Carpenter Art Garden is on the brink of true transformation!

LaTonya Hunt, our Garden Coordinator, took me on a walk through our East Garden one day (with which I am totally obsessed), and she pointed something out for me: Broccoli... which, at first, didn't look like broccoli? In fact, the vegetables looked like the most robust collard greens I'd ever seen in my life! I was perplexed. Anyone could see that these were indeed collard greens?

"You would think," she said. "In fact, when the stores run out during Thanksgiving, we've even had someone mistake them for collard greens, sneak in, and pick the leaves! But little do they know, they'll cook those leaves for hours and discover that they don't taste like collards..."

"What do they taste like?!" The curiosity was killing me, as well as the slight amusement of vegetable theft.

"Broccoli. They taste like broccoli."

And what do you know? Inside those leaves was a soft tuft of broccoli fiber, hidden like a clever punchline. An entire garden row of treasures quietly growing, awaiting a harvest.

The thing is this: Carpenter Art Garden is a humble, healthy ecosystem full of nurtured, vibrant treasures growing and blossoming right under our noses: our youth. And I wouldn't doubt, the whole operation could be overlooked if you're zooming down our street in Binghampton. The Purple House, the Bike Shop, and Aunt Lou's House are perfectly integrated into the neighborhood. You wouldn't recognize them from the aesthetic along Carpenter Street. The Mosaic Park welcomes its guests from the neighborhood, inviting them to sit, celebrate, mourn, and reflect. The East and West Gardens are ever-present and evolving monuments and metaphors for the youth who we artistically, vocationally, and educationally serve, as well as representations of what nature can do and examples of how it sustains us.

For those who don't know who we are-- we're a lot like those collard greens! But when you look inside? We are quite something else: multigenerational, consistent, loving, and bursting with strong legacies for our children.

I love this place. And it hasn't escaped me that you must, too-- because it wouldn't exist without you. The Art Garden grows and thrives because of the excellent team of staff and volunteers who nurture it. But we could not nurture and creatively cultivate the lives of our children if it weren't for you planting the financial seeds that sustain us.

Megan Banaszek was right. I see something in this garden, still steeped in a beautiful winter, wondering what is due to burst forth in the coming months and years of a new harvest-- we are on the edge of transformation. I can feel it. The recipe is just right. The programs are strong. The staff and volunteers are diligent. Leaders have risen up in the teens who were once children in the Art Garden programs as they take hold of what it means to serve in a vocation. And art? It is the thread that binds our conversation, purpose, and community together. I think in years to come, we will all be blown away by the natural evolution that the Art Garden undergoes by nature of successfully living out its mission of inspiring the youth of Binghampton through art, vocation, and education. Someday (soon, I hope), we'll see the Art Garden as something that is not only essential, relevant, and necessary, but maybe even something that surprises us with some kind of newness.

Friend, please consider donating to Carpenter Art Garden. Whatever the next season holds will only be realized through the generous support of donors-- and we can't do it without you! And we wouldn't want to do it without you.

Thank you for reading.

Peace to you in this new year,

Jazmin Miller, Executive Director