People come from around the world to make New York City their home. And for a lot of them, their homes are in high-rises--hardly any room for a garden.
But thanks to the New York Botanical Garden, families living in the Bronx are given an opportunity to recreate a piece of their homeland. They call themselves "garden diplomats." They come from China, India, Russia, Africa, and the Caribbean, and they all have one thing in common: They actively garden, but they are also interpreters who tell visitors exactly what they're doing, why they have the certain crops they have, how these might be used medicinally or for crafts or cooking.
Now in its fifth year, the garden diplomat program allows children and other visitors at the New York Botanical Garden to learn about gardening around the globe. Because the plants are tropical, the botanical garden provided greenhouse space for those that have a longer life than one season.
Edwin Martinez was the first to volunteer here. With tools, plants, seeds, and a lot of support from the New York Botanical Garden, he was able to recreate the garden of his ancestors.
The garden is a Caribbean garden, and it lets people connect with plants in their homeland. There are bananas growing here, sugar cane, ornamental plants, different herbs. And what one country grows as an ornamental plant, others may use for cooking. Take colocasia. We know it as elephant's ear. In Puerto Rico, the root is used to make vegetable stew. It's also used in China, where the stalk makes a nice dish that's considered a delicacy. In Trinidad, the young leaves are used to make something that we know as callaloo, a sort of a green sauce. The leaves adn roots are also used by the Chinese.
In fact, most of the plants in the Chinese garden are grown either for cooking or medicinal use. Shirley Cheung learned all about this in a small village in China where she grew up. Chinese celery is good for blood pressure. The Madeira is good for eyes. And the bittermelon is good for many kinds of disease, especially diabetes. Both the Chinese and Indian gardeners have taken advantage of vertical planting, using bamboo towers and wooden trellises to make the most of their gardening space.
The Indian gardeners have packed more than 500,000 plants into their 300-square-foot plot. Almost all of the plants are used for cooking. As a special treat, these global gardeners love to cook dishes from their homeland and share their exotic cuisine with one another. The gardeners get to try something new and different; it's fun and educational.
A family of five runs the Russian garden. Back in Russia, gardening was a way of survival. Every generation had gardens, so this is a way to introduce traditional Russian gardening to the next generation. For children who don't have a yard of their own, it's a great place to explore, pick strawberries, and make friends with children from different cultures.
There are African gardens from Barbados, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Panama. They all have a lot in common. They are happy to be able to share their heritage with their children through gardening. They like being able to tell them where certain things originated--what foods, plants originated in Africa and how they were used.
By learning each other's cultures, sharing each nation's food, and nurturing the land together, these gardeners are united.
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