2016 marks our 6th year, LUNGS was formed in September of 2011.

ELECTIONS:
According to our by-laws, LUNGS is due for board elections this Spring.

Currently there are the five board members; President Charles Krezell of DeColores, Vice President Maryanne Byington of Green Oasis, Treasurer Karen Kandra of Miracle Garden, Secretary Ayo Harrington of Orchard Alley and Projects Coordinator Christopher Batehhorst of Campos Garden.

Board members serve for two year. According to our by-laws there must be a minimum of five and each board member must be from a different garden.

Board nominations will be accepted at the next LUNGS meeting, Saturday, March 5.  Elections will be held at the annual general meeting, Saturday, April 2. If you are interested in serving on the board please contact us.

SPRING AWAKENING
We will celebrate out Third Spring Awakening 2016, Saturday, April 16. We will consolidate the festivities with one parade beginning at 2pm at 6B Garden walk up Avenue B to 12th St go east on 1th and come down Ave C and culminate at El Jardin del Paraiso.

CSA
Our fourth year of the LUNGS Fresh Food Bag CSA will kickoff in June depending on the crops and continue until Thanksgiving.

We hope to continue our collaboration for the third year with NYC’s Summer Youth Employment Program. We are currently seeking funds to pay two college interns to supervise the twelve high school students working in the gardens for six weeks.

HARVEST ARTS FESTIVAL
This year we will have our 5th Annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival on September 24 & 25. Keep the dates open.

Open discussion on Elizabeth St Garden
The Village Independent Democrats will sponsor a forum tomorrow, to discuss Elizabeth St. Garden’s pending destruction to make way for affordable housing.
That’s tomorrow, Thursday, February 11 at St. John’s Lutheran Church Annex at 83 Christopher St. The general meeting is scheduled for 6:30, and open to the public. The forum will begin about 7:15.

The forum will hear from both sides including Toni Bergman, — head of CB2 who wants housing
elsewhere in order to save the Garden – and K Webster, from M’Finda Kalunga Garden. who wants
affordable housing on the Garden site.

This Thursday, Dec. 17, Gardens Rising continues with its round-table series

From noon until 2:00 p.m. at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, located on 232 E.11th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.
This week’s round-table features:

Tessa Hexley, former director of Battery Park City Parks Conservatory.
John Shuttleworth, Civil Engineer.
Wendy Brawer, founder of Green Map System.
JK Canepa, community activist.
Samuel Robinson, community driven landscape design firm Greenwood Robinson.

Gardens Rising Roundtables bring together experts, stakeholders and the public for a brainstorming session to discuss nature-base, green infrastructure in the Community Gardens on the Lower East Side.

Gardens Rising is inspired in Super Storm Sandy, a project funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development through the state of New York to control flooding in vulnerable city areas with nature-based infrastructure in our NYCCGC community gardens.

Also This THURSDAY PARTY
LUNGS is having Holiday Party!! Thursday, December 17 at the fabulous Royale, 157 Ave C between 9th and 10th Sts, from 6-8pm. Please come and join us for cup of cheer and toast the season. We thank the Royale for their generosity in giving us this space.

Gardens Rising is moving forward but needs a great logo. so we are having a contest with  $500 awarded for the winning design.  See below for contest rules.

Gardens Rising Logo Competition

Rules

1.       The deadline for submission is Friday November 27, 2015.
2.       All submissions must include, “Gardens Rising” in the design.
3.       All entries must be accompanied by your name and contact information.
4.       By submitting an entry, you agree to be bound by the competition rules and transfer all rights of the design without limitation to Gardens Rising to use, display, make copies, publish in any media, alter, etc. Entries will become the sole and exclusive property of the Gardens Rising.
5.       Submit original artwork or comprehensive layouts. The work must be original. Consideration should be given to simple reproduction capabilities to a number of media processes. Artwork must be reproduced in not more than four-match colors. Gardens Rising reserves the right to adjust reproduction art for optimum reproducibility to a variety of visual processes.
6.       The logo should be easily displayed and usable in both color and black-and-white environment.
7.       A short paragraph, explaining the concept of the design, is required.
8.       If all entries are deemed unsuitable or unqualified, Gardens Rising will have the right to determine whether to extend the dateline, reject all submissions and declare the competition ended without awarding a winner or hold another competition in the sole and absolute discretion of Gardens Rising.
9.       Gardens Rising reserves the rights to modify the competition rules and regulations at any time.
10.   All entries must adhere to the entry specifications outlined below.

Eligibility

1.       Competition is open to anyone in New York City.
2.       Participants must submit only two final product (s) to aziz@nyccgc.org.

Entry Specifications

1.       All entries must have a minimum resolution of 300 dpi or be in vector format.

2.       All entries must be no smaller than 1200 x 1200 pixels and no larger than 2400 x 2400 pixels.

3.       All entries must be submitted electronically in either PDF (.pdf), JPEG (.jpg), TIFF (.tif), Portable Network Graphic (.png), Encapsulated Post Script (.eps) or Adobe Illustrator (.ai) format.

4.       Entries must be multicolor.

5.       Only two entries per person will be accepted.

Winner Selection

Gardens Rising will have right to pick any final Logo Contest to be used as the official logo for Gardens Rising.

Awards

Winner will receive $500 from Gardens Rising award for their design.

The official announcement of GARDENS RISING will take place tomorrow, Monday, November 2, 2015 at 10 am at La Plaza Cultural. We are asking all gardeners to show our unity and support for this very important project by attending and making your voices heard.

GARDENS RISING is a New York State funded project to build green infrastructure in the Loisaida community gardens for storm water capture and abatement. This is a $2 million grant through the HUD-funded NY Rising program, which came as a response to Hurricane Sandy.

New York City Community Gardens Coalition (NYCCGC), and their partners NYC Parks’ GreenThumb and LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens) will announce this Community Development Block Grant. This is Disaster Recovery funding from the New York State Governor’s Office of Storm Recovery (GOSR) to undertake a feasibility study for stormwater capture best practices within the community gardens of the Lower East Side of Manhattan and to implement the study with an extensive green infrastructure.

This is a two-phase project. The first phase is to develop a Feasibility Study and Master Plan. The Master Plan will combine the best of community engagement, landscape design, engineering and creative thinking about storm water management with cost effectiveness and sustainable practices.  The Master Plan will be approved by October 2016 and will end phase one. The second phase is the implementation the Master Plan, construction must be completed by September 2019.

GARDENS RISING is a community based operation, all decisions will ultimately be made by the gardeners affected, gardens can choose to participate or not. A Steering Committee of gardeners will be elected and make the final determinations as to the Master Plan.

This as a huge step forward for our community gardens. We are finally being recognized as a vital environmental asset. GARDENS RISING puts us at the center of the greening movement in New York City.

We hope to parlay this grant into other funding to build other sustainable systems throughout Loisaida and become a Green Lab for the City.  We can look at this as seed money to attract more greening programs and grants into our remarkable and diverse community. GARDENS RISING should be interwoven other projects involving permaculture, renewable energy, conservation, local food production, rat abatement policies, composting practices, citizen science, and other ideas and practices that will evolve with this process.

We have much work to do to make GARDENS RISING a success but for now let’s celebrate our community gardens and think this new opportunity to contribute to our common future.

So Tomorrow–Please join City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, City Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver, many other electeds and your fellow gardeners for this important announcement.