The Giving Garden is a self-sustaining garden located in Westchester, NY at the Port Chester Middle School. Allison Silverman is a teacher at the middle school and started the garden 14 years ago to help her students learn about nutrition and valuable skills in the kitchen. The garden further blossomed into a local outlet for fighting food insecurity throughout the town.
The Giving Garden also advocates for sustainability; they often work with other organizations such as the Children’s Environmental Literacy Foundation to make sustainability efforts more accessible for the students.
The Port Chester school district is the first district in the country to be declared “carbon neutral” by a United Nations initiative. With the help from the nonprofit One World, an organization focused on educating students about world issues, the district has been able to offset carbon emissions since 2019.
The Giving Garden supports the carbon neutral initiative and for the past 14 years has advocated for environmental sustainability. The garden’s influence directly contributed to why Port Chester is so passionate about making a global environmental impact. Fourteen years ago, Allison Silverman took the first step toward a more sustainable future for the town of Port Chester.