New York Restoration Project
Nature is a fundamental right of every New Yorker.
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our work helps make historically underserved communities more resilient. This includes greening community gardens, reviving unkempt parks, cleaning empty lots, and bringing to life other places that can serve as beautiful, green, open spaces. In these spaces, neighborhood residents can meet one another, garden together, share food and experiences, socialize and build friendships, enjoy movie nights and public events, and form bonds that can last a lifetime. The opportunity to have these experiences should be available to all New Yorkers, regardless of zip code. New York City has the highest population density of any major city in the United States, with over 27,000 people per square mile. NYRP makes the City more resilient because our sites provide ecosystem services, mitigating floods, increasing the urban tree canopy, and providing access to fresh food. They catalyze value by inspiring neighborhood-wide improvement, increasing retail activity, and building social capital.
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Parks & Gardens Stewardship
NYRP owns and maintains 52 community gardens across the five boroughs of NYC, nearly all of them located in underserved neighborhoods lacking substantial public green space. We also steward over 80 acres of parkland across Northern Manhattan, including Sherman Creek Park, Highbridge Park, and the Harlem River Greenway. Every year, NYRP removes thousands of pounds of trash and compostable materials, makes needed capital repairs, prunes trees, and completes other tasks as requested by garden members, ensuring these community assets remain clean, welcoming, and accessible year-round.
Community Engagement & Public Programming
Every NYRP garden is governed by a dedicated group of members who live or work nearby, and who work with NYRP to promote the garden, open it to the public, and recruit new members. They also plan enriching public programming to benefit the surrounding community, such as movie nights, theatrical and musical performances, literary readings, cooking and fitness classes, block parties, and much more. To support the planning and execution of these events, NYRP provides small grants and free equipment rentals through our Community Garden Activation Program. When renovating a garden, our Engagement team facilitates visioning sessions to ensure that the final design is informed by community needs. Other NYRP programming includes tree giveaways, volunteer opportunities, and online educational resources for teachers and parents.
Gardens for the City
NYRP collaborates with community partners across the city – including public schools, community-based organizations, senior centers, and others – to create or transform their underutilized open spaces into beautiful, productive, and welcoming gardens. We work closely with each applicant to understand how they wish to use their open space, and then provide the design, staff and volunteer labor, and materials to complete the project. Every year we complete 20-25 projects for our partners at no cost, building raised beds and shade structures, planting trees and perennials, installing rainwater collection systems, repairing walkways and fences, and providing seeds, soil, and plant starts.
Urban Agriculture
Forty-three of NYRP’s 52 community gardens support food production, providing over 18,000 square feet of growing space for fruits, herbs, and vegetables. Our Urban Agriculture team works on the ground in these gardens, serving as technical and educational resources to our gardeners and ensuring a successful harvest. We provide clean soil, compost, and garden tools, as well as seeds and plant starts to jumpstart the growing season. Gardeners also benefit from educational workshops, personal consultations, and NYRP’s facilitation of partnerships with local food pantries and community fridges. This program fosters stronger local food systems, encourages existing cultures of mutual aid, and connects New Yorkers tangibly to the food-growing process.
Building Resilient Urban Ecosystems
NYRP works to advance environmental sustainability, resiliency, and equity citywide. In Northern Manhattan, our innovative ecosystem restoration work at Swindler Cove and Highbridge Park protects the surrounding communities from the impacts of climate change, specifically sea level rise and the urban heat island effect. At Highbridge Park we remove invasives, clear litter, and plant native trees, shrubs, groundcover, and wildflowers in an effort to restore the area’s original ecological character and provide habitat for the park’s rare species. At Swindler Cove, we installed and continue to monitor our Living Shoreline – a 500-foot artificial oyster reef and restored salt marsh that reverses erosion and filters pollutants out of the Harlem River.
Where we work
External reviews

Videos
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Evaluation documents
Download evaluation reportsNumber of trees planted
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Parks & Gardens Stewardship
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Renovated number of garden spaces.
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Community Engagement & Public Programming
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Number of individuals attending community events or trainings
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Urban Agriculture
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Number of children educated about the environment, nutrition, and nature.
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Holding steady
Context Notes
The number of students educated depends primarily on our staff resources to deliver these vital programs.
Number of community events or trainings held and attendance
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Related Program
Urban Agriculture
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
NATURE IS A FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT OF EVERY NEW YORKER. At New York Restoration Project, we believe everyone deserves access to beautiful, high-quality public green space. Since our founding in 1995 by Bette Midler, we have been partnering with underserved communities to take back public space by picking up trash, planting trees, and renovating parks and gardens. The resulting transformation and ongoing care has been proven to lower crime, improve health, and reduce feelings of depression and worthlessness. Working together, neighbors become neighborhoods.
As New York’s only citywide conservancy, NYRP brings private resources to spaces that lack adequate municipal support, fortifying the City’s aging infrastructure and creating a safer, healthier, and happier city for every New Yorker. Every space that NYRP adopts receives a range of services and physical improvements intended to provide beautiful, clean, environmentally functional spaces.
