Blog

Vol­un­teers Help Us Bloom

Nov 17, 2016 12:00 am

Our two-year old Team Vol­un­teer­ing pro­gram and brand new Cor­po­rate Mem­ber­ship Pro­gram, spear­head­ed by the Friends of Gov­er­nors Island, real­ly took off this year! Vital to many of Gov­er­nors Island’s hor­ti­cul­tur­al and envi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives, these pro­grams engage vol­un­teers in the hard work of keep­ing pace with our evolv­ing landscapes. 

This year, 16 cor­po­rate and 14 non-prof­it and com­mu­ni­ty groups brought a total of 1,663 vol­un­teers con­tribut­ing more than 7,000 hours of stew­ard­ship for our land­scapes. Our entire vol­un­teer pro­gram grew sev­en-fold over the last two years to include 1,732 vol­un­teers col­lec­tive­ly ded­i­cat­ing over 8,000 hours of work to make the Island clean­er, green­er, and more beau­ti­ful and wel­com­ing than ever. 

Scroll down for a pho­to album of some of this year’s vol­un­teer highlights!

We have ambi­tious long-term goals for the Island’s extra­or­di­nary envi­ron­ment. In 2016, we opened the newest sec­tion of our award-win­ning park — 10 acres of rolling hills and for­est that will reach peak matu­ri­ty in 2100. Designed to antic­i­pate cli­mate change and ris­ing seas, the new park serves as a mod­el for sus­tain­able and resilient build­ing along New York City’s 600 miles of vul­ner­a­ble coast­line. We work hard to estab­lish and share best-in-class urban eco­log­i­cal prac­tices to match the park’s design. This endeav­or would not be pos­si­ble with­out the col­lec­tive stew­ard­ship of our volunteers. 

This year, vol­un­teers tend­ed to two park sec­tions, which include six dis­tinct gar­den and hor­ti­cul­tur­al areas, and estab­lished a new 4,000 square foot pol­li­na­tor gar­den to attract more but­ter­flies and bees. They also: 

• cul­ti­vat­ed soil by hand
• removed inva­sive plant species in six acres of lawns and plant­i­ng beds
• tend­ed an acre of orna­men­tal shrubs
• cut back and seed­ed native flow­ers and grasses
• estab­lished 3,000 feet of gar­den­er trails in our wood­lands and meadows
• installed 13,000 feet of gar­den­ing and safe­ty fencing
• installed 75 bird hous­es dec­o­rat­ed by kids dur­ing our Fam­i­ly Fun Day
• start­ed con­struc­tion of the ​“Green Zone” – our back-of-house out­door ​“hor­ti­cul­tur­al kitchen” com­plex and vol­un­teer field base. 

A pri­or­i­ty for next year, the ​“Green Zone” will include plant nurs­eries and tree ​“boot camps,” and soil amend­ment and com­post tea test­ing areas. This project is essen­tial to achiev­ing our goal of being a ​“Zero Waste Island,” where all organ­ic waste gen­er­at­ed on the Island is returned to nour­ish our landscapes. 

A spe­cial thank you to our anchor cor­po­rate mem­bers who helped us launch team vol­un­teer­ing on the Island: Amer­i­can Express, Bloomberg L.P., and Black­stone. Each of these part­ners sent mul­ti­ple teams of employ­ees to work on our land­scapes in 2016, and also helped fund the mate­ri­als, sup­plies and staffing we need­ed to make the pro­gram successful. 

We are very grate­ful to addi­tion­al cor­po­rate part­ners War­by Park­er, Accen­ture, Above Aver­age Pro­duc­tions, and Sharon Davis Design, as well as our non-prof­it teams: the Stu­dent Con­ser­va­tion Asso­ci­a­tion, FIN­RA, Fed­er­al Reserve, Coun­cil on Accred­i­ta­tion, Break A Dif­fer­ence, Brook­lyn Urban Gar­den School, the Office of the May­or, and kinder­gart­ners from P.S. 33 for giv­ing back so gen­er­ous­ly to the Gov­er­nors Island community. 

Thank you Gold­man Sachs and Bloomberg L.P. for teach­ing our stew­ards-in-train­ing from the Har­bor Intern­ship Pro­gram how to make most of their pro­fes­sion­al development. 

Stu­dent Con­ser­va­tion Asso­ci­a­tion – thank you for your lead­er­ship and for being our true part­ner, lend­ing us your high­ly skilled and very ded­i­cat­ed crews. 

Thank you to all of our cor­po­rate and non-prof­it part­ners for lend­ing your hands, your enthu­si­asm, your grit and your care! We are look­ing for­ward to see­ing you in the spring! 

If you are inter­est­ed in vol­un­teer­ing, please con­tact Masha Berek at masha@​friendsgi.​org.