Teaching Kids to Grow and Cook Fresh, Healthy Food on the Lower East Side

Part of the reason Central Park is so famous in Manhattan is that it was once the borough’s only real green oasis. Before the island’s edges were gradually reclaimed for recreation, there was nowhere else to spend time but the streets. Back then, the rare view of the Lower East Side community garden was a draw: You could practically smell the extra oxygen coming from it.

The 6&B Community Garden (at Sixth Street and Avenue B) was started in the early 1980s. It’s still going strong, and it doesn’t just provide cooling vapors on the city’s hot streets. It’s also where kids come to learn how to cook, in a neighborhood that not only has few parks and trees, but also offers readily available, whole foods.

Briar Winters and Michael Mangieri recently spoke with us about the hows and whys of their outdoor program for kids (run with educator Barbara Caporale). They’re locals who met while working in New York City kitchens, and both have experience working on small farms. Briar now owns an apothecary shop, while Michael is a chef. Together, they’re tackling food equity issues in the most enjoyable way possible.

Photography by Valery Rizzo for Gardenista.

Why did you get involved in the 6&B community garden?

Heather: I had lived in the neighborhood since 2002, and when Michael joined me in 2008, we started to really think about how to put down roots in the community, and getting involved in the garden seemed 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 leave the city for an agrarian life, we would find a community garden in our neighborhood to get involved in. We had visited 6&B many times and when someone invited us to apply for a plot of land, we jumped at the chance.

How did you take the step into teaching?

Heather: One of the benefits of being part of our gardening community is that it creates a real space where each of us can contribute in the way that feels most meaningful to us. We have artists, educators, crafters, and more who lead workshops; all of our events are completely free and open to the entire community.

Michael: We were starting to get really interested in food justice and found common ground with Barbara (who had just graduated from Farm School NYC). We took a few workshops with Edible Schoolyard and, after some trial and error, discovered that our experience in restaurant kitchens was very useful in designing and facilitating hands-on workshops for kids.

Heather: Barbara worked on some grants to get us the basic equipment we would need to get started, and Michael and I attended a few educator workshops hosted by Edible Schoolyard in their beautiful classroom and demonstration garden in East Harlem—and then we were off!

The idea of ​​food justice is partly based on the availability of culturally appropriate foods. How can we achieve this?

Heather: From the beginning, a big part of our program has been encouraging our members to share family recipes and foods from their culture 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 the kids some context before we begin. Maybe a story or a memory of how they remember making the dish when they were young and how they like to make it now. Whether it’s an everyday dish or a special occasion dish. It really helps make those connections, and parents will tell us that they never knew their child to like a particular vegetable, but the combination of hearing someone talk about the dish and harvesting the ingredients themselves is enough to inspire them to try something new. Pretty magical!

Michael: In the Kids Cooking Series, we try to showcase the cultural diversity of our gardening community. We have a tradition of celebrating Mexican Independence Day in September, with our friend Paula Jiminez contributing recipes. In the past, we have also hosted the chef-owner of a local Mexican restaurant. In other workshops, we have collaborated with garden members and other communities from Afghanistan, Costa Rica, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Ukraine, and Thailand.