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Due to the long-term partnership between The Bronx Institute and The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx GEAR UP Network students from the Celia Cruz Bronx High School of Music were given a special opportunity to attend the New York Botanical Garden’s Fall Wild Medicine Institute. The Fall Wild Medicine Institute is a workshop series where students are educated about and able to observe plants from across the globe that grow in varying environments. New York Botanical Garden experts guided students through multiple plant ecosystems housed in the Garden. Students were encouraged to draw and share pictures of plants they found particularly striking. Students were also given the chance to walk through the Botanical Garden’s famous annual Holiday Train Show, observing painstakingly crafted models of trains and towering man-made structures with a naturalistic plant background.
Brian Hockaday, a research assistant for the New York Botanical Garden Institute of Economic Botany, outlined the everyday uses of plants all around the Garden for the students. For example, the cacao plant, more commonly known as the cocoa plant, is used to create chocolate, which made it a class favorite. Such purposes ranged from creating foods like chocolate to fighting deadly diseases like malaria. In order to illustrate this variety of uses, students were given a hands-on experience by crafting their own hand sanitizers from the gel of the aloe vera plant. The workshop had a profound impact on the students, with some expressing an increased desire to protect nature and think about the environment around them.
Enclosed in this package are photos of the students participating in the workshop, speaking to Brian Hockaday and creating hand sanitizers. We hope you enjoy viewing these activities as much as the students enjoyed participating in them.