Zhenia Nagorny
Sustainability Educator + Culture of Care Steward
About Zhenia
Zhenia is a sustainability educator, a fierce advocate for public gardens, a community writer, and a healing practitioner.
Since 2016, she has been co-leading the Compost Committee (CC) at the Maple Street Community Garden, which started with 12 volunteers and is now a thriving garden group of 80 volunteers per season. Under her leadership, the CC expanded their work beyond processing over 6,000 lbs. of food scraps each year to mentoring a new generation of garden leaders, facilitiating compost education, conducting advocacy campaigns and outreach, and tending to street trees in partnership with local Brooklyn partners.
In 2024, she helped to secure a $3,500 grant from Citizens Committee of NYC to go towards arts programming in the garden. She collaborated on four (4) new art events that year, which influenced the creation of the Arts Committee in 2025. This year, the committee will host nine (9) creative workshops that explore sustainably, play, and art-making.
Zhenia is also a multi-modality healing practitioner who specializes in moving and restoring energy - through Reiki, Sound Healing and Creativity - to help her clients connect to the spaciousness, peace and resilience within. Click here to learn more.
Sustainability ~ Care ~ Joy ~ Celebration ~ Belonging ~ Community
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Sustainability ~ Care ~ Joy ~ Celebration ~ Belonging ~ Community ·
Past trainings + Talks
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Designed for garden leaders, coordinators, and organizers, this 3-day training with GreenThumb NYC explores what a sustainable garden culture looks like when we prioritize relationships, care, and interdependence instead of overwork that leads to burnout.
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What would it look like if gardens centered their approach towards volunteers as sustainable?
In this 2005 talk + tour for the National GrowTogether Conference, Zhenia discusses the importance of creating a culture that respects all volunteers, (including their health, individual lives and availability, and volunteer expectations/commitments), centers communication and accountability and allows space for change, innovation and creative thinking.
Let’s Work Together
