Greentopia has been working in partnership with Cornell Cooperative Extension to run our Introduction to Landscape Technicians Certification program. This certification program has been so important to helping our participants gain a better understanding of horticulture, environmental issues, and landscaping basics. This gives our participants skills, knowledge and a certification to help them find empowerment in the workplace and to gain meaningful employment in green industries. We are so thankful to Cornell Cooperative Extension for their continued work with our program.
Cornell Cooperative Extension also has other amazing educational programs that you can partner with. To learn more about Cornell Cooperative Extension and their work click the button below!
Our partners at the Rochester Female Charitable society have just celebrated their 200 year anniversary of serving the Rochester community.
On February 26th 1822, 60 women came together to create the Rochester Female Charitable society. This society helped to found the first schools, public projects and social services in the community. This was the beginning of women’s civic activism in Rochester, at a time when the city was only a settlement of around 2,700 people.
We are proud to be one of the many organizations that the Rochester Female Charitable society supports in the Rochester Community. This organization has been dedicated to supporting women and the Rochester community as a whole, helping to further futures. Thank you so much for your continued support as we try to build a better Rochester together.
Greentopia was honored at the 12th annual Community Design Center Redesigning Rochester Awards. Our organization received the Director’s Award for our dedicated work in High Falls and the State Park project.
We are honored to be recognized among our fellow award recipients, who are just as dedicated to making Rochester a better city for all, and excited to see such unique projects.
We are so excited to see High Falls become a green space for the Rochester community to enjoy. Greentopia remains dedicated to creating these spaces for our community. Check out the video to learn more about Greentopia’s hopes for High Falls.
This past month we hosted our first Yoga on the Bridge. In partnership with Breathe Yoga, Green Visions hosted a silent disco power vinyasa yoga class on the Pont De Rennes Bridge. Thankfully this year, we were lucky enough to get a beautiful sunny day for the event.
A huge thank you to Breathe Yoga Studios for leading such a beautiful class, we are so appreciative of your partnership, support, and your continued work with us.
Also, thank you to WildByrd Productions for the use of silent disco headphones for the event.
Greentopia strives to make High Falls a center for recreation for all Rochester citizens. Events like Yoga on the Bridge allow us to showcase the natural wonder that can be found in the heart of Rochester. We are so grateful to everyone who came out to support the event, thank you so much for coming out and joining us in High Falls. We hope to see you visiting again soon.
Yoga on the Bridge will be returning next year!
If you are interested in how you can get involved in events like these, sign up for our volunteer list to stay informed on the latest happenings in High Falls.
On September 4th Congressman Joe Morelle came to visit our High Falls viewing dock and take a tour of Hydro Station 4, the first hydroelectric station in Rochester now owned by Greentopia! Congressman Morrell received the full tour of our facilities from Greentopia’s Executive Board Chair Lisa Baron. Erik Frisch from the City updated Congressman Morelle on the ROC the Riverway project in HIgh Falls and Ben Gustafson from Hunt Engineering shared the latest findings of the structural study being done on Hydro Station 4.
The Roc the Riverway initiative seeks to capitalize on the riverfront property and adjacent natural space of the city of Rochester, places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge. By investing in these places such as the High Falls and the beautiful gorge, Rochester will be able to generate space for economic development, family recreation, environmental protection, and education about the natural assets of the city of Rochester. These green spaces are a part of Rochester that so far has been an untapped resource.
We were so happy to share the High Falls and our vision with Representative Morelli, Thank you for the visit Congressman!
This past week Greentopia hosted a cocktail party to thank our Green Visions program partner Lucas Green House. The event took place on our viewing platform with a beautiful view of the high falls gorge.
In attendance was the Lucas Green House staff and recently former-owner Susan Palomaki. The party was to celebrate Susan, a huge partner of the program, and her retirement after 15 years of owning and working the Lucas Green House. Lucas Green House has partnered with our Green Visions program for the past 5 years. They have helped us by providing a space to start our flowers and giving the program extra flowers as well, in order to make our gardens more beautiful. Our Green Visions Program is always looking for partners with local businesses such as Lucas Green House. If interested reach out to morgan@greentopia.org.
Our viewing platform cocktail parties are available to all! They include a tour of the high falls gorge from the Pont de Renne Bridge by the director of the Greentopia board Lisa Baron. With wine, cheese, and a beautiful view it is a great place to bring friends, coworkers, or anyone else! For more information reach out to Lisa Baron at lisa@greentopia.org.
