seeding the city

The plants are growing now!

I was lucky enough to spend part of the last week working with the fabulous staff and kids at Covenant House New York. We were on the roof of their building in midtown Manhattan on two gloroous afternoons mixing the growing medium and planting all of the grasses and sedum. It went beautifully!

We used a mixture of potting soil (3 bags), grorocks (10 bags), sand (4 bags) and pea gravel (10 bags) to plant 646 little plants in 100 trays. The kids mixed their own growing medium, picked out the plants they wanted to use and designed and planted their own modules. Some of them did four or more modules!

One of the participants expressed his gratitude and said that he had never done anyuthing like it before. I had to agree – neither have I! He also promptly signed up for as many watering times as he could fit in his schedule! (I would too if I were a resident – it’s going to be fun to watch them grow!)

My gratitude to those helping with the planting, Huong Ngo & Colin McMullen (who will oversee the growing throughout the summer), my assistant Meg Whiteford, the amazing Tricia Martin who stepped in at the last minute to provide consulting and who so carefully figured out the plant mix for me and then showed up to help with the planting. And my deepest gratitude to Athana Kontinos who contacted me from Covenant House with her interest in working together, the kids at covenant house who volunteered their time to work on the project and the other staff who came out to help, especially Bret who is working with Athana on a much larger scale project to green Covenant House.

It is thanks to fresh ideas, a willingness to experiment and the support of a great staff that good organizations become amazing organizations.

They even got to boast about it on the international website!