We’re in our first year partnering with St. Barnabas Health & Wellness Center (SBH). SBH is located in Belmont, the central Bronx neighborhood most New Yorkers know as home to Arthur Avenue and the borough’s Little Italy. SBH is blocks away from one of the city’s great food destinations, yet fresh, affordable produce is hard to find. SBH built its wellness center to help people stay healthy enough that they do not need the hospital next door. This single building combines affordable housing, a hospital, a gym, a teaching kitchen, and a rooftop farm: SBH runs the kitchen, and our team runs the rooftop farm.
Rooftop farms are a great solution in dense urban areas where ground-level space is limited, but the exposed setting comes with its own challenges. This spring, wind hit the young plants and pigeons ate the green beans. Our horticulture team put up wind barriers, staked plants through their most vulnerable stage, and repurposed the netting to keep the birds off. The farm is now in full production. The crop list is a collaboration between our team who recommends what will grow on a windy roof and SBH staff who know what will work in their cooking classes and community. The farm has several varieties of tomatoes, plus peppers, eggplant, summer squash, and herbs including tulsi, oregano, and mint, just to name a few.
Students, patients, and community members spend time with us on the rooftop getting to know the plants and their uses, then head to the kitchen to cook with what the farm has grown. The newest program addition is a food pharmacy: each week, our team helps distribute food from the roof and a local farm to roughly 75 hospital patients as part of their care. These consistent interactions give us a chance to speak with the community and tailor programming for their needs.
For SBH, the farm is one piece of a larger commitment to keeping its neighbors healthy through affordable, fresh food. This work earned them a 2026 Gage Award for Population Health. For us at The Hort, SBH lets us keep an unlikely rooftop space working as a farm, part of our mission to make plants part of daily life.