Celebrating Our 15th By Giving Back: Brooklyn Queens Land Trust
Nov 17, 2020
As a part of our 15th Anniversary celebration and thank you to Brooklyn, we’ve selected 15 non-profit organizations to highlight that are doing work in our borough—or directly helping our fellow Brooklynites. We encourage everyone to learn a bit about the people making our community stronger and, if possible, to join us in making a small monetary donation to further their work. We thank them for everything they do and thank you for supporting a small, woman-owned Brooklyn business for the past 15 years!
As anyone who has gotten involved with one can tell you—or even anyone who has just happened upon one on a walk in a new neighborhood—community gardens offer some much-needed relief to those of us across this city. And it’s our love of these gardens that prompted us to highlight Brooklyn Queens Land Trust.
But the pieces of land the Trust owns that became gardens serve many more functions than simply adding to the ambiance of a neighborhood. As their website explains, “Many BQLT gardens were once vacant, trash-strewn lots, converted through the hard work of community residents into the thriving public green spaces they are today.”
And what happens as a result of those thriving public spaces? You get open-air classrooms, fresh fruits and vegetables, places to serve as neighborhood meet-ups or summer fish fries. In other words, community. We’re inspired by the work of a dedicated team that not only keeps an eye on neighborhood parcels endangered by developers but also offers its protections to participating existing gardens. Click to learn more about what they do or to get involved.