Cindy Goulder

It is thanks to Cindy Goulder, steward and fearless leader of the Poplar Street Community Garden since the 1990s, that you will find more than a plot of soil to grow your vegetables.

Cindy inspired us by being an venerable champion of the Garden for over three decades, transforming this once-abandoned scrap of public land along the Brooklyn Queens Expressway into a community oasis.

She also educated so many of us — novice and experienced gardeners alike — by sharing her encyclopedic knowledge of plants. We learned to care for the whole garden, from its tallest trees to the life in its soil. We learned to create a beautiful, sustainable, natural sanctuary for ourselves and our community.

Nature is nourished and nurtured here. Cindy stated, “Our garden was never meant to be a conventionally neat, weed-free, insect-free garden—just the opposite! Our plants are given space to grow and interact with each other and animals in a natural way.”

Thanks to Cindy’s guidance and planning, the Garden now includes more than 100 types of native plant species, flowers, and veggies, plus butterflies, bee hives, a bat house, and a compost system. Everything here is intended to enrich the space.

In January 2023, Cindy received the NYC Parks Green Thumb’s prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award for her outstanding contribution to community gardening throughout New York City. Since the 1990s, Cindy has helped design and supervise the ecological restoration of NYC coastal wetlands and uplands and assisted urban homeowners in creating their dream gardens in their backyards. She provided planting design and installation for the NYC Parks Department and the Brooklyn Bridge Park Conservancy and authored a highly acclaimed educational booklet about the nature of the Brooklyn Bridge shoreline.

It is because of Cindy’s love for the land and her leadership that the Poplar Street Community Garden now flourishes, offering members, friends, children, and passersby a respite of natural beauty.