August Public Programs!

Come help HarborLAB remake a Hunters Point South waterfront as a green and inviting community space! We’ll paddle to the Brooklyn Bridge for breakfast (bring your cash and we’ll direct you to options from sweet to savory). We’ll return between 11am and noon and take a rest. Then we’ll get to work on the following:

1) Lay a permeable surface (bricks with five holes) into the ground without concrete, for our trailer to park without creating rain runoffs.

2) Plant straw bale gardens: http://strawbalegardens.com/

3) Use bricks and broken bricks to create a substrate for intertidal plantings. We’ll add clay, sand, and compost to grow beach plums, service berries, and other indigenous species. We’ll also protect coming salt marsh grasses.

4) Prepare areas for a gear shed and raised beds and planters.

Come help HarborLAB remake a Hunters Point South waterfront as a green and inviting community space! We’ll paddle to the Brooklyn Bridge for breakfast (bring your cash and we’ll direct you to options from sweet to savory). We’ll return between 11am and noon and take a rest. Then we’ll get to work on the following:

1) Lay a permeable surface (bricks with five holes) into the ground without concrete, for our trailer to park without creating rain runoffs.

2) Plant straw bale gardens: http://strawbalegardens.com/

3) Use bricks and broken bricks to create a substrate for intertidal plantings. We’ll add clay, sand, and compost to grow beach plums, service berries, and other indigenous species. We’ll also protect coming salt marsh grasses.

4) Prepare areas for a gear shed and raised beds and planters.

Come help bring kayaking to the community at Gantry Plaza State Park! Please register here and email volunteer@harborlab.org by Thursday. We’ll email detailed instructions to the volunteer team ahead of the event.

We need volunteers especially to set up, so if you can come early, that’s golden! 🙂

We’re very grateful to the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and New York State Office for Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation for making this program possible. We’re also grateful to our local partners, Hunters Point Parks Conservancy and LIC Partnership, for help with community outreach.

If there are heavy rains in the days before the event, we will cancel as a matter of safety because heavy rains can cause combined sewers to overflow into the estuary.

You need not volunteer the entire time. We’ll have a set-up crew at 5PM (some will no doubt start earlier), programming from 6PM-9PM, and then pack up by 10PM.

People without kayaking experience can still be a great help with getting waivers signed, educational literature distributed, life vests fitted snugly, managing lines, and more. Experienced kayakers can help on the dock and with on-water safety.