About
The Hort believes that New Yorkers benefit most from nature when it is part of their everyday routines. City life unfolds on streets, in housing, at schools, and across shared public spaces. These are the places where people live, work, and move through their day, and they are often the places with the least access to plants and green space. Our work is grounded in the conviction that access to nature must be local, ordinary, and woven into daily experience.
We believe equity requires durability. For access to be real, planted spaces must function and be cared for over time, under challenging conditions. Equity means plants that live, spaces that work, and care that continues year after year, especially in the hardest and most overlooked parts of the city.
For this reason, we see horticulture as essential social infrastructure. When plants are embedded into the daily fabric of neighborhoods, they support health, learning, dignity, and opportunity.
Our Approach
The Hort operates where urban horticulture is most difficult and most needed, and where care must account for both plants and people.
Our approach is grounded in citywide operations that deliver consistent results under real constraints. We work in places others are not equipped to sustain: sites with little or poor-quality soil, no irrigation, fragmented ownership, tight budgets, and heavy daily use. These conditions are common across New York City’s streets, housing developments, schools, and shared public spaces, and they require solutions that function reliably in public view.
Rather than delivering one-off projects, we build and manage systems of care that combine horticulture, custodial stewardship, and community presence. Our work integrates planting, watering, maintenance, cleaning, and staffing, so spaces remain healthy, usable, and welcoming over time. Routine attention and seasonal upkeep are not separate from horticulture; they are what allow planted spaces to function as everyday places people want to use.
We achieve durability by selecting resilient plants and practical infrastructure that can withstand heat, pollution, salt, and constant use. At the same time, we design our operations to fit local routines and conditions. Our teams are visible and present, working in coordination with city agencies, site partners and housing staff to ensure care is predictable, responsive, and sustained.
Who We Are
The Hort is a New York City–based nonprofit that designs, installs, maintains and activates planted spaces across streets, housing, schools, and shared public spaces, with a focus on neighborhoods that have historically had limited access to green space.
Our work is hands-on and operational. Maintenance and custodial care are central to how we define success, ensuring planted spaces remain functional and welcoming over time.
Our work combines citywide operations with education, therapeutic horticulture, and public programs that help people learn, heal, and connect through direct experience with plants. These programs are closely tied to the spaces we care for and reinforce the role of horticulture as a practical tool for health and community life.
We also train and employ New Yorkers to sustain a green city, embedding workforce development into the everyday care of public space. By linking horticulture, public space maintenance, and employment, we strengthen both the spaces themselves and the communities responsible for sustaining them.
History
Established in 1900 and incorporated in 1902, The Horticultural Society of New York began by sharing horticultural knowledge through public education and exchange.
Over more than a century, The Hort has evolved in response to the city itself. As New York grew denser and access to green space became more uneven, the organization expanded from a primarily educational role to delivering citywide urban horticulture and ongoing care. Today, we bring plants into the spaces people use everyday and sustain and activate them over time as part of the city’s essential infrastructure.
More About The Hort
Our Supporters
Our programs are made possible thanks to:
