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NEW YORK – An autumn harvest project for a group of Upper East Side preschoolers ended in heartbreak after their hand-planted cornstalks were mysteriously chopped down and thrown in the trash.<\/p>\n
What we know:<\/p>\n
For the past five years, Mis Amiguitos, a family-run Spanish Montessori language program located at 84th Street and York Avenue, has used a sidewalk tree bed outside its building to teach toddlers aged three to five about nature and gardening, according to school officials.<\/p>\n
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After successfully raising pumpkins and sunflowers in previous years, the children planted corn in April and spent months watering and watching the stalks grow several feet high, school officials said.<\/p>\n
With the harvest only a month away, teachers and students planned to paint the corn for fall decor and use it to make tamales together, according to school staff. The towering greenery had become a popular sight for neighbors, who frequently stopped to admire and photograph the sidewalk garden.<\/p>\n
A group of young children in New York City were devastated after their months-old sidewalk corn stalks were mysteriously chopped down and thrown in the trash. Police are investigating the incident, while local officials confirmed the tree bed garden was completely legal.<\/p>\n The excitement turned to tears when school staff arrived to discover the stalks had been chopped at the base and stuffed into a nearby trash receptacle. A school assistant was brought to tears upon finding the ruined crop, leaving the young children devastated after watching their hard work vanish overnight, school officials said.<\/p>\n The NYPD responded to the scene and filed an official report on the incident, according to police.<\/p>\n What they’re saying:<\/p>\n Officials from the New York City Parks Department confirmed to FOX 5 N.Y. that they had no involvement in removing the plants and emphasized that cultivating crops in city tree beds is completely legal and actively encouraged.<\/p>\n What’s next:<\/p>\n The NYPD and local authorities are continuing to look into who cut the corn down and why.<\/p>\n The Source: Information from FOX 5 N.Y. reporting and the NYPD.\u00a0<\/p>\n Education<\/a>News<\/a>Upper East Side<\/a>Manhattan<\/a>New York<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK – An autumn harvest project for a group of Upper East Side preschoolers ended in heartbreak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":325130,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[67,75,9,24,12,56,63,134,136,135,61190,618],"class_list":["post-325129","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-education","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-news","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-ues","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325129","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=325129"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325129\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/325130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325129"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325129"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325129"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Kids'](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/mu1xb0rbudxxbqk8.jpg\")
Kids’ corn project chopped down on Upper East Side<\/a> <\/p>\n