photo by Amanda Reis
Public Food, Water, and Land in New York.
Growing or picking food on New York City and New York State’s public land has been largely off-limits for almost a century.
Swale’s Floating Garden is an experiential and educational food forest built on a barge that utilizes marine common law to circumvent local public land laws.
It opened June 6 as part of the inaugural Medina Triennial in Medina, New York, and will begin its journey to New York City in Fall of 2026. While working to shift policies that will increase the presence of edible perennial public lands, Floating Garden continues to build stewardship of public waterways and land.
photo by Subhram Reddy
Floating Garden expands on our first barge, Swale, a floating food forest that was in public in NYC from 2016 - 2019. Swale prompted NYC Parks to build the Bronx River Foodway at Concrete Plant Park. It’s the first sanctioned food forest on NYC’s public parkland, and led by NYC Parks with Bronx River Alliance, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, and the Point. It’s facilitated by Nathan Hunter and his team.
photo by Andrew Oberstadt
Swale is always docked at a pier, except when it’s in transit to another pier. This photograph was captured between NYC piers as Swale was heading to Brooklyn, 2017.