Our History

Connect-Garden-Grow

Since announcing Brain Food Garden Project’s founding in 2013 on the Ginger NY Talk Show on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network (MNN). BFGP has worked to connect mental health peers interested in gardening as a wellness tool to already existing gardens and urban farms across New York City. Our primary goal was to connect peers with local gardens in their neighborhoods who desired to use gardening as a tool for community reintegration and healing. BFGP also started a successful campaign to reach as many mental health peers as possible and communities to create person-centered conversations around mindful eating and its positive effects on mental health.

Our founder, Sean Brennan, has had several mental health peer advocates support him on his own journey of recovery. From day one wished that the Brain Food Garden Project would be a program for peers managed and operated by mental health peers. He attended the Howie T. Harp Advocacy Program and became an NYS-certified mental health peer advocate. He realized that there were very few peer-run and operated programs in the country. Most mental health programs are still being operated through the medical model. Sean made a pledge that his entire organization would be operated by persons with lived experience.

In our first attempt in 2016, to build the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden, on unused hospital space within a NYC Health + Hospitals site. It was important to our Founder and Executive Director Sean Brennan that our first garden be connected to Health + Hospitals Metropolitan Community Hospital as he himself received excellent psychiatric care at MHC during a mental health crisis in 2012. It was during his time in 6 West that he started to finalize his idea for the Brain Food Garden Project. As he sat in his room every day after lunch and in his mind, staring out his window at a patch of empty rooftop space directly below started planting an imaginary garden that by the time of his discharge was completely flourishing. The space he looked down on is pictured here after our partner Brook Farm Group created a rendering of what it could look like. The program we were discussing creating for the Metropolitan Community Hospital and for their surrounding neighbors:

A certified team of our peer advocates would be responsible for:

Facilitating weekly sessions in in-patient units where peers and facilitators begin to have a fun and informative discussion on the role food plays in their mental health.
To lead peers off the unit when reaching higher levels of recovery to provide opportunities to garden in the hospital garden and participate in seasonal gardening and other related activities.
Coordinating with outpatient services and outside agencies (housing programs and HARP programs) and creating a warm environment where patients feel a desire to return to the hospital, benefitting from continuing to work on what they had already cultivated in our garden.
To be a reminder to patients that they are never alone, that their life does have meaning, and that they have a peer support system to turn to no matter what their circumstances.

Our Community Supported Agriculture Program (CSA)

A CSA is a program that allows consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. In the first of its kind, the Brain Food Garden Project CSA will offer those living with mental health concerns an opportunity to receive boxes of fresh produce from our hospital garden seasonally at a very low cost of $10.00 a season for a family share or $5.00 for a single share per season. Participants in the Brain Food Garden Project gardening program, "our farmers," will automatically receive a share if they so desire at no cost. Depending on the productivity of the garden, extra produce may be sold at a hospital farmer's market for the entire neighborhood and hospital community to take advantage of, where other community gardeners will also be invited to come and share their fruits and vegetables at this monthly community event.

Changing the dialogue of food within the hospital’s surrounding neighborhood by offering low-cost fresh fruits and vegetables through two distinct and creative programs
By starting a hospital community market with the fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the hospital garden
To create a low-cost CSA program specifically for the mental health community, providing fruits and vegetables grown in the hospital gardens.

Building a Hospital Community Around Our Garden

While the garden's first service would primarily be for mental health peers to utilize as a wellness tool for their recovery while hospitalized and after discharge. The Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden would have served the surrounding neighborhood. There would be volunteer days other hospital visitors and staff may take advantage of participating in, as well as garden tour days for those who just wanted to check out our work in progress.

After a fruitful start with initial first contact meetings with administrators, nothing eventually came out of it, due to administrative changes and excessive red tape generated in our attempts at trying to work with Health+ Hospitals.

Therefore, Brain Food Garden Project's first Advisory Committee made the decision to postpone trying to work within the hospital system. We would reshape our original mission to work to establish our first garden as a free-standing operation and would work to build greater community support. As the great Thomas Edison said, "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." The model we created for the hospital system wasn't flawed and is what later became part of our Connect+Garden+Grow model.

