🌿 Rooftop Reciprocity: An Urban Gardening — Action Lab #3 🌱
In a city that runs on speed and extraction, what does it look like to slow down and build a relationship with the living things around you?
This Metacrisis Action Lab is part mingle, part workshop, part tea ceremony, part meditation — and part getting your hands in the dirt. We'll spend the afternoon learning about the properties and histories of the herbs we'll be working with, what to think about as you begin designing your own urban garden, and how tending plants can be a small act of reciprocity in a chaotic, capitalistic world. It's a chance to heal our relationship with the world around us, one planter at a time.
These aren't random picks. We'll be planting rosemary, sage, hyssop, mugwort, and yarrow — five herbs that humans have leaned on for centuries for remembrance, cleansing, protection, dreaming, and healing. There's a whole history in each one, and Lauren will walk us through it before we put them in the ground.
Then we'll head up to the Lightning Society rooftop and put it into practice — taking a couple of our neglected planters and transforming them from rooftop dead zones into tiny herbal gardens. You'll leave with your own plant, a little dirt under your nails, and some new ideas for what you might grow at home.
The afternoon:
3:00–3:30 — Arrival & mingle
3:30–3:50 — Herbal presentation
3:50-4:10 — Herbal Tea Tasting+ Discussion
4:10-4:30 — Rooftop Garden talk.
4:30–6:30 — Up to the rooftop for hands-on planting, play, and grounded work
6:30 onward — For those who want to linger, we'll order in some food and enjoy the sunset together after a day of real work
Bring a sun hat. We'll be on the roof in the afternoon light, so dress for the sun and for getting your hands dirty.
About Lauren
Lauren Sadowsky is the Business Development Manager at The Horticultural Society of New York, with a background spanning urban agriculture, green infrastructure, public space activation, and natural areas stewardship. She holds an M.S. in Natural Resources and Community-Based Conservation from Colorado State and is, at heart, a systems thinker — which is exactly why she's the right person to help us think about gardens not as decoration, but as relationships