Art in the Garden: Gathered from the Field Ornaments

As winter settles in and the landscape shifts toward its quieter hues, join teaching artist Junell Banks for a seasonal and mindful workshop. Using seedheads, dried grasses, and clipped evergreens—materials gathered from the edges of fields, garden beds, and the lingering memory of autumn growth—participants will craft botanical ornaments designed to carry personal affirmations or winter intentions.

Together, we’ll sort through our found natural materials from the garden and park, and work with the feathery plumes of wild grasses, sculptural seedheads, and the grounding scent of evergreen clippings. At the heart of each piece, you’ll tuck a written affirmation or intention to nurture through the winter season.

Your Facilitator: Junell Banks

Junell Banks is a creative visionary from Harlem, who blends her passions for creative direction, youth empowerment, and self-love advocacy. Through her multifaceted initiatives, she embodies a commitment to inspiring those around her to embrace their authentic selves with creativity and confidence.

Grounded in the garden, join us to critically and creatively engage in a diversity of artmaking techniques that open us up to deeper dialogue on place, our relationships to our lived environments, ecological concerns, and contemporary culture. Learn meditative and mindful drawing, printmaking and sculptural techniques, scientific observation with plant portraiture, nature-inspired intuitive artmaking and mixed media exploration, and other various practices from botanical and ecologically-focused contemporary artists to create works of art to nurture your relationship to the garden.

Immerse yourself in the learning garden, greenhouse, and across Riverbank State Park's green roof overlooking the Hudson River to create artwork that is rooted in place and in partnership with plants.

Workshops are rain or shine.

When inside the greenhouse and kitchen we will open our double-doors and windows to vent the space and encourage masking and social distancing when in more closed-in spaces.

Accessibility: Our kitchen/classroom space is wheelchair accessible. With prior planning, we can add a few small mats onto the pebbled ground of greenhouse to make a small wheel-chair accessible path. Our learning garden has grass paths, and the entrance is through a gate with a small, raised entrance. Our tables can be lowered/raised, and we have several backless benches or stools. Our kitchen is in regular use, and while we try to cook without peanuts, much of our cookware is shared and we cannot guarantee a nut-free environment. We have a first aid kit, and the closest AED is in another building several yards away. Drinking water is made available in refillable pitchers.

Our closest bathrooms are a building away, about a one-minute walk. A gender neutral bathroom is also available, and this is accessible by key which you can request from staff. We are not a scent-free zone, and because herbalism classes take place here, cannot guarantee that the site will be clear of any essential oil smells. If you have needs not addressed here, please reach out to Mallory Craig at mcraig@thehort.org.