Category: Events

Our garden’s own Pollyanna is offering a free Intro to Mindfulness: Cultivating Inner Space class on from 3 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. on Sunday, September 8 at the Pharm!

A little about Pollyanna:

Pollyanna is currently training to be an MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) teacher and this class is a prerequisite to her final teaching intensive this fall before she gets her official certification. Pollyanna said she thought it would be a fun way to give back to the community while enjoying our lovely green space.

About MBSR: MBSR is a clinical program (with Buddhist roots) that was first introduced in 1979 at the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Stress Reduction Clinic by Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. The program continues to be shared with thousands of people in clinics across the world as a way to supplement their health treatments with mindfulness techniques.

The class will be capped at 20 adults, so please RSVP to save your spot using this Google Form: https://forms.gle/X8ynweuk49t6zx5v7

Due to the weather, Saturday’s general meeting will start earlier at 10 a.m. Please bring plenty of water, electrolytes — whatever you might need — to stay cool in the heat.

Prospect Heights Community Farm, in partnership with Make Music New York (MMNY), is hosting a Summer Solstice Celebration on Friday, June 21 — and you’re invited!

We’ll update this post with more information about performers, open mic sign-up and other logistics. We can’t wait to see you!

Featured Performers

Peace of Heart Choir is a volunteer New York City choir that came together shortly after 9/11. Their singers come from all five boroughs and perform 20 outreach concerts a year. They aim to promote healing, diversity, community bonding and mutual understanding through music. The choir performs free of charge for communities in need. They have a vast repertoire, including world music, standards, pop, Broadway, folk, etc. — they sing it all!

Peace of Heart Choir believes that the power of music is universal. The music they sing reflects the ethnic, racial and cultural backgrounds and traditions of their membership and audiences. They encourage audiences to sing along, and they also remain after their performances to bond with audience members. The conductor, Robert René Galván, is a published poet, who will also share his poetry.

Andrew Pichardo is a Brooklyn-based singer-songwriter guitarist with bolero, bachata and bossa nova influences. His songs are sung in both English and Spanish. His guitar work is in the vein of Jobim and Gilberto.Andrew describes his lyrics as “sensual, flourished with imagery inspired by the plants and ambience of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden,” where he does most of his writing.

Jiwon Choi is a poet, preschool teacher and urban gardener. She is the author of One Daughter is Worth Ten Sons and I Used To Be Korean. Choi’s third poetry collection will be published by Spuyten Duyvil in 2024.  She started her community garden’s first poetry reading series, Poets Read in the Garden, to support local writers. You can find out more about her at iusedtobekorean.com. She will be reading work from her new book of poems, A Temporary Dwelling.

Samantha White is a New York-based flutist who has performed throughout North America and Europe, including concerts at Lincoln Center, Centre Universitaire Méditerranéen, NPR’s “From the Top” and most recently, an orchestral residency with members of the Orchestra of the Americas and soloist Yo-Yo Ma. She lives at the Unruly Collective in Bushwick, developing as a musician and writer in a variety of musical styles.

This evening’s set is a mix of classical and original music inspired by nature and community. Being able to play music inspired by these things, while at a beautiful event and garden featuring them is such a special opportunity that Samantha cannot wait to share with everybody! As somebody new to the Brooklyn area and community, she can’t wait to learn more about what this community embodies and see what artistic inspiration this leads to.

Event Logistics

• Doors open at 4:30 PM
• Food is welcome. Please pack in and pack out. Trash cans will not be provided
• Seating is limited, so bring your own folding chairs or stool!
• In case of rain, the event will be canceled
• Please reach out to PHCFevents@gmail.com with any questions!
• If you would like to share our event, here is a public link for easy distribution

Open Mic Details

• Sign up through this form or register day-of
• We will provide 2 mics and 2 microphone stands, but please bring any additional equipment you will need

It’s time for Brooklyn’s best plant sale!

Come on out June 1-2 and June 8-9 and show your support for the Prospect Heights Community Farm during our annual plant sale.

Please join us during the first two weekends in June from 10am to 6pm for garden-grown plants and produce. Invite your friends and neighbors. Hope to see you there!

Join us to celebrate 25 years of community gardening and our end-of-season party at the annual Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash.  

Come on out Saturday, November 4, from 12-4 pm (rain date: Sunday, November 5) to smash your jack-o-lantern and enjoy a hot potato.

Please see the flyer for more information, and continue below to learn about the history of this event, written years ago by Redelia N., one of our founding members, as dictated to her daughter and another founding member, Traci N.

In fall 1997, we cleared the garden of car doors and other parts — sofas, broken dishes, mugwort and of course, the dreaded knotweed and other debris. The following spring, with the assistance of Dan N. cutting the boards, we built new boxes during Memorial Day weekend, filled the boxes with wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of soil, and after that, the planting was on!

At a meeting during the early fall of 1998, one of our former members (John S.) suggested we have an end-of-season party to reward ourselves for all the hard work. Someone suggested after Halloween and invite the community too so they could recycle their tired jack-o-lanterns. Someone else suggested we smash them against the wall before adding them to our compost pile; yet another suggested we should have baked potatoes and other snacks.

We thought on what to name our event since we were throwing pumpkins, so someone came up with pumpkin smash, and since we were serving potatoes, it was a potato bake too. The name “Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash” was suggested, and everyone agreed.

We served baked potatoes — both white and sweet — and cold and mulled cider. Each member brought food stuffs for the event, even marshmallows for the kids and the kids at heart. Music was provided compliments of the Pantones (and in subsequent years as well) and with Stan B. and his gang when they were available. A simple flyer was made. It was posted around the neighborhood primarily by Joseph J.; other members posted the flyers in their building lobbies and under doorways. 

Thus the Pumpkin Smash Potato Bake Bash was born! It was not the idea of one sole person but a communal, group effort of the truly dedicated garden members. It has become one of our garden’s signature events.

Later on, in order to save our garden from destruction, a full contingency of garden members went to our local community board to elicit their support in the preservation of us as a community garden. We spoke of the various programs that we planned as a service to the community, such as youth gardening, movie nights, voter registration drives, pumpkin composting and other events.

You’re invited to PHCF’s Annual Plant Sale, where we’ll be offering PHCF homegrown tomatoes, herbs, vegetables, annuals and perennials, plus houseplants. We prefer PayPal or cash payments.

Here’s a sneak peek of what we’ll have available over the next two weeks:

• Evening Primrose (perennial)
• Artichoke Imperial Star
• Thai Basil
• Okra (jing orange and clemson spineless)
• Trinidad Hot Pepper
• Cosmos
• Elderberry
• Boysenberry
• Oxalis
• Gooseneck Loosestrife
• Liriope

You can view the full list of this year’s offerings here. Prospect Heights Community Farm is celebrating 25 years!