Gardens & Green Spaces: A Summer with Green Team
Marcus Kassick, Community Engagement Coordinator [TerraCorps]
The CitySprouts Green Team Summer Program was a major success this past summer! The Green Team Summer Program is a free opportunity designed for rising 5-8th graders to learn gardening, cooking, and leadership skills while working and spending time outdoors. Youth learn to be leaders and stewards in their community through a combination of garden work, STEAM-focused projects, and field trips to outdoor spaces within their community.
2025 Green Team staff
Before getting into the fun, we want to give a huge shout out to our CitySprouts Green Team, team for running a smooth and enriching program. Thank you to Kalyani, Luis, Austin, Melissa, Alex, Lily, Catherine, Sadie, Audrey, Kerry, and Leila!
CitySprouts’ hope is to inspire a generation to grow a greener future. Green Team members work in the gardens each week, maintaining and sustaining them to a yield a strong harvest through the fall. They also spend their time exploring the Boston and Cambridge communities and the vast environmental learning resources that green spaces and museums in the area have to offer. Like any other summer, this summer with Green Team was filled with lots of interesting, exciting, and special moments.
Here’s a trip down memory lane!
To kick off the summer, the Boston-based Green Team traveled to the Museum of Science and learned about hydroponic freight farms, climate change, bug habitats, and engineering the Charles River!
The Cambridge-based Green Team took a field trip to The Harvard Museum of Natural History. They explored various exhibits learning about the most innovative climate solutions of our times and how they have an impact on the ways we live, move, work, and eat. They checked out the glass flower exhibit, spent some time observing the rocks and minerals in the earth science exhibit, and observed different animals from all over the world in the taxidermy exhibit.
Exploring green spaces in the community:
The Rose Kennedy Greenway Garden [pictured on the left] where the Green Team learned about food-producing plots and helped harvest produce (Photo Credit: Greenway Conservancy Staff). The Dark Matter Garden [pictured on the right], a private garden nestled in Somerville, where youth got the chance to see a very different kind of garden than food production.
Taking on the Charles-kayaking with the Charles River Conservancy to check out the floating wetlands and learn about reducing harmful algae blooms in the Charles, which threatens the river's health.
A trip to Georges Island of the Boston Harbor Islands National Park where Green Team members learned about the Boston Harbor Islands from a Harbor Historian and explored the island in different ways like hiking around, going on archeological treasure hunts, and even going fishing and catching crabs!
Of course, it wouldn’t be a CitySprouts summer without gardening time! Green Team members spent a lot of time cultivating their schoolyard gardens. They built their own pollinator garden, learned about the different seeds they planted, and made connections with their peers. They even had a special garden visit from Mayor Michelle Wu of the City of Boston! Read more about Green teams day with Mayor Wu here.
August marked the end of summer Green Team! Staff and youth successfully completed two sessions - The Science of Gardening and Growing Green Communities - filled with new friends, exploring the city, caring for the gardens, and enjoying the harvest!
"Our summer Green Team youth had a blast learning everything from the anatomy of a flower to the importance of green spaces in the community," said Youth Program Manager, Alex Frank.
He also mentioned "some of the biggest highlights - according to the students - were our field trips kayaking on the Charles and exploring Georges Island on a harbor tour." We are proud of Green Team for their hard work and exploration this summer and look forward to seeing some of them back this fall! Green Team members finished off the program by receiving an official Green Team certificate and stipend! As we wrapped up the summer programs, Alex also shared his pride in the outcomes of the Summer Green Team Program, "we are excited to build this program and continue to provide tuition-free, accessible garden programming to the youth of Cambridge and Boston." Thank you to the Green Team staff for their hard work and to all of the Green Team youth for creating beautiful memories in their schoolyard gardens.