In conjunction with the exhibition Combined Overflow on view now at Proteus Gowanus, Greenlab Studio is hosting a build-it-yourself workshop at the Gowanus Canal Conservancy Salt Lot on how to construct a square foot stormwater garden module. Come out and learn how to build these gardens and return home with a module of your own!

As featured in the April 2014 issue of Dwell Magazine, these stormwater garden modules can be installed on any outdoor vertical surface such as a fence, a brick wall, or even a fire escape. In addition to providing valuable green space in any urban environment, they help capture rainwater before it enters our frequently overburdened stormwater system.

$50 registration fee, $40 for GCC members. All tools and materials are provided.
Click here to register

The Salt Lot is at the Dept of Sanitation lot at the end of Second Avenue, at the corner of Fifth St, where it dead ends into the canal.

Please join us for an evening of broom-making with a Master Broomsquire from the foothills of the Catskills.  David of Catskill Mountain Broomworks, will create two very special brooms fashioned from a locally raised crop of broomcorn grown this summer on the banks of the Gowanus Canal.

The Gowanus brooms are the culmination of the project “SWEEP” by the collaborative Husk with the Gowanus Canal Conservancy and with support from the Brooklyn Arts Council and FEAST Brooklyn.

This May, Husk planted broomcorn seed along a terraced garden just above the high tide zone of the Gowanus. Broomcorn is a type of Sorghum that was once commonly used to make brooms. Brooklyn was once home to a small broom-making industry but with the introduction of synthetic materials broomcorn cultivation declined and the broom-making industry left Brooklyn. The Gowanus Canal is currently a US Superfund Clean Up site and the garden was only steps away from a caution sign marking a combined sewage output. The Gowanus brooms are meant to draw attention to efforts being made to clean and restore the area around the canal. This evening, Husk celebrates the rare heritage craft of broom-making and invites you to watch the transformation of the Gowanus broomcorn into the Gowanus Brooms.

Come enjoy music, photographs of the garden, and beer donated by Six Point Brewery.

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Husk is a collaborative project of Christina Kelly and Jeffrey Hutchison.

The Gowanus Canal Conservancy is a steward for the preservation, restoration and green development of the Gowanus Canal