6&B Community Garden: Teaching Kids to Grow and Cook Fresh, Healthy Foods in the Lower East Side

Part of the reason Central Park in Manhattan is so famous is that, for a long time, it was the only real green space in the borough. Before the island’s edges were slowly reclaimed for leisure, there was nowhere else to spend time away from the streets. Back then, the rare sight of a community garden on the Lower East Side was a pull—you could practically smell the oxygen, while instinctively crossing the street to walk in its shade.

The 6&B Community Garden (on Sixth Street and Avenue B) began life in the early 1980s; still going strong, it does more than emit cooling vapors into the hot city streets. Children go there to learn about cooking, in an area that is not only low on parks and trees, but easily accessible, unprocessed food.

Briar Winters and Michael Mangieri recently spoke to us about the why and how of their outdoor program for kids (run with educator and former garden president, Barbara Caporale). They are local residents who met while working in New York’s kitchens, both with experience working on small farms. Briar now has an apothecary studio, while Michael is a chef—together, they are tackling issues of food equity in the most enjoyable way.

Photography by Valery Rizzo for Gardenista.

Why did you get involved with 6&B Community Garden?

Briar: I’d been in the neighborhood since 2002 and then when Michael joined me there in 2008, we started really thinking about putting down roots in the community, and becoming involved with the garden felt like a great way to meet our neighbors and be a part of something good.

Michael: Briar and I decided that if we weren’t going to move out of the city for an agrarian life, then we would find a community garden to get involved with in our neighborhood. We had often visited 6&B and when someone invited us to apply for a plot we leapt at the opportunity.

How did you take the step to teaching?

Briar: Part of the beauty of being a part of our garden community is that it truly creates a space for all of us to contribute in whatever ways we find meaningful. We have artists, educators, craftspeople and more who lead workshops; all our events are completely free and open to the entire community.

Michael: We were beginning to be very interested in food justice, and found common ground in that with Barbara [who had recently graduated from Farm School NYC]. We took a few workshops with Edible Schoolyard and with a little trial and error found that our experience from restaurant kitchens was very useful for designing and leading hands-on workshops for kids.

Briar: Barbara worked on some grants to get the basic equipment we’d need to start, and Michael and I took a few workshops for educators put on by Edible Schoolyard at their wonderful demonstration classroom and garden in East Harlem—and then we were off!

Part of the idea of food justice is about availability of culturally appropriate food. How do you approach that?

Briar: A big part of our program from the beginning has been an emphasis on encouraging our members to share family recipes and foods from their cultures that are meaningful to them. If we can, we try to have the garden member who shared the recipe join us at the workshop to give a little background to the kids before we start. Maybe a story, or a memory of how they remember the dish being prepared when they were young, and how they like to make it now. Whether it’s an everyday dish or something for a special occasion. It really helps to make those connections, and parents will say to us that they’ve never known their child to like this or that vegetable, but the combination of hearing about the dish from someone, and harvesting the ingredients themselves is enough to get them to try something new. Pretty magical!

Michael: In the kids cooking series we try to highlight the cultural diversity of our garden community. We established a tradition of celebrating Mexican Independence Day in September, joined by our friend Paula Jiminez who contributes recipes. In the past we also hosted the chef-owner of a local Mexican restaurant. In other workshops we’ve collaborated with garden and other community members from Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and Thailand.