The benefits of having access to nature cannot be overstated and have been demonstrated in countless research studies. Central to NYRP’s mission is creating a context for community to happen. Every space that NYRP adopts receives a range of services and physical improvements intended to provide beautiful, safe, clean, environmentally functional spaces.
NYRP: renovates NYRP community gardens in the most dense and least green, under-resourced neighborhoods throughout New York City; supports agricultural activity in NYRP gardens; and delivers garden workshops. We: educate K-8th grade school students citywide on the environment, nature, and nutrition citywide; offer fitness classes in parks and gardens; produce public programming events; host tree giveaway events for underserved New Yorkers; and build, develop, renovate, and improve Department of Education school yards, NYCHA housing campuses, senior citizen centers, local gardens, and other public spaces. Finally, we: plant trees, shrubs, and native perennials; build new public space on the waterfront site of Sherman Creek Park and return waterfront access to the under-served Washington Heights/Inwood community; and remove trash and produce compost.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
NYRP has pioneered a unique land-based approach to community building that combines:
• developing and maintaining land that is our own and land owned by government and private entities;
• integrating community needs, priorities, and partners into all our work;
• planning and executing projects swiftly using in-house design and operations staff;
• activating spaces through urban agriculture, education, fitness and cultural programming; and
• operating at multiple scales from site to neighborhood to citywide.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
Public space is where communities come together with their neighbors, children connect with their families, kids form lifelong friendships, individuals form lasting bonds, and families meet other families to build lasting friendships. New York Restoration Project reclaims and restores spaces as a shared community resource and envisions a future where open space is an integral and essential right of every community, contributing to the health and well-being of all citizens.
Founded by Bette Midler in 1995, New York Restoration Project has:
• Acquired and successfully run 52 community gardens in all five boroughs of New York City, saving them from commercial development.
• Revitalized more than 400 acres of public land throughout New York City.
• Co-led MillionTreesNYC with the New York City Parks Department, planting 250,000 of the million trees, and reaching our million tree goal two years ahead of schedule.
• Planted over 350,000 trees (including the 250,000 from MillionTreesNYC), 20,000 shrubs, 145,000 plants, and 58,000 bulbs throughout parks, community gardens, NYCHA campuses, schools, and other public spaces citywide.
• Given away 68,000 trees to New York City residents to plant on privately-owned land.
• Renovated and upgraded over 300 gardens in the least green and most economically depressed and underserved neighborhoods of New York City.
• Transformed four city parks – Ft Tryon, Ft Washington, Highbridge, and Sherman Creek. For example, we converted Sherman Creek, a five-acre dumping ground on the Harlem River, into a thriving park that includes an urban forest, a children's garden, a saltwater marsh, and public gathering space.
• Educated more than 65,000 K-8th grade school children about ecology, nutrition, and the environment using our community gardens and parks as outdoor classrooms.
• Engaged over 25,000 attendees through our arts, culture, and fitness programs.
• Mobilized over 65,000 volunteers in community greening projects.
• Removed 5,125,000 pounds of trash from highways, abandoned lots, gardens, and parks.
• Diverted 1,020,000 pounds of food scraps from the waste stream through composting.
What NYRP has done to date is unprecedented. We have transformed New York City’s urban landscape so that it is greener, more accessible and usable, and healthier for 8.6 million New York City residents. This is especially true for those residents of economically depressed, underserved neighborhoods throughout the five boroughs, where nearly all of NYRP’s community gardens and parks are located. We turn land liabilities into assets.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
Founded by Bette Midler in 1995, New York Restoration Project has:
• Acquired and successfully run 52 community gardens in all five boroughs of New York City, saving them from commercial development.
• Revitalized more than 400 acres of public land throughout New York City.
• Co-led MillionTreesNYC with the NYC Parks Dept, planting 250,000 of the million trees, and reaching our million tree goal two years ahead of schedule.
• Planted over 350,000 trees (including the 250,000 from MillionTreesNYC), 20,000 shrubs, 145,000 plants, and 58,000 bulbs throughout parks, community gardens, NYCHA campuses, schools, and other public spaces citywide.
• Given away 68,000 trees to New York City residents to plant on privately-owned land.
• Renovated and upgraded over 300 gardens in the least green and most economically depressed and underserved neighborhoods of New York City.
• Transformed four city parks – Ft Tryon, Ft Washington, Highbridge, and Sherman Creek. For example, we converted Sherman Creek, a five-acre dumping ground on the Harlem River, into a thriving park that includes an urban forest, a children's garden, a saltwater marsh, and public gathering space.
• Educated more than 65,000 K-8th grade school children about ecology, nutrition, and the environment using our community gardens and parks as outdoor classrooms.
• Engaged over 25,000 attendees through our arts, culture, and fitness programs.
• Mobilized over 65,000 volunteers in community greening projects.
• Removed 5,125,000 pounds of trash from highways, abandoned lots, gardens, and parks.
