My name is Aileen. I grew up in Riverdale, in the Bronx and we had a large flower garden that my Mother with her green thumbs and I with my diligence tended, but I have since had many gardens of my own and prefer less fussy plants and flowers and love to grow veggies and herbs. Often tomatoes and squash that start as volunteers from my compost or from seeds I’ve saved and can wait to see what they produce. I love digging in the dirt and creating amazing compost!
I have kept a garden for the past few years because I benefit from the physical and therapeutic outdoor activity and I find it a responsible and essential aspect of living. The garden gives me a space to practice decision making, to develop creative problem solving skills, and to nurture empathy. As an artist, I find inspiration in the abundance of textures, patterns, colors, and systems that I observe in the garden. I love the tactile process of gardening, the joy of discovery as the garden evolves, and the community a garden can foster when sharing ideas, information, and harvests with others.
My love of gardening comes from my love for food. Luckily, I've been able to work with food in kitchens, on farms, and in classrooms. Learning and sharing knowledge around food is what motivates me to continue my work. Being able to help preserve an endling is helping to preserve a story and the hard work of others who kept them alive.
I grew up on a small family farm in West Virginia. When my dad lost his job and was unemployed for a year, we relied heavily on our garden and hunting to provide sustenance for our family. I vividly recall sitting under the muscadine grape vines that my great-grandparents had planted on the property and plucking grapes one by one and sucking on the sweet juices. My mom canned our fruits and vegetables so that we could have nourishing foods all year long. Now a vegetarian, I love growing my own fruits and vegetables to combine together in unique recipes to share with others. Food is a way to connect and relate to people and when you grow it yourself, it's that much more delicious and interesting to talk about!
I was born and raised in the Garden State (New Jersey) by multiple generations of avid gardeners. The importance of growing and caring for plants was instilled in me at a young age: my first Christmas tree is actually planted in the front yard at my childhood home, and now towers over the roofline at close to 40 feet. A small plot of the backyard at my grandfather's house has continuously used for a tomato garden for at least 30 years. I also own and care for a ‘pup’ from a spider plant that’s been in the family for over 50 years (and the ‘mother’ is at my aunt’s house!).
My current pride and joy is a 2-year-old monstera deliciosa affectionately nicknamed ‘Miss Monster,’ but my strongest knack is for growing food: tomatoes, strawberries, zucchini, eggplants, herbs, etc. I love creating dishes from produce I grew myself.
My parents had a vegetable garden at our home in East Patchogue ever since I was a baby. I was pulling weeds and picking green beans and tomatoes from a very young age. After purchasing a home in Eastport with my wife, Allison, one of the first things I did was to start a garden. Soon, I joined the Eastport Roots Community Garden, where members grow food for their own families as well as local families in need. My gardening interests have grown beyond raising food organically and into native plants, regenerative gardening and ecological horticulture.
I am a graphic designer, botanical lover, and plant-mom to 25 different leafy babies.
In my small Brooklyn apartment, the south-facing windows allow for hothouse varieties to thrive, while plants that require cooler temperatures make their home on my 2-foot-wide balcony. The smaller space I live in comes with size restrictions so I currently care for plants that will not get too gigantic. I have a small dog as well, so I tend to stray from anything that could be poisonous. I make sure to check in with my plants frequently to see if they need adjusting and prune and fertilize regularly to promote new growth.
Suffice to say I love plants and am eager to take on any plant challenge that can survive my extra-warm and sunny apartment conditions!
We are a couple from Long Island farm country. Ethan is a chef who loves to cook veggies, and I never believed I had a green thumb. I grew up planting seasonal flowers on Mother’s Day, and having small herb gardens in small pots. When the pandemic started we were living abroad in a country where GMO is not a thing and everything was fresh! When we came home we quickly started our pandemic garden and the love of gardening started. Our focus is zucchini, beans, varieties of tomatoes, herbs, and okra which is a family favorite. We currently rent a community garden plot and love to learn from fellow gardeners and farmers in our community.
For years I have kept a detailed garden diary encompassing all aspects of each growing season. I then reference my diary comparing growing seasons and ways to improve my garden techniques. Every year I add one or two different varieties to trial. For example, I’ve been successfully growing Shiitake Mushrooms on logs for the past several years. I utilize my 200 square foot greenhouse to grow select winter vegetables without utilizing any heating system. I am able to continue harvesting these vegetables throughout the winter months.
Finally, for the last ten years I have been focusing on growing more heirloom varieties which also give me the capability of saving the seeds for future plantings. I especially enjoy propagating plants through various methods, mostly tip cuttings. I have propagated many different fig varieties and have been growing them successfully in pots and in the ground.I look forward to becoming a part of the Endling Project Community.
Growing up in rural Italy, I have always been immersed in nature. It also helped that half of my family are florists who own the town's largest plant nursery and greenhouses. I never really thought of myself as a plant person until, as many, I turned to one single succulent during the pandemic. I soon realized that I was more familiar with plants than I thought I was, and that my now growing collection of plants wasn't dying! From one single succulent, which is currently flowering, my windowsill is now hosting 9 green, and some variegated, bushels of leaves. My apartment has large, south facing windows which let in an enormous amount of direct light an heat through the day. I hope to be able to welcome some new sun-loving plants, such as myself, soon!
