Arts & Letters United
Garden & Cooking Afterschool Program

3rd to 5th graders at Arts & Letters 305 United in Brooklyn, New York will receive twelve interactive workshops in the garden and kitchen as part of the Upper Elementary School Garden & Cooking Club. Their garden experience begins with orienting students to the space, creating a shared understanding of expectations, and teaching them fundamental gardening, food preparation, and basic cooking skills. They then explore a number of food and garden subjects, including soil composition, flower biology, pickling, medicinal herbs, food safety and preparation, and more. We were deeply influenced and guided by the amazing team at Edible Schoolyards in developing this curriculum.

The purpose of this class is to teach our city students how to garden in the urban landscape and make simple dishes for their families using homegrown and easily accessible ingredients. In almost every class, students will eat their own homemade food and go home with food and skills to share with their community.

Fall 2024 Program:

Gardening and food prep will take place at the Stars of Hope garden on Madison, as well as visits to the Hattie Carthan Community Garden.

About the teachers:

Laena McCarthy

is an educator and entrepreneur who founded her first company, Anarchy in a Jar, in 2009. She is currently CEO and ringleader of the events team at Edible Anarchy, and advises small businesses in marketing and growth strategy. Laena was not born with a green thumb, but over the years has learned the slow and magical art of nurturing plants. She helped start the Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farms, is an avid community gardener, and

Laena and her companies have been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Martha Stewart Show, New York Magazine, Food & Wine, and more. Laena's cookbook, Jam On: The Craft of Canning Fruit, was published with Penguin Random House in 2012.

Laena graduated magna cum laude from Mount Holyoke College, received an MS in Information Science from Pratt Institute, has trained as a glass designer and food scientist, and was awarded the United States Antarctica Service Medal by the Department of Defense for her work with the National Science Foundation.

When she’s not nerding-out about food and startups in Brooklyn, you can find her tinkering at Kulsoom, her fruit orchard, event space, and chili pepper farm in New York's Hudson Valley.