Recipes & Rituals for Community Care: Kinning in the Garden

With every breath, every sip of water, every meal, we are reminded that our lives are inseparable from the life of the world—and the cosmos—in ways both material and spiritual. What are the sources of our deepest evolutionary and planetary connections, and of our profound longing for kinship? – Humans and Nature Press

Just by living as humans on this animated Earth, we are participating in relationships that sustain us. Yet many of us long for deeper ways of belonging.

In this gathering, we’ll explore practical and creative ways of cultivating kinship with plants through everyday rituals and acts of care, and how by deepening our relationships to plants, we can deepen our sense of belonging and meaning in the world. Drawing inspiration from artists, land stewards, herbalists, and thinkers whose work is rooted in reciprocal relationship (such as Robin Wall Kimmerer and Rowen White), we’ll spend time with the plants growing in the Greenhouse & Education Center’s Kinship Garden, considering what it means to know them as more than resources—as neighbors, teachers, and fellow beings in the places we call home.

Together, we’ll harvest herbs such as lemon balm, tulsi, and rosemary to prepare a nourishing tea, exploring how daily rituals can foster attentiveness and connection. We’ll engage in reflective writing on handmade flax and mugwort paper, practice tree breathing as a meditation on reciprocity, and consider how tending relationships with plants might reshape our understanding of care. In return, we’ll offer stewardship to the garden through weeding, compost tea, and observation, recognizing that kinship is sustained through mutually beneficial relationship.

Participants will leave with simple recipes, rituals, and everyday practices for nurturing a deeper sense of belonging with the living world in their everyday lives.

Your Facilitator: Mallory Craig

Mallory is a land and cultural worker cultivating caring spaces that nurture reflection and dialogue to work towards personal and social transformation. She currently stewards intergenerational programming in the learning garden, greenhouse, and around the kitchen table at the Greenhouse Education Center at Riverbank State Park in NYC.

Join us for Recipes and Rituals for Collective Care every Wednesday!

What does it mean to heal in community? What does it feel like when we extend care to ourselves and the collective? How do plants and our local ecologies care for us? How can we care for the plants and local ecologies in return?

Weave in rituals and recipes into your own self-care and community care practices through weekly explorations in herbal arts, somatic movement in the greenhouse and garden, folk remedies, and other wild-crafts and meditative activities that foster a deeper connection to plants to care for the body, mental health, and the people you move with.

Each week, be guided by a guest herbalist, healing artist, or wellness practitioner who will help you create your own toolkit and apothecary for self and communal care.

This is a free drop-in program. Come to every class to build on your skill or come to one or two that you are available for.

Workshops are rain or shine.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.