Celebrate City Of Forest Day Saturday October 26 At Roosevelt Island Lighthouse Park - Come Join Our Neighbors To Learn About Tree Stewardship, Enjoy The Beautiful Fall Colors, A Special Ecological Dance Performance & More Family Fun Activities
Roosevelt Island resident and iDig2Learn founder Christina Delfico invites you to the third annual City Of Forest Day celebration activities at Roosevelt Island's Lighthouse Park on Saturday October 26. According to Ms Delfico:
Aiming to raise awareness of the natural beauty of Lighthouse Park surrounding Coler Hospital and the importance of the urban forest, and the vital role residents play in caring for the “lungs” of our city, while having fun doing so, three organizations – iDig2Learn, Main Street Theatre and Dance Alliance (MSTDA) and NYC Health + Hospitals/Coler (Coler Hospital) – are collaborating to host “Forest for Us” a City of Forest Day event on Roosevelt Island.
This third annual event will celebrate the trees at the northern tip of Roosevelt Island. The afternoon includes a series of activities, supporting awareness of trees’ vital role in our local environment – they stabilize the land capturing rain during storm events, which reduces flooding, they provide a calming respite for our mental health, they inhale carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen and provide food and shelter for birds and butterflies.
Image From 2023 City Of Forest Day At Lighthouse Park One highlight, returning thanks to MSTDA partners, is a performance from famed dancer Jody Sperling featuring dancers from the Time Lapse Dance ensemble, whose work “aims to investigate the relationship of the moving body to the ecologies we inhabit through performance, media, education and activism.” From 3:00 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. the company will perform excerpts from “Arbor,” an ecologically-themed piece that expresses human kinship with trees.
Another high point is an underground listening and drawing experience created for us by interdisciplinary artist Nikki Lindt who “explores the subterranean world both sonically and visually to tell stories about the earth’s ecosystems.” She will guide us to listen through headphones to what her microphones pick up and encourage us to draw what we hear “revealing surprisingly dramatic sonic arrays that normally remain hidden from our senses.”
Other activities will spotlight members from the community. Meet Andi of NiAva’s Body Bar to sample forest-infused body butters (while supplies last). Mingle with residents of Coler Hospital for a healthy snack while reveling in peak fall bloom of the sugar maples and tupelo trees. Enjoy savory appetizers from Jon of Poppa’s Pantry. Enjoy assembling a take home succulent in a beautifully handcrafted mini pot from local Winifred’s Collection. Reconnect with Coach Scot’s baseball players, the Girl Scouts, Roosevelt Island Garden Club and Haki Compost Collective members who will guide us to create mulch rings for existing trees planted in 2022. Attendees will also plant a handful of new trees and be invited to add professional botanical tree labels into the ground next to the trees, thanks to iDig2Learn receiving a Green Fund Grant. Cap off the event with members of the Roosevelt Island Plogging Club who will invite us to try Plogging while learning more about their club.
Don’t miss this annual day, especially while Lighthouse Park trees
are in peak fall color.
iDig2Learn is thrilled to celebrate City of Forest Day and team up again with Coler Hospital and Main Street Theatre and Dance Alliance to host this day on Roosevelt Island. Island residents and visitors alike treasure the island’s trees. No matter how you arrive – by ferry, subway, tram, bike, bus or foot – you cannot miss the abundance of greenspace on the island, which has been thoughtfully managed by the RIOC Grounds Team and supporting partners Trees New York and GRIN. Since 2022, with the help of these outstanding local partners and the work of RI Garden Club, Haki Compost Collective and Big Reuse, we have added 100 new baby trees, growing the urban tree canopy by focusing on native regional species that are known to support New York City’s habitat.
I am deeply thankful to our partners who co-create alongside iDig2Learn, including Girl Scouts, Roosevelt Island Garden Club and Coach Scot's baseball players and others to make the island beautiful. I invite everyone – our existing supporters and those new to our work – to join us for this joyful City of Forest Day to explore, celebrate and get to know our trees. By seeing the living trees as a who not a what we can better protect them. And we hope the tree labels, which were assembled by residents, will enable visitors to Lighthouse Park to learn more about the trees in the park and around Coler Hospital for years to come. Each of the afternoon’s free activities has been designed to inspire us to do more to help our trees thrive.
Roosevelt Island’s City of Forest Day details include:
● WHAT: City of Forest Day
● WHEN: Saturday, October 26 – 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.:
● 2:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. learn about tree stewardship and participate in a community
mulching activity to blanket existing trees, plant a handful more and add tree labels
● 2:30 p.m. – Meet Coler Hospital neighbors for healthy snacks and enjoy savory bites
by Jon of Poppa’s Pantry
● 2:30 p.m. – join Andi of NiAva’s Body Bar to sample natural Body Butters
● 2:30 p.m. – plant a take home succulent in a handmade mini pot by Winifred’s
Collection
● 3:00 p.m. – enjoy a 15-minute performance by Jody Sperling’s Time Lapse Dance
ensemble of excerpts from “Arbor”
● 3:30 p.m. – connect with the artist Nikki Lindt for underground listening and drawing as she connects microphones to trees so we can hear and also draw what we experience
● 3:30 p.m. – try plogging with the local teen-led Plogging Club to join in on this invigorating and healthy way to keep our community clean
WHERE: Roosevelt Island Lighthouse Park, 910 Main St, New York, NY 10044 (the northernmost tip of the island). Please note that in case of rain, the dance performance and art activity will take place indoors at the Good Shepherd Church Community Center on Roosevelt Island, 543 Main Street, New York, New York, 10044 (the dance performance will be upstairs and the art activity downstairs). For up to the minute updates on these events, please follow iDig2Learn on Instagram.
This celebration on Roosevelt Island is just one of over 80 taking place throughout New York City on October 26th to highlight the vital need to better protect, maintain, and expand the New York City urban forest to benefit all New Yorkers. iDig2Learn is a part of Forest for All NYC (FFANYC), a diverse coalition of over 157 organizations across business, nonprofit, conservation, and environmental justice sectors that is working to expand the tree canopy of the urban forest in New York City to 30% by 2035. FFANYC in partnership with the Parks and Open Space Partners – NYC Coalition and NYC Parks is presenting this citywide.
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