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 2016, founder Sean Brennan had hoped that our first garden, the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden, would find its home at the 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 develop his idea for the Brain Food Garden Project while sitting 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.

Our certified team of 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

The garden 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 is also a garden for the entire hospital community. There will be volunteer days other hospital visitors and staff may take advantage of participating in, as well as garden tour days for those who just want to check out our work in progress.

After several attempts at trying to work with Health and Hospitals, the Brain Food Garden Project's first Advisory Board made the decision to forgo trying to start off working within the hospital system. We would delay pursuing hospitals until after we had our first garden established as a free-standing operation and worked to create greater community support.

In 2018, founder Sean Brennan partnered with Baltic Street AEH, Inc., the largest 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 their mental health participants of this holistic peer-run drop-in Center. In 2022, Baltic Street awarded BFGP their Community Partnership Award for our founder Sean Brennan's continuing work with their program.

In 2019, in BFGP's continuing quest to assist mental health peers to Connect-Garden- and Grow. A pilot program for BFGP Peer Volunteer Days was being created. This mental health peer volunteer day would happen at already established local gardens. Participants would have been led in their garden activities by a BFGP peer-certified gardener and would set out to foster peer communication, working together, and utilizing peer principles in the garden as recovery tools. Each participant gardener would take home a large bag of seasonal fruits and vegetables for their volunteer effort provided by the urban farm they were volunteering for. This program would also work within the garden’s localized community to broaden mental health knowledge in an effort to combat mental health stigma.

BFGP was in the final stages of negotiating with the owners of Brooklyn Grange Farm at their Sunset Park location to start the summer of 2019 When COVID-19 shut our country down for two long years. The eventual goal would have been to have a BFGP volunteer location in every NYC borough.

After the world returns to a new normal. BFGP’s first Advisory Board decided to suspend this program for the time being to pursue further workshop and training opportunities as well as continue the ongoing effort to strengthen our partnership with Baltic Street AEH, Inc.

As our 10-year Anniversary comes to a conclusion in 2023. We continue to strengthen our relationships with our community partners and are preparing to take our next bold leap to find the space to build our first mental health community garden, the Todd Petriscak Memorial Garden and CSA. Finally, move from having a fiscal partner to obtaining our 501C3 status.

In our efforts to advance this work in December 2023 we submitted our application to join the 2024 cohort of the Urban Justice Center's Social Justice Accelerator. "The SJA is designed to shepherd new and early-stage social justice leaders through the challenges of developing a well-functioning operation, by bringing them into the UJC community, where they will be mentored by expert leaders in the nonprofit and entrepreneurial fields. Over the course of two years, the SJA provides up to five individuals with the support and resources to turn their vision for social change into a reality." We were proud to have been a finalist and invited to interview with the program's leadership. We congratulate the five organizations chosen to be a part of the 2024 accelerator.

In early 2024 we will had a series of meetings with Rising Ground management to see if there are any potential opportunities for partnership between our two organizations in the future

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. We congratulate the category's winners as well as celebrating all of the other category winners at this years event.