Saturday, 11am-5 pm: Green Day Soil Jam at Socrates

This annual Queens Green Day event is even more special this year because it falls on the 45^th anniversary of Earth Day!  Celebrate at Socrates Sculpture Park with hands-on activities, sowing seeds for the season. 
Join artist Mary Mattingly in the art of creating enclosed terrariums. Witness the intricate interplay of light, water, air, soil, and plant life, each element contributing to the other’s well-being. The Field Guide series kicks off with free workshops for all ages. Get your hands in the soil with our neighborhood farmer Anna Poaster of Hellgate Farm and plant the vegetables, herbs, and flowers we’ll harvest over the course of this season.

Dig deeper and make soil in a composting workshop hosted by BIG Reuse.  Take home complimentary bags of black gold to nurture your own seeds.

Makina Cafe NYC will be serving the best “habesha” Eritrean-Ethiopian food on four wheels.

Socrates Sculpture Park, 32-01 Vernon Boulevard, Astoria, NY Info 

Composting and Food for Thought at NY Botanical Garden

Composting with Bronx Green-Up, Saturday, 11am-2pm at Solar Pavilions

The NYC Compost Project Hosted by The New York Botanical Garden works to provide New Yorkers with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities they need to produce and use compost locally. Join us at our table to learn about our programming, the various ways you can turn your food scraps into compost in New York City, and the Master Composter Certificate Course. Also, while you’re there, check out our composting worms and pick up a reusable bag!

Food for Thought Saturday & Sunday, 12–3 p.m at Leon Levy Visitor Center 

This series of demonstrations by local chefs that introduces healthy and affordable ways to make your diet more sustainable—such as reducing consumption of processed foods, buying in-season and local, and eating more plants!

Learn healthy tips and tricks for keeping your plant-based meals both delicious and protein-packed. Brandy Cochrane, founder of Plant Candy, is a chef, recipe developer, teacher, author, and founder of the plant-based companies Entrepreneur Meal Plan and Plant Candy. Learn about Brandy’s work to improve both the personal and professional lives of individuals through plants.

New York Botanical Garden, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, NY Info

Saturday, 11am-4pm: Climate Arts Festival at Queens Botanical Garden

Join in for an empowering day as we reflect on our international climate crisis and explore ways to help our planet thrive. Bring the whole family for fun, hands-on activities, art exhibits, music, interactive performances, tours,demonstrations, and more! And be sure to visit the Sustainable Vendor Fair to support local businesses! This year NY Urban Sketchers offer original drawings and prints for sale at the Vendor Fair. Above: by NY Urban Sketcher Katie Woodward

Queens Botanical Garden, 43-50 Main Street, Flushing, NY Info

Saturday & Sunday, 11am-7pm: Bear Mountain Pow Wow

Bear Mountain Pow Wow is a full contest Pow Wow attracting over 500 Native American artists, educators, singers, dancers and performing groups from across the Americas. Over 40 artist booths selling crafts, jewelry, food and more.  Other highlights of the event include authentic cuisine: buffalo burgers, venison stew and corn soup. Visitors can interact with representatives from tribes of the Lakota, Navajo, Mohawk, Seneca, Cherokee, Aztec, Mayan, Samoan, Hawaiian and many more. There is a tipi raising. Organized by the Redhawk Native American Council Info

Anthony Wayne Recreation Center, Palisades Interstate Parkway, Harriman, NY 

Saturday & Sunday, 11am-6pm: FAD Market Earth Day Pop-Up at Invisible Dog

Celebrate the best of New York’s emerging design scene with FAD Market’s NYCxDESIGN pop-up. FAD Market will be taking up residence at The Invisible Dog Art Center in Brooklyn’s Boerum Hill, with over 50 cutting-edge designers and makers pushing the boundaries of home furnishing, tableware, apparel, jewelry, and more. Browse the specially curated selection of goods and meet the best new designers from the city and beyond!

FAD Market is a roving Fashion, Art and Design pop-up market that travels seasonally to unique venues in the vibrant borough of Brooklyn, New York. We aim to create a thoughtfully curated platform for artists, designers and members of the public to meet, interact and together, discover the art anInvisid culture within our community.

Invisible Dog Art Center, 51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn, NY Info

Sunday, April 23 from 1:30-5:30pm: Art & Craft Workshops at Climate Museum
Visitors are invited to participate in drop-in workshops with two outstanding artists: Artist Nicole Kelner (left) will lead a watercolor workshop that draws on the SolarPunk aesthetic, which she will outline and which envisions a climate-safe future through lush, utopian imagery. With guidance from the artist, visitors will picture the world they want to live in in their mind’s eye, and bring it to life on paper using a bright watercolor palette. Simultaneously, in a different space in the exhibition, interdisciplinary artist and educator Dario Mohr will lead us in exploring how historical systems of inequality have led to unequal access to green space, with plant deserts in many Black and brown neighborhoods. He’ll invite visitors to bring new plant life into the city and to continue to reflect on this history by writing or illustrating messages to our common ancestors on seed paper greeting cards. 

Climate Museum Pop-Up 120 Wooster Street, New York, NY Info

Just in from long-time subscriber, photographer Jade Doskow:

To celebrate Earth Day I am pleased to share a special sale of Freshkills prints through Tracey Morgan Gallery.  You can see the Freshkills work currently in two exhibitions: New York New Publics at the Museum of Modern Art through July 29 and Ecologies at the Alice Austen House through May 20th. The photographs are printed on a beautiful rag paper and at a scale that truly celebrates the expansiveness of the Freshkills wilderness. Above: New York City Skyline with One World Trade from North Mound, Looking Northeast toward Main Creek and the Greenbelt, Autumn, 2018/2021. View more images at Tracey Morgan Gallery $100 from every sale will be donated to reputable organizations fighting climate change. 

Thursday, April 20, 6:00pm: Earth Day Artlab: Grief, Culture, and the Environment 

In celebration of Earth Week, artist and educator Mary Ting will lead a discussion around grief from an ecological perspective. Ting will present her work with the Grief Artlab and its trajectory from personal grief to environmental research, lectures, and community projects. She will share how her individual losses and family and cultural history coincide with wildlife crime and environmental injustices. 

Following the presentation in the Modern Chapel, attendees will break out into small groups for discussion facilitated by Gabrielle Gatto, Green-Wood’s coordinator of public programs, who holds a certificate in Thanatology, and Sara Evans, Green-Wood’s senior manager and curator of Living Collections. This portion of the evening will be in the spirit of a Death Cafe, where there is no set agenda, but we come together to discuss topics associated with death, dying, grief, and loss. Free. Registration required

The Green-Wood Cemetery, 500 25th Street, Brooklyn, NY

Next weekend, join subscriber Chemin Hsiao for a botanical block printing workshop at New York Botanical Garden

Learn the basics of block printing with artist Chemin Hsiao. Together, you'll visit a location on Garden grounds for seasonal botanical inspiration. Then, experiment with carving a simple design into a block of soft, eraser-like material. You'll stamp your designs onto paper and walk away with a unique set of hand-printed cards for your loved ones! All materials provided. 

New York Botanical Garden, Watson Room 102, 2900 Southern Boulevard, Bronx, NY Info and Registration