We are such unabashed fans of Brooklyn Grange and what they do: promoting, designing, building, and maintaining sustainable urban green spaces. If you want to visit their projects, you’ll likely have to look up, though—their forte is creating thriving rooftop gardens. Founded in 2010, the firm has since grown in both influence (they’re responsible for the farms atop Javits Center, Rosemary’s restaurant, and Vice Media headquarters) and size (it now owns and operates two rooftop farms, at the Brooklybn Navy Yard and in Sunset Park). But their focus remains simple: encouraging a more intimate connection between city folk and the natural world.
Today, we’re excited to have Junior Schouten, Brooklyn Grange’s head of horticulture and maintenance, answer our Quick Takes questionnaire. His advice for gardening neophytes? “Make friends with owners of perennials gardens—as they grow, they will need to be divided and can be shared.” Read on for more of his tips, including a recommendation for a beginner-friendly plant that “grows quick, blooms beautifully, and is an edible pollinator magnet.”
Your first garden memory:
Mom asking a neighbor in the Caribbean for some cuttings of their front yard hibiscus hedge.
Garden-related book you return to time and again:
Taylor’s Guide to Perennials by Houghton Mifflin. The whole Taylor’s Guide series is a great reference source for succinct information on gardening.
Instagram account that inspires you:
@nativeplanttrust shares region-specific plant information and ties beauty with sustainable gardening.
Describe in three words your garden aesthetic.
Seasonal pollinator magnets.
Plant that makes you swoon:
Dinner plate dahlias are arrestingly beautiful—literally as big as your head and oh-so-easy to grow.
Plant that makes you want to run the other way:
English ivy—I’m literally a sneezing, sniffly mess when maintaining this plant. Brooklyn Grange clients get a little switcheroo with less dusty natives like Boston ivy or Virginia creeper.
Favorite go-to plant:
Salvias! Garden sage grows quick, blooms beautifully, and is an edible pollinator magnet—Brooklyn Grange and our landscaping clients get all their boxes checked with this one.
Hardest gardening lesson you’ve learned:
All tomato plans are for naught when chipmunks abound. Expect every tomato to have a single bite mark in it. Rude.
Unpopular gardening opinion:
Roses are overrated. Happy to say it one more time for the folks in the back.
Gardening or design trend that needs to go:
Volcano mulching trees, that is, forming a damaging pyramid of mulch up the trunk of a tree. It is not the flex that you think it is, landscapers! Hire Brooklyn Grange, we don’t volcano mulch.
