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TOMORROW'S HARVEST: Celebrity chef Rick Bayless (C) plants Seeds of Change organic vegetable and herb seeds with students from MS 328 at a New York Restoration Project community garden in East Harlem New York. (Diane Bondareff/AP images for Seeds of Change)
NEW YORK—“The gardens are waking up, and we're giving the ground something to be happy about,” said Donte Taylor with a smile, as he taught seventh graders how to prepare the land and plant the first seeds of the season. The pupils of Middle School 328 gathered in Rodale Pleasant Park in East Harlem on Wednesday to learn how to truly make their food from scratch.
The experience was seminal in more ways than one. Not only were the students provided with the skill they will need to grow their own herbs and veggies, they were also given the seeds to sow this spring.
Taylor is the Manhattan regional manager for the nonprofit organization New York Restoration Project (NYRP). Founded by Bette Midler in 1995, NYRP owns and operates 55 community gardens in the city. The organization teamed up with Seeds of Change, an organic seed and food company, to disperse millions of seeds across the city's gardens in the “Sowing Millions Project .”
Seeds of Change will give away 100 million seeds this spring. Rooftop and backyard gardeners, as well as large-scale urban farmers, may visit the Seeds of Change website to get in on the seed giveaways. For every request submitted online, the company will also make a donation to the American Horticultural Society—up to 25 million additional seeds.
NYRP will reach out to 700 community gardens, extending far beyond their 55 plots, to offer New York City's gardeners 2.5 million seeds. The campaign aims to inspire New Yorkers to grow organic food, which celebrity chef Rick Bayless told the kids from MS 328 would make them “not only just healthy people, but happy people.”
Bayless, season-one winner on the Bravo television series “Top Chef Masters,” spends all 12 months of the year in his urban garden in Chicago. Even in the winter months, which are frostier in Chicago than in New York, he grows leeks, parsnips, and other winter vegetables.
His award-winning dishes feature flavor that one can only find in organic, garden-fresh ingredients. He said the taste of something right out of the garden cannot be compared to the vegetables shipped thousands of miles and often picked early to ripen on the way. He also pointed out that city dwellers have lost touch with the process that puts food on their tables.
“We have become disconnected from our food in our culture,” observed Bayless. Some urbanites want strawberries in December, and so the market sells them strawberries in December, he added, noting that this is “not necessarily a good thing.”
Getting into gardening “makes us better citizens,” asserted Bayless. He shared his horticultural enthusiasm with the urban gardeners of tomorrow.
Franciel Delgado, a student at MS 328, explained that he had been working with his classmates and teachers for a week to build plots for their school's inaugural growing season. Delgado had never worked in a garden before, but enjoyed his introduction to the farming life on Wednesday.
