S7E5: New York City's First Pocket Forest — 400 Strangers, 1,500 Trees, and the Japanese Method That Compresses a Century into a Decade, with Christina Delfico of iDig2Learn

There's a statistic I keep coming back to: the average child can name more than 1,000 corporate logos, but fewer than 10 native plant species in their own neighborhood. Christina Delfico has been fighting that number for 13 years — one toddler, one oak tree, one planting day at a time. In this episode, I talk with Christina — Emmy-nominated TV producer turned urban greening practitioner, and founder of I Dig to Learn on Roosevelt Island — about what actually happened when 400 New Yorkers gathered to plant New York State's first-ever Miyawaki method pocket forest. We get into the wood wide web, why a 20-year career at Sesame Workshop turned out to be perfect training for ecosystem restoration, and what Christina did not expect when she handed 1,500 baby trees to 400 strangers on a Sunday in April. We also talk about the woman who came back every week to water the specific tree she and her son had planted. About beach plums, the Lenape Center, and what Henry Hudson's journals tell us about what Manhattan used to look like. And about why a pocket forest might be the best gateway drug urban forestry has ever had. Visit the Manhattan Healing Forest at South Point Park on Roosevelt Island — public, free, and on Google Maps. Learn more about the forest at sugiproject.com. Find Christina and iDig2Learn on Instagram at @idig2learn.