Field log
A running record of what we built, delivered, and learned.
August 2026
A morning session at 135 West 23rd Street with KidsKnowRights, hosted by VISIONS' program and community engagement team, for blind and visually impaired New Yorkers. We committed about 60 boxes; the pot shipment arrived broken, so 10 went out on the day and the rest are being scheduled. Mint is a plant you can grow by touch and smell — this partnership is shaping every guide we print.
June 2026
Somewhere this spring, the total number of MintBoxes donated since 2020 passed two thousand. It took three years to donate the first two hundred and about two more to donate the next eighteen hundred. The year-by-year records are being reconciled for the impact page.
May 2026
Back at Hudson Guild — this time with growing boxes. Members and residents opened their kits together at the courtyard tables, picking their herbs and starting them on the spot. Shared by the team in May 2026; the exact event date is being confirmed for the record.
May 2026
Requests came through a parent form and delivery ran to homerooms rather than entrance pickup. Demand outran supply — more than 40 additional families asked after the first giveaway, so the form closed when materials ran out. Every family already on the list still received a box.
April 2026
Three short classroom sessions — three to five minutes each, coordinated with a teacher — built to get students interested rather than to distribute. MintBox was worked into the curriculum across all three grades.
March 2026
Every kit now carries a printed guide in English and Spanish — five illustrated steps covering location, filling the pot, planting, watering, and growth — with a QR code linking to more. A guide a family cannot read is decoration; this changed who the box works for.
March 2026
The MintBox Community Giveaway, a collaboration between Avenues and Elliott-Chelsea Houses at 259 10th Avenue: we introduced the mission, demonstrated how the boxes work with the Growing Food in Small Spaces presentation, and distributed MintBoxes to residents. Months of planning with the Resident Association, delivered as one community day.
February 2026
Alongside KidsKnowRights and the Language Service Club: the church hosted and made the introductions, the wider effort collected toys and clothing for families, and we handed out MintBoxes — cilantro, parsley, thyme and rosemary — and taught planting. The partnership model working exactly as designed.
November 2025
Distribution paired with a hands-on workshop rather than a drop-off: families plant their box before they take it home. About 400 boxes have gone out through this partnership to date, and it is ongoing.
September 2025
We began distributing kits to families attending NSC's weekly pro bono immigration legal clinics, alongside the childcare program a MintBox member founded and runs there. The boxes travel through a relationship that already exists — which is the whole model.
August 2023
We delivered the 50 EDU kits across four Covenant House shelters in Manhattan and the Bronx.
August 2023
The whole team packed 50 Baby Sprout EDU kits in one afternoon — the fourth iteration of the design — ready for delivery to Covenant House.
August 2023
A few weeks after planting, the radishes were up and close to harvest, on a bed nobody had to water daily.
July 2023
We met with members to see how the planter was holding up, replanted radishes, and talked about the sub-irrigation systems we planned to build for other community centers.
July 2023
Filling the sub-irrigation system with water through the corner access pipe, then planting it out for the first time.
June 2023
We delivered the planter to the Hudson Guild Fulton Senior Center and set it up in the common room with the residents who had been prototyping it with us.
June 2023
We bought the birch and built the frame in the school maker workshop, weather-proofing every face before the sub-irrigation pipes went in.
May 2023
We modeled the frame, the sub-irrigation system and the access and drainage pipes before cutting any wood.
November 2021
Ethan and Zenchang introduced the curriculum to two 5th grade science classes, about 30 students, from lesson plans built with the Lower Division teachers. The model was student to student: Upper Division students designed and led the lessons rather than adults teaching into the classroom.
July 2021
We manufactured 75 more boxes with the ceramic 2.0 pot and spent the summer at Union Square — early fundraising, and the best lesson we ever got in explaining the box in thirty seconds.
June 2021
We developed the first MintBox pot in CAD through the Avenues Mastery program and cut a run of 25 by hand on a laser cutter. Every one found a home within days.
May 2021
We brought a kit into a first grade class at Avenues to find out whether the material held a class's attention. It did, and that session became the basis for the EDU curriculum.
