Abib is one garden part of the Learning Gardens program<\/a> started by the nonprofit City Parks Foundation<\/a> that seeks to reimagine hands-on learning about gardening, food, biodiversity, cooking and lifeskills. With 37 different crops to maintain in the garden, the summer internship is a big aspect of the program.<\/p>\n \u201cThese students are learning very personally what it means to be a community gardener, ” said Chrissy Word, the City Parks Foundation Director of Education. \u201cThey are growing food. They are learning how to be urban farmers. They are interacting with community gardeners who are part of those gardens.\u201d<\/p>\n The interns are mainly recruited through schools by Program Manager Katina Leier during the school year. They then go through interviews and a four month training program with Leier in the spring to learn about organic gardening, food justice and urban sustainability before becoming paid interns for the summer.<\/p>\n Interns complete plant checks, plant new seeds and teach workshops to younger community groups. A majority of the interns never worked in a garden before, according to Leier.<\/p>\n Adeia Simon, a 24-year-old biology student and one of the college interns, began at the learning garden in the Bronx last summer before joining the Abib garden this year.<\/p>\n \u201cBeing a New York City kid, you don’t really get a lot of opportunities to spend a lot of time outdoors,\u201d Simon said. \u201cI was really interested in knowing how to grow food and where our food comes from.\u201d<\/p>\n Besides learning and teaching opportunities, the garden creates a peaceful space away from city life for interns and the community members.<\/p>\n \u201cThings change so quickly in this garden, and it makes you so much more appreciative of life in general. It’s a great space to be mindful in,\u201d Simon said.<\/p>\n The interns also lead younger children\u00a0through activities and lessons for the Learning Summer Gardens Groups Program, helping them to connect with nature, gardening and science.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of times vegetables aren’t their favorite thing to eat because they don’t always have access to these things, and so it’s filling up a need within the community,\u201d Simon said.<\/p>\n From pesto making to seed planting, working with younger students so far have helped them develop valuable skills for their future careers, including communication, leadership and group management, according to Word.<\/p>\n Soraya Serome, an intern who graduated from high school this year, said she is using the program to improve her communication skills that would help her when she becomes an OB-GYN.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I wanted to talk more, express myself more, and then get used to it with kids, so I could learn and then start talking to patients,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Working in the garden can also reveal how community gardening can unexpectedly intersect with career and future goals for the students.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin my career, I definitly want to help people who don’t have access to these things,\u201d Simon said. \u201cWithout these programs, I don’t think I would be here today. I always want to be able to give back to the communities that I’ve always been a part of.\u201d<\/p>\n Leier\u00a0is optimistic that more people and schools will get involved in the program.<\/p>\n \u201cI hope that more students, more people become aware of community garden spaces in New York,\u201d Simon said. \u201cEspecially now where our food systems are becoming a bit more destabilized. It’s a great way for us to take back the power in our hands to provide for ourselves because we don’t really know what the future is going to look like.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Learning Gardens program through the City Parks Foundation provides hands-on lessons for high school and college interns…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308875,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,116862,9,24,63],"class_list":["post-308874","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn","tag-brooklyn-headlines","tag-brooklyn-news","tag-city-parks-foundationlearning-gardens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308874","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=308874"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308874\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308874"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308874"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308874"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"adeia-simon-in-front-of-echinacea-her-favorite-plant\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/adeia-simon-in-front-of-echinacea-her-favorite-plant.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nAdeia Simon, 24, is participating in the Learning Gardens program this summer at the Abib Newborn Garden in Brownsville. Photo: Whitney West for BK Reader
<\/p>\n![\"interns-check-plants-and-record-findings-1\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/interns-check-plants-and-record-findings-1.jpg;w=960.jpeg\"\/)
\nInterns check the plants. . Photo: Whitney West for BK Reader
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