Audio exhibit debuts at 13 community gardens, uncovering the climate shifts in Brooklyn backyards

Rinia Akter has been a gardener for two years at the Ashford Learning Garden. It makes her feel back home again in Bangladesh.

As her 80-year-old fingers tug up mugwort weeds and sow seeds at the Herbal Garden of East New York, head gardener Johanna Willins feels both “wonderful and worried.”

Willins is one of 57 New York City public gardeners featured in “The Warmest Years on Record,” an oral history project by Brooklyn artist Rachel Garber Cole that captures people's anxieties about the planet's future. It includes audio installations that opened at 13 community gardens across Brooklyn on June 4th during Open Garden Day. The project is funded by the Brooklyn Arts Council with the support of New York City Parks Department and runs through December 15th.

“It’s wonderful just watching everything come back alive after the winter time is over,” said Willins, as she rubbed mint and hyssop leaves between her fingers and smelled them. “But I see it [climate change]. I see it. I see it. After a long winter, what should have been up, was not up. And when it came up, it [collard greens] just looked funny, as if it didn’t get enough water, or it got a burn on it.”

On the front gate of each of the 13 gardens, colorful signs display a single question chosen from a series of 13 questions about climate change that Cole has been asking gardeners since the project started in 2018. To hear the answer, visitors scan a QR code on the poster, and listen to a demo of answers that range from seven to 20 minutes, depending on the question.

Click listen in the player to hear about this project, and visit Gothamist for more details.