Art in the Garden: Blooming in Blue

Join us at the Greenhouse as we approach the Summer Soltice to take in the sun’s powerful rays of light to create sun prints, or cyanotypes through this camera-less photographic process. Together, we’ll learn the alchemy of the cyanotype process, then move to the garden where we’ll select the botanicals we most wish to work with, composing our own prints and working witht the light of the sun to document what is alive and blooming in our garden.

Your Facilitator: Nadia Bongo

Nadia Bongo is a teaching artist and translator. A former Brooklyn Poets Fellow, her writing and/or photographs have appeared in African Voices, Litro online, Solstice, The Citron Review, Blue Mesa Review, and elsewhere. Her first co-directed poetry short film, supported by a BPL program, has been selected by festivals. Nadia was the September 2025 Teaching Artist in Residence for the Washington Square Park Conservancy.

Find more of her work at nadiabongo.com

All images Courtesy of the Artist, Nadia Bongo, Header ImagesL 1: Mallory Caring, cyanotype collage on paper, 2: Photos from Nadia’s workshops and class. Bio Image: Still from Nadia’s film Wandering in Beauty

Grounded in the garden, join us to critically and creatively engage in a diversity of artmaking techniques that open us up to deeper dialogue on place, our relationships to our lived environments, ecological concerns, and contemporary culture. Learn meditative and mindful drawing, printmaking and sculptural techniques, scientific observation with plant portraiture, nature-inspired intuitive artmaking and mixed media exploration, and other various practices from botanical and ecologically-focused contemporary artists to create works of art to nurture your relationship to the garden.

Immerse yourself in the learning garden, greenhouse, and across Riverbank State Park’s green roof overlooking the Hudson River to create artwork that is rooted in place and in partnership with plants.

Workshops are rain or shine.

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.

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.

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.