The Children’s Magical Garden is located on the corner of Norfolk and Stanton Street on the Lower East Side. It is one block south of Houston, across from the Lower East Side Prep on one corner, and the Anna Silver School on the other.

The garden is open Monday through Friday after school, from 4 PM until dusk, and on Saturdays from 2 PM until dusk. We are also often open on Sundays and for extended times on weekdays. Come in whenever the gates are open! Contact us to become a member and open the garden whenever you have time!

The garden is open to everyone, and especially welcomes kids and their guardians.

Please check out our calendar of events for upcoming fun, kid and family oriented activities!

The garden is facing imminent destruction by developers. Please check out our Save the Garden page to find out what you can do to help!

 

Vision:

The Children’s Magical Garden is a special place for kids to play, learn, and grow among the living, ever-changing natural world. It is a place for city kids, who would otherwise have little access to green spaces, to run around rose bushes and swing under apple trees. Most of the kids who use the garden on a regular basis come from families who can’t afford to go on expensive nature vacations, and whose work schedules prevent them from taking their kids to city parks with any frequency. The garden lets city kids experience the outdoors in a way that would be impossible in a concrete playground. It is like a shared backyard, made magical by the many years of love, hard work, and the spirit of community that sustains it. Kids play tag, race the wooden boxcar, make mud pies, and draw huge silly faces in the dirt. The garden is big enough for kids to really get a chance to be active.

Kids need safe, fun, educational experiences during long summer days and after school in order to broaden their horizons and spark their creativity. The Children’s Magical Garden gives them those experiences. Kids watch peaches, strawberries, nectarines, and apples ripen in the garden. They learn about composting, what makes good soil, why we need the worms, why we need the trees. They learn skills that will help to sustain them for the rest of their lives. They learn values that will help to sustain the earth.

The garden fosters community on the Lower East Side. Parents and gardeners, who are proven, responsible community members, teach kids about art, crafts, music, science, math, dance, history, sociology, and of course gardening. Kids teach adults their unique wisdom, too. The Children’s Magical Garden is a place for neighbors to get to know one another. When kids and adults in the neighborhood all know each other’s names, the neighborhood becomes stronger and safer.

So Why do we need a garden?

The garden was founded as a safe haven for children in a neighborhood overrun by crime. The location was chosen largely because it is on the corner between two schools. While the neighborhood has become safer, there is now a proliferation of bars, and a loss of community spaces. There is even a bar on the other end of the block from the garden, facing the high school. Community spaces like the garden are needed now more than ever. With skyrocketing cases of asthma in our area, trees are needed now more than ever, too.

We hope that The Children’s Magical Garden will continue to grow, enriching the lives of kids on the Lower East Side, for many years to come. We want the Children’s Magical Garden to become a permanent garden, as there will always be a great need for it in our community.