Sustainable Flatbush's space from 2008. photo © Sustainable Flatbush

Tomorrow is the 3rd annual Park(ing) Day in NYC. It’s a day when people take over parking spots in creative ways to raise awareness to the extra public space that is normally hogged by cars. People play music, lay down sod, have kid’s activities, hold environmental workshops, etc.

Sustainable Flatbush will have a space on Cortelyou & Argyle this year with a puppet show, worm composting demo, a solar-powered cell phone charging station, etc. To find a Park(ing) Day space near you, visit the Park(ing) Day NYC site and look at their map.

It’s too late to register for this year, but I’m dying to make a park next year!!

This is a nice story about Patrick Gabridge who took an ugly, unused strip of land in Brookline, MA and turned it into a community vegetable garden. He decided against planting without permission (aka Guerilla Gardening) and got approval from the property manager. He planted squash, cucumbers and lots of other veggies. The little 200 foot long patch of soil (which he had tested to make sure it wasn’t contaminated) will blossom into something much more beautiful than the weedy patch it used to be. Gabridge hopes that the neighbors will help themselves to the veggies as they ripen.

You can read about his project on his blog.

BYELIZABETH LAZAROWITZ

Tuesday, July 14th 2009, 9:39 AM

It’s a rural lesson in an urban jungle.

Students at 10 Brooklyn schools will be toiling in the soil this summer and fall, growing vegetables to feed their classmates as part of an effort to get student-grown foods into the school cafeteria.

“We want to eat the stuff we grow,” said Aidan Israel, 7, a student at Public School 107 on Eighth Ave. in Park Slope, who has been helping cultivate peas, kale and basil in the school’s yard. “It tastes fresher than the stuff in the store.”

With its fall harvest, PS 107 – which is in mobile “earth boxes” while its new garden is closed due to a school renovation – will join a program started last autumn by the Department of Education’s SchoolFood department and the state’s Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Dubbed “Garden to School Cafe,” it began with 20 schools citywide – nearly half of them in Brooklyn.

Next year, the program, which lets school cafeteria staffers put kid-gardened produce on the menu, will expand to about 25 schools as part of a broader effort to source school food locally, said Billy Doherty, who heads the program for SchoolFood.

“It’s something that’s important in terms of teaching the kids how to eat better and connecting them to farming, to help them have an overall healthy lifestyle,” Doherty said.

Last week, PS 29 science teacher Tina Reres and a group of incoming prekindergarten students gathered around one of four long gardening beds built behind the Cobble Hill school. They tied up tomato plants, searched for bugs and then lettuce shoots that, if all goes well, will be part of a meal the school’s students will get to eat in the fall.

“It’s a chance to learn where your food comes from,” said Kristin Berman as her daughter Julia, 3, dug in the soil. “City kids don’t really know that.”

Some of the schools – like the Urban Assembly School of Music and Art in DUMBO – are combining food-growing with culinary lessons. Students in the school’s Teen Iron Chef program grew parsley and mint for tabbouleh and demonstrated how to make it, said Lynn Fredricks of FamilyCook Productions, who runs the cooking program. “For them to actually create the food itself is pretty amazing.”

Pesto pasta from school-grown basil was a big hit with kids at PS 29 last fall, Reres said.

But whether getting locally grown foods will really get kids to eat more veggies remains to be seen.

Mia Espinosa, 4, turned up her nose at the peas she had excitedly plucked from the PS 29 garden.

“She won’t eat anything green,” her grandmother, Carmela Panico, said, sighing. “Maybe next year.”

elazarowitz@nydailynews.com

The decade-long project of Friends of the High Line (FHL)  has just opened. The High Line was originally built in the 1930s as an elevated train track and went out of use in 1980. There were plans to tear down the elevated tracks, but a community-based non-profit  group Friends of the High Line formed in 1999 to preserve it as a public space. The first section just opened a few days ago, which runs from Gansevoort Street to 20th Street. Eventually it will go to 34th Street and be a mile and a half long.

As you may know from previous posts, I love creative ideas for unwanted or underused spaces. This patch of green promises to be a soothing place in a very industrial area. I love that they are going to keep it a bit wild instead of having manicured plantings.

They are expecting big crowds, so they recommend that people enter at the corner of Gansevoort and Washington Streets. There are other exit/access points at 14th, 16th, 18th and 20th Streets. There is also an elevator at the 16th Street access point.

Hours: Open daily from 7am to 10pm.

You can see lots of photos and get more info at The High Line site.