Urban Forest Lab Project, by Casey Tang

Located just beyond the park’s North entrance, Casey Tang’s forest garden is a low-maintenance, sustainable agriculture system based off of woodland ecosystems. Forest gardens are typically made up of plant polycultures—plants that occupy an ecological niche in the system. The plants help close the nutrient cycle and attract beneficial insects.

Forest gardens appear in many forms throughout the world from Chagga, Tanzania, to the gardens of the Dai People in China, to the Milpa gardens throughout Mesoamerica, to Satoyama in Japan.

Phase one of this project includes rehabilitating the land by adding soil amendments, organic material and compost, and planting a succession of cover crops.

Phase two of the project will include implementation of a low maintenance, edible landscape mimicking forest ecosystems, using an attractive semi-natural garden aesthetic. The garden will serve as an example of alternative forms of agriculture and food sources, as well as a repository of hard to find edible perennials.

To read more about Casey Tang and his project, you can find his profile here.

Casey Tang (b. 1984, New York, NY): While tapping into diverse disciplines including ecology, musicology, and narratology, Tang puts actions, experiences, objects and installations into works that create liminal areas that re-contextualize and compare systems, information, histories, and paradigms. Recently, Tang has become interested in abstractions of form and narrative as a means of creating disassociation from cultural norms and incorporating non-western worldviews—such as humor and contradictions found in Zen Koans and ritual clowns—and cultural outputs to create and critique new, hybrid worldviews. Casey Tang has a BFA from SUNY Purchase (2006) and has exhibited in the US, Europe, and China. He will participate in “CAFAM Future” Exhibition: Observer-Creator at the Central Academy of Fine Art Museum, Beijing. Most recently he has had a solo exhibition at Charpa Gallery, Valencia, Spain and is working on the Forest Garden Lab Project at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY and First Sounds, Booklyn, Brooklyn, NY. He is a recipient of the 2013 New Vision Award from He Xiangning Art Museum, Shenzhen, China.