The St. Louis Community Garden Summit is an annual Gateway Greening event that brings in over 200 people and provides the opportunity to hear from national experts on community gardening, horticulture, and community development. Attendees participate in networking with other gardeners and people working in sustainable practices across the region.
This year’s keynote address will be presented by Magali Regis, an architect practicing in New York City, with a focus on sustainable design, historic preservation and adaptive reuse. She is also a community gardener and garden activist, working for the past 20 years to preserve New York’s communal public spaces from looming development. Magali also serves on the board of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, an advocacy group representing over 600 NYC community gardens and 20,000 gardeners and is a member of LUNGS (Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens), a coalition of community gardens in NYC’s Lower East Side working to create a Community Garden District. She has been featured on the BBC news, conducted workshops at the American Community Gardening Association’s conferences, participated in an international forum on Parks in Moscow, and conducted workshops in New York City’s GreenThumb Gardeners conferences.
New York City is home to over 600 community gardens. Most have appeared within the last 30 years and contributed to a green space renaissance. These communal spaces, run entirely by small groups of neighbors – volunteers who have transformed these once neglected empty lots into lush gardens and urban farms, are catalysts for urban renewal and neighborhood revitalization. These gardens are at the crossroads of social, economic, cultural and environmental assertion. Come hear how we are creating a green revolution in a city that is more typically known to be a concrete jungle.