Urban Farm

Urban Farm

The Randall’s Island Park Alliance’s Urban Farm is an environmentally sustainable, community-focused farm and outdoor classroom. Since its inception in 2006, the Urban Farm has grown in size and scope, featuring over 100 raised beds, two greenhouses, four rice paddies, and a small fruit tree orchard.

Your Visit

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Open Hours
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Edible Education Field Trips
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Volunteering
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Programs on The Farm
Open Hours

Join us for self-guided exploration on weekends between 10 AM and 4 PM from April to September. Discover a variety of fruits and vegetables, an active composting system, and a Tot Lot designed for our youngest friends. For inquiries about accessibility or special requests, please email [email protected].

Field Trips

Our experienced team of Urban Farmers and Educators guide students through age-appropriate hands-on classes focused on the environment, planting, composting, and cooking. Lessons adapt to seasonal changes and are designed to align with NYS learning standards.

Volunteering

Interested in getting your hands dirty on the Urban Farm? Join the team for drop-in volunteer hours as we compost, weed, plant, and water throughout the growing season. No registration is required for individuals! For more information about bringing a community or corporate group to the farm:

General Volunteer
Corporate Volunteer

Experience the Farm

Open April-October, our farm offers field trips, workshops, festivals, volunteer days, and more. Explore your culinary side with: interactive cooking workshops, farm-inspired cocktails, and live food demonstrations. Visit our events calendar and social media for updates.

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Open Hours
Open Hours

Join us for self-guided exploration on weekends between 10 AM and 4 PM from April to September. Discover a variety of fruits and vegetables, an active composting system, and a Tot Lot designed for our youngest friends. For inquiries about accessibility or special requests, please email [email protected].

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Edible Education Field Trips
Field Trips

Our experienced team of Urban Farmers and Educators guide students through age-appropriate hands-on classes focused on the environment, planting, composting, and cooking. Lessons adapt to seasonal changes and are designed to align with NYS learning standards.

icon
Volunteering
Volunteering

Interested in getting your hands dirty on the Urban Farm? Join the team for drop-in volunteer hours as we compost, weed, plant, and water throughout the growing season. No registration is required for individuals! For more information about bringing a community or corporate group to the farm:

General Volunteer
Corporate Volunteer

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Programs on The Farm
Experience the Farm

Open April-October, our farm offers field trips, workshops, festivals, volunteer days, and more. Explore your culinary side with: interactive cooking workshops, farm-inspired cocktails, and live food demonstrations. Visit our events calendar and social media for updates.

Inside The Farm

With education at the forefront of its design, the Urban Farm embodies the core belief that plants and children can grow side by side. With over 200 varieties of fruits and vegetables from around the world, the Urban Farm allows visitors to deepen their understanding of where food comes from. Strolling through the farm, you’ll discover fruits and vegetables you’ve never seen in grocery stores and crops that are culturally relevant to our nearby communities. Through free hands-on classes and public events focused on sustainability, cooking, planting, and composting, farm visitors of all ages can explore locally-grown food in an urban environment.

School groups can visit through our Edible Education Program, and we invite the public to explore during weekend open hours and many program offerings. The Urban Farm is located at the island’s southern end, adjacent to the park’s playground, a picnic area, playing fields, and a public restroom.

The Randall’s Island Park Alliance is proud to program and maintain the Urban Farm and greatly appreciates donations to help continue to make these events possible.

Urban Farm

Learn More

Food Distribution
Sustainable Agriculture
Compost
Tot Lot
Rice Paddies
Fruit Tree Orchard
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Food Distribution

Food Distribution

The Urban Farm grows over 3,500 lbs of food annually, donating over 60% of the food produced to the LSA Food Pantry. This pantry serves 350 families in our neighboring community of East Harlem. Much of the remaining harvest goes to the Urban Farm’s Edible Education programs. The public can sample the farm’s produce at free cooking workshops throughout the season or at the Urban Farm’s free farm stands at one of RIPA’s major festivals. Check the events calendar for a chance to take home some of our vegetables grown on the Urban Farm.

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Sustainable Agriculture

Sustainable Agriculture

The Urban Farm utilizes sustainable agricultural practices that support soil fertility and increase biodiversity on the farm. Careful crop rotation enables plants to draw different nutrients from the soil each year and discourages the spread of pests and diseases and the need for chemical pesticides. The Urban Farm uses integrated pest management practices, like using netting or row cover to discourage large animals, releasing natural predators, planting disease-resistant crop varieties, or removing pests by hand. These practices ensure that a range of animals and insects can still visit the farm without causing serious damage to the plants. In addition to adding compost to beds, the Urban Farm plants cover crops that benefit the soil, like oats and peas, which build nitrogen levels.