I have always had an interest in gardening. As a child I always had houseplants in my bedroom. Once I had a yard to garden in I began to grow tomatoes and cucumbers . When my children were in elementary school I began to help with the outdoor garden classroom. I found it was great sharing what I knew about gardening with the children. They taught me more than I taught them. I found an odd looking thing in the garden and a second grader told me it was a praying mantis eggs sac, and of course he was correct. I continued to volunteer for 10 years. I took the Master Gardener class from Cornell Cooperative Extension in 2015. I volunteered for a few years at the Childrens Garden located at the Suffolk County Farm in Yaphank. Currently I am a member of the Patchogue Community Garden located on Bay ave in Patchogue. At the community garden we have designated beds where we grow produce that we donate to a local food pantry. At my home I enjoy growing a variety of herbs, vegetables, flowers and luffa.
I come from farming stock—Subsistence farmers in Louisiana, as well as overseas in Italy—but my plant propagation over the years has been more based in my love for all living things. As a child, I would sing to a lily of the valley bush in the front lawn of my childhood home after reading that it could positively affect the plant’s growth. Next to that bush was a tall Dogwood tree my father planted there as a sapling because, as he does to this day, he always left behind new life where he went. I hope that trait passes to my children.
I come from a small town in the Italian countryside, close to the mountains at the border between Italy and France. As a child, I witnessed all sorts of plants, fruits and vegetables grow in my family’s garden. My favorite thing to do as a little kid was to go and check on the apricot tree, witness its blooming season and wait for actual apricots to grow on it during summer. Seeing nature evolve during different seasons is something that always surprised me as a child and that I still carry with me when going to the farmers market or picking produce for the week now that I am in a big city, and I am grateful for that.
Joanne settled in Eastport, New York, 27 years ago to raise her family. She is a retired high school business teacher from Bridgehampton UFSD who spent time assisting in the Edible School Garden program. She is a member of the Eastport Roots Community Garden, Ladies Auxiliary of the Eastport Fire Department and the Eastport Chamber of Commerce Beautification Committee. She presently works at the Westhampton Beach Fire District.
My interest in plants begun when my mother used some of her homegrown aloe Vera to soothe a burn when I was a child.
I delved deeper in high school, where my AP Biology capstone project focused on the effect of different light wave lengths on various plant growth hormones. This passion further expanded in college, where I majored in Biology.
Despite my penchant for tropical plants, many flora classes are on display in leca, hydroponic and semi hydroponic systems in my apartment (near Brooklyn Botanical Gardens where I am an annual member).
In my current Kitchen Manager role, I pride myself on helping connect Eataly’s chefs with products at the height of their seasonality- from locally foraged gems, to farmers market staples and everything in between.
My name is Kath and the endling project seems right up my alley. I have had my own garden since I was four. There is nothing better than sharing the beauty and bounty of this. From introducing a friend who "didn't like cucumbers" to the eye opening experience of picking one, slicing it and taking a bite and realizing that he does like cucumbers, just not ones from the supermarket. He has since become a gardener. I have always experimented in the garden, and enjoy sharing success and failure stories with fellow gardeners.
Growing up with an Italian grandfather who nurtured his garden and taking countless excursions out east to pick vegetables throughout my childhood, I have always been at least vaguely familiar with the idea of gardening. Last year’s routine trip to pick out flats of flowers to decorate our front yard turned into family musings of purchasing a raised bed. Four raised beds and a menagerie of pots later, I have now become a novice gardener complete with a DVR full of P. Allen Smith episodes and a growing stack of seed catalogs. Throughout the season, from alyssum to marigolds, onions to zucchini, I have enjoyed both the serenity found spending time tilling the earth as well as the pride felt when sharing a harvest with friends and family. As a gardener, I hope to continue to grow and flourish as my garden does the same.
To have my own garden is in my near future plans so this volunteer opportunity came in just on time! To have access to the most beautiful gardens and harvest what I want to put on my plate is just half of the journey. I want to be part of the whole process, from planting, caring, and sharing what nature so generously provide us. It is a simple but inspiring way to redefine my relationship with food.
I am originally from the North Shore of LI. My wife Shari and I had huge oak trees and no sun, so I put together a wonderful Japanese Garden - all perennials. We moved to the South Shore 7 years ago to be close to my father-in-law Max who was very old so we could take care of him and ended up buying the house where my wife grew up. We have lots of sun. Max was a fine artist and gardener. He let his garden go wild and he had lots of biennials which reseeded themselves every year. Our home is now a museum for all his artwork and we continue to grow many biennials in his tradition. We really enjoy growing and eating our own food and I continue to experiment in the garden and educate myself daily about soil and seeds and how critical they are to human survival. Gardening is my second love.
I live to get lost in the garden and forget about what time or day it is. Here's me triumphantly harvesting garlic and oh how we loved their scapes! Oh to forget about politics, covid, and paying the bills...just focus on the lovely messy task at hand. The best part of my life is perfecting tomato sauce from my own harvests or the generous bounty of good friends.
I’m a passionate gardener, landscape designer, and native plant grower. For ten years I was Director of GreenBridge, the community environmental horticulture program at Brooklyn Botanic Garden, then I moved to the North Fork where I served Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk as Community Horticulture Specialist for three years. Now I’m designing and installing rain gardens with native plants, including a public garden for North Fork Audubon at Inlet Pond County Park in Greenport.
Seeds are the embodiment of both the past and the future. They represent generations of farmers whose work in close observation and selection brought us the incredible wealth of varieties we still have available to us today. At the same time they hold the potential for shaping the very foundations of our future food supply. They contain memory, history, and culture. They fill us with both wonder and hope and a sense of responsibility. We are the stewards who will shepherd them forward in this unbroken chain. It is up to us to ensure that coming generations will still enjoy these treasures. Let's get to work!