What have you lost because of Climate Change? How do you grieve?
Want to hear more? You can listen to the other project collages here
You are here at Java Street Community Garden
Java Street Community Garden is a collaboratively run garden located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Members co-design and tend to shared green space which includes raised vegetable beds, fruit trees, perennials and native plants to attract pollinators.
The garden has adopted many sustainable practices, including organic gardening by eliminating the use of pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, making compost, and brewing compost tea with a vortex brewer. Java Street Community Garden also collects rainwater from the roof of the garden’s shed and generates electricity from solar panels with battery storage.
The garden was started in 2011 when former Greenpoint resident Stella Goodall identified the potential future site at 59 Java street. At the time, the land was nothing but weeds and rubble. It was owned by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development. With the aid of an advocacy group called 596 Acres, Stella and other local volunteers worked through city proceedings to successfully open the garden to the public in 2012.
Location
Java Street Community Garden
59 Java Street
Brooklyn, NY 11222
Open Hours
We are open to the public from April through November.
Weather permitting, our general hours are:
Monday-Friday: 5:30-7:30pm
Weekends: 10-6pm
To become a member, contact hello@javastreetgarden.org
Since 2018, The Warmest Years on Record has collected audio interviews that explore people’s emotional, psychological and sensorial experiences of living in the climate crisis. Through these conversations, we try and answer the question, ‘what does it feel like to live on a rapidly warming planet?’
In the summer and fall of 2021, I partnered with GreenThumb and interviewed almost 60 gardener members at thirteen community gardens across Brooklyn. These folks reflected not only on how climate change has shown up in their emotional psyches, they also shared hyper-local knowledge about how their growing seasons have changed over the past many decades.
Each participating garden hosts a unique sign outside their fence facing the sidewalk. I invite you to visit each garden site, enjoy the green space, and listen in on our other people are wrestling with the big questions of this unique time.
To listen to the full project archive, please visit The Warmest Years on Record here.
If you’re concerned about the climate crisis and don’t know what to do about it, I encourage you to join your local community garden. These spaces are vital for the health and resiliency of our city as we move into an uncertain future. An abundance of green space sucks carbon and other pollutants out of the air, helps with rain water drainage and takes stress off our city sewage systems, cools down the temperature, and most importantly, provides food, nourishment and community in our neighborhoods.
The Warmest Years on Record is supported in partnership with NYC Parks GreenThumb and is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC)
Signs for this project were designed by Ashley Smestad Veléz
Audio mix by Michael Simonelli
Music for audio by Charles Waters
Website designed with Matthew Spencer