It’s time to launch the High Falls Eco-District! So no, that’s nothing like sailing a Frisbee over the edge of the Genesee River ravine in Greentopia’s backyard. It’s the formal process required to begin certification of the EcoDistrict north of downtown. The planning stage, which involved lots of meetings with stakeholders and then registering that plan, is over. Now the plan has to be shared with the public and adopted by individual stakeholders’ pledges toward green practices. This is all working toward certification by the international organization, EcoDistricts.org
Harkening back to Greentopia’s early days, the launch will be marked with a public EcoFair Oct. 7, from noon to 5 p.m., coinciding with Rochester’s annual Genesee River Romance event. This fair will be held on and near the Ponte du Rennes Bridge, that pedestrian pathway that has the best view of the river gorge and the river’s High Falls.
EcoDistrict Manager Rachel Walsh said the event will feature:
A gardening project
A fair filled with information tables and vendors
The opportunity to recycle electronics
A collaborate chalk mural
Goats (Yes, goats. They’re the star of cute Internet videos, but also a sustainable way to remove brush
A food truck (Maybe wash your hands between eating lunch and petting a goat.)
Other nearby events that day include Zagster bike tours of the area and tours of Monroe Community College’s new campus at Kodak Tower.
Next steps for the EcoDistrict include stakeholders making and signing commitments that will spell out how they will undertake sustainable efforts to take “equity, resilience and climate protection seriously,” Walsh said. It’s expected to take about three years to gather these written commitments, and then Rochester’s EcoDistrict will join dozens around the world.
“We won’t wait for certification to start projects,” Walsh said. The short list is a walking trail, solar power installation, a pollinator pathway andother programming. Come visit our fair on Oct. 7 and see what it’s all about.
It’s been an unusual summer for Green Visions, Greentopia’s job development program. A super-soaked spring and summer, along with some red-tape tangles, delayed the start of the season. Manager Morgan Barry said the Green Visions garden wasn’t tilled until late May, when it’s usually under cultivation by the first week in May. So some plants, notably a major crop of zinnias, are coming in a month late and all at once.
Rather than trying to conduct business as usual in an unusual situation, the program is experimenting a bit. Green Visions is still a job development program for young people 16-22 in the Northwest quadrant of Rochester, one of the poorest sections of a city where half the kids live in poverty. But with expertise growing in the staff and the job-skills participants, the site in the JOSANA Neighborhood can also offer more. A cut-your-own-bouquet event scheduled for Saturday, Aug. 19, for instance. Visitors can walk away with their own cut flowers, or can rely on the expertise of managers Morgan Barry and Tiani Jennings to make a beautiful arrangement.
Other developments:
Greentopia purchased additional land adjacent to the main garden lot (797 Smith St.)
A learn-to-drive program is being added to the program later in the growing season, adding another key skill young people need to to secure regular employment.
A grant from the Developmentally Disabled Giving Circle at Rochester Area Community Foundation is allowing students who’ve aged out of Edison Technical High School’s program for disabled students to continue working – and, more importantly, getting paid – in the Green Visions program. (Most of the 16 program participants are from the neighborhood, but a couple spots are set aside for developmentally disabled disabled youngsters, who have an even harder time gaining job skills and employment.)
“It’s bringing back graduates and keeping their momentum going,” Barry said.
One such graduate is Frank Graham, 22, who returned this summer to work with Green Visions for a second year. He listed planting, watering, fertilizing, working hard and getting along with people as some of the things he’s learned.
“I’m a workaholic. It’s good, though,” Graham said. At home, his mother doesn’t like him to leave the house. Working with Greentopia gets him out into the sunlight. “It’s better than being in my room, cooped up,” he said.
Ideally, Green Visions graduates will take what they’ve learned over 20 weeks in the growing season and apply it to year-round jobs. Angela Tye, 22, has her sights set on a job in a garden department at a place like Home Depot or Wal-Mart. “I know what to do now. I know what the flowers need, what the plants need,” she said.
While it was nice being in the building on the corner of Platt Street and Brown’s Race, the sale of the building that housed Greentopia for the last several years resulted in our move to new digs across the way at 74 Brown’s Race.
“If you need us, we’re across the street,” said Greentopia Co-Founder Michael A. Philipson. The move happened May 1 and the new quarters are both larger and a little more accessible, as the space is all on one level now – no more steps and ramps! One added bonus is the new office provides additional income for our initiatives because it includes two spaces to rent out, one of which is occupied. Another bonus is our new boardroom and balcony look out over the Genesee River gorge. And that’s the reason Greentopia moved to the High Falls area in the first place.