In 2017, founder Sean Brennan partnered with Baltic Street AEH, Inc., now named Baltic Street Wellness Solutions the largest 1st generation peer-operated program in New York State. He worked with the Director of the Baltic Street Community Resource & Wellness Center in Brooklyn to create an indoor garden space, facilitate regular garden club meetings, and add BFGP Presents: Feeding Our Mental Health Workshops to the weekly calendar for the participants of this holistic peer-run drop-in Center.

Fast forward to 2022, Baltic Street awarded Brain Food Garden Project their Community Partnership Award for our founder Sean Brennan's continuing work with their program and the mental health community.

In 2019, founder Sean Brennan signed a fiscal partnership agreement with BioCities, the nonprofit arm of Kathleen Bakewell's urban landscape design company Brook Farm Group. The agreement was reached so that Brain Food Garden Project could start raising small sums of money for business upkeep and to fund smaller projects while being able to provide donors with tax deductible donations. Also, our ED created our first Advisory Board pledging to support a 100% female driven board to underline the still disproportionate number of men to women that serve as CEO's, ED's and sit as Board Directors. Our founder stated, "It is way past time that men that claim to be allies to women stop just talking the talk and start walking the walk!"

After celebrating our 10 year anniversary in 2023, we continued to strengthen our relationships with our community partners and prepared to take our next bold leap, First, finally moving from having a fiscal sponsorship to obtaining our own 501(c)3. And second, seeking land or rooftop space to make our first standalone mental health community garden, the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden and CSA a reality!

In our efforts to advance this work in 2024 we submitted our application to the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest to seek pro-bono services in filing for Brian Food Garden Project's 501(c)3.

Also, in 2024 we expanded upon our Connect+Garden+Grow model by taking a series of meetings with management at Rising Ground to see if there are any potential opportunities for partnership between our two organizations in the future. Talks began around providing Feeding Our Mental Health programming and creating a garden space for one of the buildings within their housing program. Our Founder and ED was also invited to keynote at their first Rising Ground Youth Summit.

Our Founder and ED announced that he had written a book titled The Compassionate Path: Navigating Mental Health Peer Advocacy and Nonprofit Development. The mission of the book was to inspire mental health peer advocates with a "big idea" for their own nonprofit providing hope and insight, based on his own lived experience and journey. The book will be released through Amazon and Kindle in 2025.

In May 2024 our Founder/ Executive Director Sean Brennan was nominated in the category of "Leading the Charge" at the first ever Mayor's Office of Community Mental Health Community Health Workers/Peer Support Workers Recognition Event and Awards Breakfast. Our founder/ED stated after the ceremony, "It was an honor to be nominated with such amazing and diverse peer advocates doing such important work in our community."

And in September of 2024 our ED Sean Brennan met with the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) management to see where they might be able to best assist Brain Good Garden Project in getting our first community garden built and how to provide BFGP Presents: Feeding Our Mental Health workshops to more communities.

In 2025 Brain Food Garden Project has much to celebrate! New York Lawyers for the Public Interest accepted Brain Food Garden Projects as a client and has already found us a pro-bono legal team to assist us. The process has began with the creation of our Board of Directors, filing our Certificate of Incorporation and working to create BFGP's bylaws.

After an expansive renovation and name change for Baltic Street Wellness Solutions drop in Center, now re-named the Isaac Brown Healing Arts & Community Center. Our founder and ED Sean Brennan is expected to sign a letter of agreement to become the Center's peer advisor on all things mindful eating and gardening. Twice a month he will facilitate their Baltic Street Garden Club meetings in their new hydroponic garden center and provide BFGP Presents: Feeding Our Mental Health workshops to Center participants.

Also, in the spring of 2025 our Founder and ED's first book The Compassionate Path: Navigating Mental Health Peer Advocacy and Nonprofit Development will be released on AMAZON and Kindle.

Our Founder and ED returns to Community Access's Howie the Harp Advocacy Center to provide the first peer workshop based on material from his new book to the Winter/2025 cohort. The workshop is titled, The Importance of Strategic Career Planning: From Lived Experience to Lived Expertise