The South Fork chapter of ReWild Long Island will hold a winter sowing workshop, its first program of 2026, on Jan. 17 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at the East Hampton Historical Farm Museum.
The workshop launches what the group intends to be an active year, following an eventful 2025 that saw myriad accomplishments in conservation and mitigation of environmental degradation alongside the building and strengthening of ties within the community.
“It is exciting,” Gloria Frazee, co-chairwoman of the South Fork chapter, said of the group’s 2025 accomplishments. “What is it that provides value? How do we leave a better world for the next generation, and how do we equip them to care for that world and understand what it is they’re looking at, and connect to nature and to their community?” When gardening and harvesting, she said, “you’re not on your phone, you’re talking with people. The mentoring, the conversation, the things that come up in the meantime — that’s when kids and adults come up with great ideas, and connect.”
For herself, she said, “I feel like I’m in ‘adult summer camp.’ A lot of times you read about the Hamptons and it’s all glitzy, but for me the heart and soul of the Hamptons is our environment and community, and how do we grow that?”
Last year, the South Fork chapter of ReWild Long Island created two new community gardens — at Windmill Village in East Hampton and the Springs School — bringing its total to six, including the Matthew Lester Memorial Pollinator Garden at the Historical Farm Museum. A seventh, at LongHouse Reserve in East Hampton, “is an unusual woodland pollinator garden, so it’s in a shady spot,” Ms. Frazee said.
Late this month, plans for two new gardens are to be announced, she added.
The South Fork chapter also engaged more than 30 high school students through its summer program and social media and web internships, who contributed thousands of hours of community service collaborating with not-for-profit organizations here. These include Share the Harvest, the East Hampton farm that grows and donates thousands of pounds of vegetables and herbs to organizations including food pantries, affordable housing complexes, the Retreat, and the Children’s Museum of the East End.
The chapter harvested around 10,000 pounds of organic produce at Share the Harvest for food pantries, the town’s shellfish hatchery, and the Surfrider Foundation. It also provided low-cost native plants through its spring and fall plant sales, and distributed hundreds of packets of native seeds. A native seed growing guide is now at rewildlongisland.org.
The group’s efforts brought the importance of composting to more residents’ consciousness in 2025. When discarded into landfills, food scraps become a source of methane, a potent greenhouse gas. By taking food scraps to collection points, Amber Waves Farm in Amagansett and the farmers market on the grounds of Ashawagh Hall in Springs among them, ReWild’s South Fork chapter diverted more than 13,000 pounds from the waste stream, transforming it into compost.
The group also helped more than two dozen households start composting on site through discounted sales of composters, along with rain barrels. It held numerous educational programs such as gardening workshops, and collaborated with town officials to encourage and empower residents to make positive changes.
“I’m surprised by how many people in East Hampton already compost in their backyard,” Ms. Frazee said. “It’s really heartening to hear, but this” — offering composters at discounted prices — “is a great way to get in at low cost. I’ve been to people’s homes and helped them put their bin together. We’re going to start a series around that.”
The town, Ms. Frazee said, “has been absolutely fabulous. One thing we’re talking about is having the kids more involved in seeing what’s going on in the town, like spending some time with the Natural Resources Department, and also presenting to the town board so they understand how they can have a voice in the community, because it’s not enough to just plant flowers for pollinators. You also need to understand how to get things done.”
Last year saw the group’s third summer program with high school students, with students from the Ross School in East Hampton, Pierson High School in Sag Harbor, and East Hampton High School as well as summer visitors participating.
“We have students from junior high school as well,” Ms. Frazee said, and former participants who are now in college returned last summer “because they loved it so much. It’s great to have that community continuity. Once a student participates one summer, they can come back as a youth organizer/mentor. They start meeting in February to plan the coming summer. They do all of the outreach, all the marketing, all the contacts with the project locations, and also get students to participate as interns. We want people to get their hands dirty and enjoy being in the outdoors and part of a team.”
Their work combats both hunger and climate change, she noted.
The South Fork chapter of ReWild Long Island will soon offer community craft classes, which Ms. Frazee described as “another way to connect with nature at Matthew’s Garden.”
Len Green, co-chairman of the South Fork chapter, “has taken the lead on pulling together collaboration between local environmental organizations” and the town government, Ms. Frazee said, “so we can work more clearly together and help get more people engaged and involved. We’re all trying to do the same thing in different ways.”
“We’ve always got something going on,” she said of ReWilders. “It’s a bit quiet now, but we’ll be doing the winter sowing workshop” on Jan. 17. “There will be more this winter.”
Registration for that workshop is at bit.ly/3Z0Ve9fhttps://bit.ly/3Z0Ve9f.