Stop by if you get a chance. Just remember, we’re on the river side of the road now.
You probably know that mellifluous voice, the one that makes it seem that no matter how grim things are for the environment, there’s still hope. Steve Curwood, host and executive producer of Public Radio International’s Living on Earth show brings his voice to Rochester Tuesday, May 16, for Greentopia’s Leadership Series. Curwood’s talk is titled “Social Equity and Climate Resilience in the Green Redevelopment of Rochester.” Rochester City Mayor Lovely Warren will also offer remarks.
Reservations are required for the breakfast lecture in our Greentopia Leadership Series. Donations of $10 are suggested to cover costs of the continental breakfast. Click here to make a reservation. Doors at the Rochester Museum & Science Center’s Eisenhardt Auditorium, 657 East Ave., open at 7:30 am and the program begins at 8.
Curwood’s show is heard on some 300 radio stations around the country, including Rochester’s WXXI-AM, where it’s broadcast Sundays at 4 pm. A Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist, Curwood has hosted the environmental news show since April 1991. The series is sponsored by RG&E/Avangrid, with media sponsor WXXI.
Next in the series will be Mark W. Johnson of Civitas Landscape Architects, a thought leader in natural spaces in urban settings, who will talk about urban waterfront development on Sept. 11 at Oak Hill Country Club.
There’s the young mother who didn’t know what it was like to hang out with other teenagers because she had a baby at 13 and dropped out of school. And the young father of two who finds working with flowers at Green Visions an oasis of peace in his life. Gardening can be hot, dirty, hard work. But it is also a lifeline of job skills and resume building for youth 18 to 22 living in a city neighborhood suffering from crushing poverty.
“These kids are in situations or circumstances in their lives because of the challenges they face,” said filmmaker Doug Buckley, of Blackbird Son Video Production, who created the “14 Stories” series. “That consumes them, I think.” A job with Green Visions exposes the young workers to life beyond a small radius within Rochester’s northeast side. Green Visions also helps the workers find new ways of dealing with life. “They’re used to conflict – and I know because they said it — that’s their first instinct is to react as if they’re in a conflict,” Buckley said. Side benefits of the program are that flower cultivation is making the soil healthier and the neighborhood more beautiful. Green Visions workers plant, raise and harvest the flowers, which are sold in stores such as Wegmans, Hart’s Local Grocers and the Rochester Public Market.
Seven of the “14 Stories” films are online now, and seven others are due to be uploaded later this spring. Watch and share, please. If you’re so moved, please support these young people or others like them by sponsoring a youth in the Green Visions program. There’s no other job development program like Green Visions in Rochester, providing 20 or more weeks of employment and training, including federal job safety certification. Watch “14 Stories” and you’ll see that it’s no small achievement for young people in the JOSANA neighborhood to complete the program while dealing with all the survival issues they face.
The stories take you into the hearts and, in one case, the home of the Green Visions workers. Buckley captured the sometimes bleak facts of their lives as well as their blossoming hopes. “I was really humbled by the fact that they would tell me those things, and tell me how they felt about those events in their lives,” he said.
For example, Tarin, who dropped out of high school in 10th grade, now hopes to go to college to study performing arts. “I can finally feel like I’m involved in something,” he says on camera.
Then there’s Anthony, who goes by the nickname of “Magic.” He shares, “Green Visions keeps me out of a lot of stuff. When I come to work, I get a lot of negative things off my mind.”
And there’s Breanna, who was living in a homeless shelter when she first started with the program. “I didn’t really feel like I had a family until I came to Green Visions,” she says. Now she talks about wanting to own a house and her own business.
Need a gift but you don’t know his size? Or don’t know what to give the person who already has everything she needs? Consider a tribute plaque in Greentopia’s FlourGarden. For as little as $100 for a single name, we can have your loved one’s name etched on a space in the FlourGarden’s Donor Recognition Wall. For $250, you can have two lines of poetry inscribed or create a memorial or commemorative dedication. Or just go whole hog and dedicate an entire section of the garden for $25,000. We’ll accommodate all budget sizes!
These laser-etched metal plaques will be attached to railings along the FlourGarden on Browns Race in the High Falls District. (Gifts of $25,000 or more get their own free-standing signs in the garden.) Besides honoring a loved one, you’ll be supporting our mission of creating vibrant public realms in sustainable, environmentally sensitive ways. And you get a tax deduction to boot!
Visit this page to find out more and to access our on-line order form. And happy giving.