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Compost

Compost

Students and volunteers help maintain the farm’s three-bin compost system, by regularly processing food scraps and turning each bin by hand. In addition to hand-aerating, the compost bins are also fed by a solar-powered forced-air system (a gift from Green Mountain Energy’s Sun Club). Air provides oxygen to diverse beneficial insects, invertebrates, bacteria, and fungi, which in turn break down the food scraps. In 2023, the Urban Farm processed more than 3,200 pounds of food scraps, converting this community waste into nutritious soil amendment for its growing beds. Students who visit the farm apply the compost created to the vegetable beds, learning valuable lessons in cultivating healthy soils and vegetables all at once.

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Tot Lot

Tot Lot

A tunnel leads into the Tot Lot, doubling as a play space for children and a trellis for growing climbing plants for visitors to taste. In the Tot Lot, visitors can find a farm-inspired play area for children of all ages. It features a dig bed, flower-shaped chalkboards, pollinator-themed “rocking chairs,” herbs to engage all five senses, child-sized tools, and a play-sized farm stand. The space is designed both for active and social play and for quiet, self-guided exploration, allowing children to participate in sensory engagement and imaginative, creative role-play. In a corner of our Tot Lot, visitors will find our Book Barn, a growing collection of farm, garden, animal, and food-related books. Visitors can enjoy books during their time on the farm and return the books before leaving.

Link to Amazon Wish List

Rice Paddies

The rice paddies at the Urban Farm are some of the only known rice paddies in New York City and offer visitors a rare chance to see how a foundational part of the human diet is grown. They are also a fascinating example of how artificial wetlands ecology is used in food production. Each lowland paddy holds 1,000 gallons of water in its soil and 1,600 rice grains every season. The rice paddies form the cornerstone of the Taste of Rice Program, designed in partnership with Central Park East II, which follows students through their early elementary school years. Students help seed, plant, and process all the rice grown on the Urban Farm. Through the multi-year program, CPE II students delve into the science of growing rice while celebrating our cultural connections to the food we eat.

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Fruit Tree Orchard

Fruit Tree Orchard

The Urban Farm’s recently-established orchard pathway takes visitors past a wide range of fruit species, including fig, pomegranate, peach, plum, pawpaw, Asian pear, and persimmon trees. Depending on the time of year, visitors can witness the emergence of flower buds, the growth of the immature fruit, or its changing hues as the fruit slowly ripens. The farm’s fruit production also features a variety of berries, trellised green concord grapes, and several espaliered fruit trees, highlighting space-saving growing methods useful in urban spaces.

Our Partners

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F.A.Q.

What's the best way to get involved with the Urban Farm?

Volunteering is one of the best ways to become an integral part of the Urban Farm Community. If you’re a young adult living in NYC, age 14–24, you are also eligible to work on the farm as a summer youth employee (https://www.nyc.gov/site/dycd/services/jobs-internships/summer-youth-employment-program-syep.page). If your school or program has an internship program and you’d like to intern at the farm, you can email us at [email protected] to find out next steps. For less formal involvement, explore the farm during weekend open hours, attend our events, and chat with the farmers.

What can I do at the Urban Farm?

The farm is for both children and adults! When visiting the farm on a weekend, stop by our welcome table opposite the farm’s outdoor kitchen. You will find seed packets, coloring books, and information about upcoming events and workshops. In addition to these take-home materials, the welcome table offers self-guided tour maps, scavenger hunts, and bingo to help you explore the space. Walking around the farm, you will discover a wide range of signage created to guide your visit.

Can the public harvest the vegetables grown at the Urban Farm?

The public is invited to taste certain crops during open hours with staff approval. Strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, snap peas, and cucamelon can all occasionally be harvested in small snacking quantities. When possible, leave enough for the next person to enjoy! Please be aware, while picking, that the farm receives many visitors each day, and on weekdays, school groups come to taste the same crops.

How can I partner with the Urban Farm?

As a public, community-focused farm, the Urban Farm at Randall’s Island is committed to working with organizations, individuals, students, teachers, gardeners, and community groups in our surrounding communities and beyond. If you would like to research a crop growing on the farm, teach a workshop, host a community event, learn from us, share your knowledge, or collaborate in any way please email us at [email protected].

I have an idea, a comment, or a suggestion - how can I share it?

Throughout the years, the Urban Farm has benefited from the community knowledge, practices, and learned experiences of many gardeners, farmers, and cooks from around the world who have shared with us. We welcome all feedback, suggestions, and comments from visitors and our community. Submit yours to [email protected].

Are there any animals on the Urban Farm?

The Urban Farm has no farm animals as of the 2023 growing season. If you visited the farm in the past, you may have met our beloved farm chickens. The Farm Team is working hard to improve the infrastructure to bring back our chickens. Stay tuned to this page for updates. In the meantime, we encourage farm visitors to keep an eye out for other smaller animals (like birds, pollinators, and other wildlife) amongst us who call the farm home.

Get Involved

Volunteer

Your work will help us keep Randall’s Island Park a vibrant and wonderful place for all New Yorkers! Click to learn more about how you can help

Careers

We are looking for candidates who are excited about Randall’s Island Park Alliance (RIPA) and would enjoy working in a park!

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