Solar-Powered Irrigation for Phoenix Community Garden

The Phoenix Community Garden is a vibrant community garden in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville neighborhood of Brooklyn. A shattering 28.4% of the community lives below the NYC.gov poverty measure. Our neighborhood is a prime example of food apartheid, with no ready access to fresh and healthy fruits and vegetables.

We empower neighborhood residents to both grow their own vegetables and  to buy at our weekly farm stand. We ask your support to keep the vegetables growing in the heat of summer when watering the plants on thousands of feet of land using a fire hydrant across the street and watering cans becomes unsustainable.

We already have the largest rain water harvesting system in New York City, but the tanks don't emit enough water pressure to reach much more than five feet away — a drip irrigation system with pumps powered by the sun is the answer! Drip irrigation systems have many other benefits: water is applied directly to the root zone, minimizing evaporation, saturation is controlled, minimizing nutrient loss through leaching, and weed growth is lessened.

1. November to December 2019 – Install solar panel structure

2. November 2019 – Rebuild planting beds to accomodate irrigation tubing

3. April 2020 – Install irrigation tubing to coincide with planting season

The Ocean Hill-Brownsville area has a serious issue of access to healthy fruit and vegetables; it is ranked first in heart disease, eleventh in obesity, and its life expectancy is over 6 years less than NYC overall (see Community Health Profiles 2018).

The Phoenix Community Garden serves a community in need of fresh and healthy vegetables. We've become the go-to place for leafy greens, such as kale, collards, Swiss chard, callaloo and scaling up our fresh basil, eggplants, zucchini, bitter melon, heirloom tomatoes, okra — and so much more. With supermarkets a distance away, often providing wilted and even rotten produce, the Farm Stand at the garden is not only the most sustainable and highest quality option, it's the only option for local residents. The space itself is also where people to come together, connect, learn about growing, organize, and address local issues, which leads to a resilient community.