Community Spotlight: Nancy Treuber

Photo credit: Nancy Treuber

WELCOME TO OUR COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT! In celebration of all the incredible people who help make the garden a success, we’d like to their stories with you. 

Please meet Nancy Treuber (she/her), a talented photographer and founding member of Maple Street Community Garden.

In 2013, Treuber joined together with a group of neighbors, hauling trash out of the abandoned lot that would one day become Maple Street Community Garden.

Her favorite Maple Street memory dates back to those early days during a dramatic legal battle to save the garden from predatory developers.

Treuber remembers “confronting the fraudulent, fake owners, the Makhani brothers, whose workers were ripping apart the raised beds in the garden.”  With the help of dedicated community members, a battle to save the garden started that day.

A recording of that confrontation was even included in an episode of WNYC's “There Goes the Neighborhood” that documented the garden’s origin story. 

These days, Treuber enjoys the social and creative outlets the garden provides.

“It is a very nearby way to sit outdoors, see my neighbors, and play with my creativity in taking photos for the newsletter,” she wrote.

Treuber’s photographs of the Fresh Food Box program’s plentiful fruits and vegetables grace the garden’s monthly newsletter and social media accounts.

“I enjoy feeling part of something that is doing good, and helping spread that word through the newsletter,” she wrote.

In 2021, Nancy published a photo essay for Voices of Lefferts' special issue, "Flatbush Eats." The essay highlighted Maple Street Community Garden and its amazing volunteers including Arlene Roberts, Brenda Hawkins Pagan, Paloma Martinez-Miranda and Lory Henning, among others.

Pick up your copy of volume #7 at Greenlight Bookstore in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, or order it online at https://www.greenlightbookstore.com/voices-lefferts-issue-7-flatbush-eats.