Dates: May 2023 - November 2023
Client: New York Botanical Garden (NYBG)
Location: Bronx, NY
The Bronx is the greenest borough of New York City and the one with the most community
gardens. For its third year, Ambar recorded and archived the experiences of Bronx community
gardeners through oral histories, highlighting urban gardens' cultural, social, and environmental
significance. Ten in-depth, individual and group interviews were conducted with community
members, capturing their narratives about gardening, heritage, and greenspace. The Oral
Histories Project was produced with NYBG’s African American Garden, curated by Dr. Jessica
B. Harris.
Ambar led collaboration with the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC) and their
students for dynamic visual documentation, enhancing the storytelling with photos of the
interviewees and gardens. The project produced digital and physical booklets archived at
NYBG’s Mertz Library for community access and as a gift for each participant, extending
outreach through academic and organizational partnerships to ensure broad public
accessibility. Ambar also served as lead project manager and interviewer in this project,
managing every element of the oral history process—from identifying and preparing
interviewees to conducting and transcribing interviews, coordinating visual documentation,
cataloging interview data, adhering to the Oral History Association’s (OHA) Best Practices, and
creating archival-ready materials in physical and digital formats.
