food scraps—but what does that mean for you and your building? Our curbside composting outreach team has the answers you need. If you have more questions, join one of our upcoming virtual Q&As! Check our website for details.
Trying to figure out what to do with your old electronics? We're here to help. Our Community Recycling Events team answers some of the most common questions we get at our pop-up events.
Check out the calendar on our website to see what opportunities we have to recycle coming up.
Our Community Recycling Event with Lower East Side Ecology Center yesterday, 4/26, was a success!
Electronics, clothing, and textiles were taken throughout the day. There was a HUGE turnout of over 550 people for electronics alone! Piles of clothing were also collected and will be sorted for families. Big thanks to interns who staffed our resource table. Thank you to everyone who came out and recycled! ♻️
@lesecologyctr@mm_jccmanhattan
RAIN OR SHINE ☀️🌧
Covers are available throughout the garden.
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Join @nycguambra for an afternoon of tea @panchos_garden_ in Manhattan.
Composting is a sacred ritual of transformation, honoring the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. We’ll begin with a sensory tea ceremony, then write down something we’re ready to release. Finally, we’ll compost the tea leaves and our notes, trusting the earth to transform them—and ourselves. This event is part of International Compost Awareness Week.
Sessions will begin approximately at 12PM, 1PM, and 2PM. While waiting for the next session, participants can enjoy a painting with food scraps activity, a playful and creative way to transform your scraps into art. This event is a collaboration between Tea, Arts & Culture, the Lower East Side Ecology Center, and Pancho's Garden.
FREE event! All are welcome!
Private support is provided by City Parks Foundation and Partnerships for Parks through the NYC Green Fund.
#teaartsculture #artoftea #composting #communiygarden #nycevent
