RIGC Associate, Christopher Satch, NYBG Professor and Founder of NYC Plant Help, is hosting two upcoming workshops for the RIGC community and friends.

If you are interested in attending one or both of these workshops, please RSVP by emailing [email protected] with Workshop 1 and/or Workshop 2 in the subject line.

Garden Design Workshop 1
Sunday, February 15th
4:15-5:30pm
Rivercross Community Room
Dream of a lush, well-designed garden but aren’t sure how to make it happen? This workshop will demystify the process and empower you to design with confidence, giving you tools to create a beautiful, thriving garden. You’ll learn essential gardening basics, design principles, and how to choose both beautiful and sustainable plants for your space. From layout and color to structure and seasonal interest, we’ll cover everything you need to know to plan and perfect an aesthetically pleasing garden—plus common mistakes and design traps to avoid so you can save time, money, and frustration.

Gardening Basics Workshop 2 - The Greatest Gardeners Practice the Basics!
Sunday, March 29th
4:15-5:30pm
Rivercross Community Room
Love gardening but don’t know where to start? Or maybe you’ve started and feel a bit overwhelmed? This deep dive into gardening basics is perfect for everyone from newbies to oldbies! Learn about light, soil, water, fertilizer, temperature, staking, and other gardening principles to keep any plant alive. Whether you garden for vegetables, flowers, native plants, or a mix of everything, this workshop covers it all! Walk through every season - from starting seeds, hardening off seedlings, first planting, and care through to harvest. You’ll leave with the confidence to keep almost anything alive—plus insider tips on what not to plant (yes, we’re looking at you, English ivy).
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Cornell Tech has reached out to community organizations for volunteer service and collaborative projects for many years, now.  Often these days happened in the spring, but this year, six Cornell Tech Students came out to the garden on a Friday afternoon in early October to work on sifting fresh compost, dig a trench for border work, and remove leaves, weeds, and large stones to prepare paths for new gravel in the eastern side of the garden. Laura & Neal coordinated the service and we were happy to host these Roosevelt Island academic neighbors! (See pictures below: that is a lot of freshly sifted beautiful compost for our garden beds and to share. ) 

On Saturday, September 27th, it was warm and dry in NYC.  At RIGC we hosted folks from our waitlist, members, associates, volunteers, and high school students in service learning all come out to help us upgrade our garden paths.  Ten years ago,(from 2015-2018) we created these pathways with help from a CCNYC grant. As heavy rainstorms and usage hit regularly and erode infrastructure, we are now upgrading the paths with a densely packed special gravel mix. Special thanks to our member, Beverly in the A section. She is our resident gravel pathway designer and expert who had the vision and the know how to help us create these important pathways for visitors and members alike to stroll, move through in wheelchairs, or push strollers and garden carts! 

RIGC Members, Associates, Haki Compost Volunteers, and new Roosevelt Island neighbors who saw our poster all showed up together for this quiet, late afternoon potluck picnic. We had fresh tomatoes, basil pesto sauce, and green beans in salad from garden produce. We had delicious vegan and vegetarian entrees as well as sweet homemade brownies and cupcakes and grandparent sugar cookie recipes.  Alby, the Australian shepherd doodle, tried to convince everyone to share their plate.  Carolina brought her Roosevelt Island bird photos and we played the ID game.  Aiesha loaned reusable table service items and folks brought their own plates, too.  Our primary leftover waste items were the container for mini cupcakes that we donated to the RIVAA gallery opening party and one red plastic uline cup! 

Gardening classes are back after a few years of hiatus due to the Front Common Area updates.

​A small group of students are breathing in, observing, composting, planting, weeding, watering...and experiencing time in the garden.  These classes were offered to waitlist and volunteer families; and this 2025 series filled up quickly. The last of a series of four summer classes will take place on July 13th. 

This cohort loves the compost critters as well as planting! They like weeding, too.  Thanks to Debbie in C section they have a place to grow potatoes, pole beans, corn, melons and a cucumber. They have also planted radishes, bush beans, and tomatoes alongside the kale in part of D-12. 

This week they had a surprise lesson on "Garden Salsa" when they learned a few steps to begin this "dance" with Associate, Nicolas Corona. 

On Sunday June 8th, Susan, Bonnie and her granddaughter, Carolina, and Jack spent the day with our extended community from Roosevelt Island and beyond.  

• Children decorated pots and plant flower or vegetable seeds. 
• People of all ages learned about ecosystems and our wildlife habitat with games and beautiful photos of the birds of Roosevelt Island. 

The RIGC table was right next to the Haki Compost table and volunteers were also sent over to the iDig2Learn planting space. Community gardeners, compost advocates, and bird photographers make life so beautiful. 
See our thank you note from RIOC community liaison office below. 

Recent events in the garden have included sun prints & watercolors for all ages, an afternoon visit from a Roosevelt Island Day Nursery class, and the first of a short series of garden classes with 9-13 year olds on Sundays from 4-5 p.m. ​

So good to be back outside together!