• Diverted 1,020,000 pounds of food scraps from the waste stream through composting.
We have carefully chosen the three strategies below to leverage NYRP’s unique expertise and maximize the benefits of merging environmental justice with social justice to make communities safer, healthier, and happier.
STRATEGY 1: Greening New York City
NYRP will green New York City by implementing the following initiatives:
• Garden Care and Maintenance
• Garden Stewardship Groups
• Urban Agriculture
• Garden Renovations
• Gardens for the City
• Tree Giveaways
STRATEGY 2: Communities Leading the Way
NYRP will prepare communities to build future environmental leaders, manage community gardens, and program community gardens by implementing the following initiatives:
• Environmental Education Programs
• Community Engagement
• Community Garden Activation Program
• Public Programming
STRATEGY 3: Building Resilient Urban Ecosystems
NYRP will pursue innovative strategies to build resilient urban ecosystems through the following initiatives:
• Highbridge Park Care and Reforestation
• Sherman Creek Park Care and Expanded Programming
• Living Shoreline Development
• Tree Stewardship
• Removing Trash and Redirecting Compost Material
How we listen
Seeking feedback from people served makes programs more responsive and effective. Here’s how this organization is listening.
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Who are the people you serve with your mission?
The parks and gardens that NYRP stewards benefit a wide array of New Yorkers of diverse ethnic and economic backgrounds. As an organization committed to both social and environmental justice, however, our scope of work primarily encompasses NYC’s underserved, low-income, and least green neighborhoods. The vast majority (73%) of our community gardens are located in East Harlem, the South Bronx, and Central Brooklyn, and when choosing Gardens for the City partners we prioritize those located in traditionally low-income and environmentally-neglected communities lacking green space. These partners include social services organizations and other community-based nonprofits; public housing tenant’s associations; affordable housing developments; houses of worship; block associations; and others.
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How is your organization collecting feedback from the people you serve?
Electronic surveys (by email, tablet, etc.), Community meetings/Town halls, Constituent (client or resident, etc.) advisory committees,
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How is your organization using feedback from the people you serve?
To identify and remedy poor client service experiences, To identify bright spots and enhance positive service experiences, To make fundamental changes to our programs and/or operations, To inform the development of new programs/projects, To identify where we are less inclusive or equitable across demographic groups, To strengthen relationships with the people we serve, To understand people's needs and how we can help them achieve their goals,
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With whom is the organization sharing feedback?
The people we serve, Our staff, Our board, Our funders, Our community partners,
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Which of the following feedback practices does your organization routinely carry out?
We take steps to ensure people feel comfortable being honest with us, We act on the feedback we receive,
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What challenges does the organization face when collecting feedback?
It is difficult to get the people we serve to respond to requests for feedback, The people we serve tell us they find data collection burdensome, It is difficult to find the ongoing funding to support feedback collection,
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
New York Restoration Project
Board of directorsas of 3/10/2022
Ms. Helena Durst
The Durst Organization
Term: 2019 -
Ms. Darcy Stacom
CBRE
Term: 2019 -
Bette Midler
Darcy Stacom
CBRE
Helena Durst
The Durst Organization
Vered Rabia
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Samuel Ashner
Winthrop Capital Partners
Betty Chen
BYC Projects
Todd DeGarmo
STUDIOS Architecture
Edmund Hollander
Edmund Hollander Design
Walter Hood
Hood Design Studio
Michael Kors
Michael Kors
Michael Lorber
Douglas Elliman Real Estate
Shelly Malkin
Erhard Marius
James Nederlander
The Nederlander Organization
Benjamin Needell
Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP
Darryl Pardi
Surveyor Capital
Janice Parker
Janice Parker Landscape Architects
David Rockwell
Rockwell Group
Josh Sirefman
Sidewalk Labs
Sophie von Haselberg
Miriam Wheeler
Goldman Sachs
Ann Ziff
Jann Wenner
Wenner Media
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? No -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? No
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? GuideStar partnered on this section with CHANGE Philanthropy and Equity in the Center.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
Race & ethnicity
Gender identity
Sexual orientation
No data
Disability
No data
Equity strategies
Last updated: 01/11/2021GuideStar partnered with Equity in the Center - an organization that works to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to increase racial equity - to create this section. Learn more
- We review compensation data across the organization (and by staff levels) to identify disparities by race.
- We ask team members to identify racial disparities in their programs and / or portfolios.
- We analyze disaggregated data and root causes of race disparities that impact the organization's programs, portfolios, and the populations served.
- We disaggregate data to adjust programming goals to keep pace with changing needs of the communities we support.
- We have long-term strategic plans and measurable goals for creating a culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.
- We seek individuals from various race backgrounds for board and executive director/CEO positions within our organization.
- We help senior leadership understand how to be inclusive leaders with learning approaches that emphasize reflection, iteration, and adaptability.
- We engage everyone, from the board to staff levels of the organization, in race equity work and ensure that individuals understand their roles in creating culture such that one’s race identity has no influence on how they fare within the organization.