Gabriel-José Maldonado

Gabriel-José Maldonado is passionate about garden education and working with the Harlem community through The Brotherhood Sister Sol, which is a black and brown organization dedicated to enrichment and development of young people in Harlem. He creates curriculum using community gardens to tackle current issues and works with a diverse range of ages, races, genders, and abilities. His work is inspired by his father, who found gardening to be restorative after serving time in prison. Gabriel calls himself an advocate, brother, and mentor. 

Gabriel-José Maldonado

He/him

Environmental Program Horticulturalist for The Brotherhood Sister Sol and Land Steward for Frank White Memorial Garden

Washington Heights, Manhattan 

Q&A

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you talk about your work with the Brotherhood Sister Sol? 

We organize, train, and educate young people around a variety of different workshops that are [focused] on things like Black Latinx history to sexual education to LGBTQIA+ rights to drugs and substance abuse. We're really trying to tackle issues that are hitting our young people here and also internationally. I help to create curriculum utilizing the community garden to create workshops around botany, sustainable practices, medicine, ancestral farming, [and] something that's more rooted in indigenous practices [from] the Lenape people here in Manhattan.

I've been working with young people since I was 16. I tell my students all the time, I'm always here to learn with you and to pass down what I've learned, and hope that you are able to take it with you and your future endeavors. Generation Beta and folks that are born in 2025, it's going to be an interesting time – as in, the climate is changing, communities are changing, so we definitely need to be learning from each other.

What does it mean to be a land steward? 

We like to call ourselves stewards because we don't have ownership of the land. How we move and how I walk on the land is a communal space, and I help to maintain that space for people to learn about the natural world. We teach about how to process organic matter to make compost, maintain and grow food out of our aquaponic system, and how to maintain fruit trees in our garden. 

I also help with external partnerships so they can utilize the garden as their playground or their learning center because oftentimes you might find schools that may not have a green space. Studies have shown that when young people are in green spaces, their cognitive thinking improves their social interpersonal skills. 

What is your favorite thing about the job? 

When you're a steward, it's a calling and it's a responsibility of being able to sustain a piece of land and city that is fighting against gentrification, redlining, and bigger entities of capitalism to systematic oppression. One of the things that I really appreciate about being a land steward is that it speaks volumes to the culture that community gardens are [being created] across New York City.

Can you talk about the importance of the Frank White Memorial Garden? 

Adults come here to work on their future master composting certification, or just to be part of a sense of community. And they're working with our young people. The way that we're creating a space for [people who come to the garden] is empowering because when we talk about climate justice, it's not our lives that we need to be worried about, it’s our future generation. What we see now as accessible might be a privilege, because down the line [it] won't exist anymore. So I want to be able to create moments now that are empowering and uplifting, because [the climate crisis] can be traumatizing, and we're not in a space to be alarmist. I think we're in a space for empowerment. 

What brought you to the climate sphere? 

My dad was someone who was a gardening aficionado – the streets [were] something that always called to him; living on the streets and always going from job to job, trying to figure out his place. My father actually spent time [incarcerated], and one of the services that was almost restorative was farming. Now I can say that I'm a farmer in ways that my dad wasn't when he was my age. When it comes to farming, especially when it comes to BIPOC folks, it's a lot of violence, a lot of hardship and a lot of dark history that is attached to us. It was a moment in history where we were shipped from the lands and put into enslavement. But now, when we think about farming, we want to change that narrative. We’ve got to  learn from [our family stories] because those are our tools of survival. We’ve got to remember we were farmers first, and we knew it best. 

Would you say that your dad is one of your inspirations in the climate field, and do you have other mentors in the climate field?

My dad was definitely a big component to what I'm doing now and in future pursuits – that might be working with young people who have been impacted by the criminal justice system and being able to utilize the garden as a space where they can gain the skills to be able to get future employment. When I think about other mentors, I think about my past colleagues at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the tools they gave me: Nando Rodriguez, the Senior Manager for Environmental Programming, has been a mentor for me in the compost world and gardening world. I hope that [younger generations] can take what they've learned now and pass it down to the next. I think that's the whole goal. We don't want it to stop with us, and it's unrealistic and daunting and taxing for us to carry all of that on ourselves. 

Could you talk about how you became a land steward? 

I went to grad school at Bank Street College of Education and I was a museum education major – I wanted to curate art; I wanted to be able to tell people stories through art. I had an opportunity with one of my advisors to think more abstractly about how we interpret art and how we interpret spaces that could be potential museums. My wonderful advisor got me an opportunity to work at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and everything that I learned was through mentorship and awesome staff – I had no formal education in terms of a bachelor's. During my time, I got my certificate in urban agriculture from farm school NYC, and I was able to earn my master composting certification.

What scares you most about the climate crisis? 

People in power that are not recognizing the repercussions of their selflessness, their capitalist mindset, that are that able to have the influence that they're able to have on others. When we think about people in positions of power, it's a famous quote: “You can kill the person, but you can't kill the idea.” That's scary, because one person can have all this power. But when you have a collective, that is influence. The reality is, when we think about the climate, the Earth has been through moments of trauma, and it's been able to rejuvenate itself. We're thinking about the human race when it comes to climate change. It's selfish, but it's also reality. We ourselves are not going to be able to live as we have, but we want to make sure that our next generations are living on an Earth that is going to be healthy.