Maple Street Community Garden, Class of 2025 🌱📘

What a year.

From winning the 2025 Community Leader Grant from CitizensNYC, to hosting four successful fundraisers, to taking home ribbons at the GreenThumb Harvest Festival (including 2nd place in the Fresh Chef contest), this season was full of big wins and small, meaningful moments.

We shared tea ceremonies, celebrated our inaugural corn harvest, hosted another beloved wreath-making workshop, and watched the garden fully built out. Just as it was envisioned by the temporary design committee back in 2020.

A huge thank you to Councilmember Rita Joseph for her generous gift, which helped make our water fountain and irrigation system possible 💧

Behind the scenes, our volunteers made magic:

🪏Team Compost chopped ~6,000 pounds (3 tons!) of food scraps with over 80(!!) volunteers

📬 Communication Committee revived the monthly newsletter and Community Spotlight

📜 Bylaws Committee put in serious work to strengthen our foundation

🌻 Gardeners showed up week after week to keep it all growing

And honestly… this only scratches the surface.

🌱 Garden membership dues are sliding scale (suggested $20 for individual, $30 for families), because this space should be accessible to our whole community.

Thank you to everyone who showed up, pitched in, donated, volunteered, and believed in this space. We’re already dreaming about 2026, and somehow, it’s going to be even greener 💚