A Garden Grows in New York City
By: Charlie Nardozzi
Deep in the heart of Manhattan, New York’s concrete jungle is probably the least suitable place to start a garden. Combine the location with the fact that the person planning the garden had lived in New York City his whole life and had never had a garden, and you wouldn’t expect a high degree of success. But Sean Collard and the hotel team members at the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square were up for the challenge. “Actually we were were a little nervous when we decided to join the Grow a School Garden Program and look for a local school to partner with and grow gardens,” says Collard. “The only grass I saw growing up was in Central Park or on a ball field,” he says. “I had no gardening experience.”
Collard grew up in Greenwich Village and married a “girl from Brooklyn.” Now they live in Brooklyn with four kids in a Co-op apartment. They have no gardens and no lawn. “The only gardening work we do is helping the other Co-op members once a year on cleanup day,” says Collard. But he does have a strong sense of volunteerism. “Even as a kid my family would volunteer in the local community,” he says.
Collard has been in the hospitality business for 19 years. He feels like the business and his sense of volunteerism are a good match. “Inherent in the hospitality business is caring,” he says. “We care about the well-being of our guests, and that’s easily extended to caring about our local community.”
A Garden Grows in New York City
The Hilton Garden Inn Grow a School Garden program has been in existence for four years. Through a relationship with the National Gardening Association (NGA), HGI properties have access to specially designed garden kits for schools, gardening information, and free consultation with NGA’s Senior Horticulturist and HGI’s Chief Gardening Officer Consultant, Charlie Nardozzi.
According to Collard, hotel manager of the Hilton Garden Inn Times Square in New York City, “The National Gardening Association helped us identify P.S. 126 in Chinatown as a possible partner school. Because there was already a YMCA After-School program at the school, we thought it would be the best place to create a gardening club. Both Matt and Simone, the science and after-school program teachers, were excited about the idea of gardening with the kids as some ot their students had never seen a garden. While gardening may not be very unusual for kids in more rural locations, for these kids in lower Manhattan, it was unique.
“The combination of the students’ enthusiasm, the teachers'experience of what would work in the program, and the support from NGA all made for a successful event,” says Collard.