New York Restoration Project (NYRP) has completed the renovation of the Gil Hodges Community Garden in Brooklyn's Gowanus neighborhood, thanks to support from Jo Malone London (a perfumery), and a NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) green infrastructure grant. Note: DEP supplies more than one billion gallons of water each day to more than nine million New York City residents.

Gil Hodges Community Garden is one of 52 community gardens owned and managed by NYRP throughout the city. The garden is named for baseball great Gilbert Hodges (1924–1972), who played most of his career for the Brooklyn Dodgers, then the Los Angeles Dodgers.

NYRP www.nyrp.org, founded by Bette Midler in 1995, is a nonprofit dedicated to transforming open space in poorer New York City neighborhoods into greener, more sustainable spaces. NYRP is also the leading private partner of MillionTreesNYC, an initiative to plant and care for one million new trees throughout New York City's five boroughs.

This is the first NYRP community garden with high-performance stormwater infrastructure. The 3,140-square-foot garden is located at the flood-prone intersection of Carroll Street and Denton Place. NYRP resolved to address the stormwater problem by retrofitting the garden with permeable pavers, flood-tolerant plants and a rain garden. The rain garden and permeable pavers should manage nearly 85,000 gallons.

NYRP also installed a DEP-designed bioswale for the sidewalk adjacent to the garden with native plants and a low curb. It alone is expected to divert and/or infiltrate about 65,000 gallons of storm water that would otherwise flow into the city's sewer system, with overflows going into the Gowanus Canal. Stormwater data will be collected for the bioswale for three years and analyzed by the City College of New York.

The garden design is by Yvi McEvilly, NYRP's director of design, and Stantec Consulting Inc., with assistance from EDesign Dynamics and Patrick Cullina, former High Line vice president of horticulture and park operations. George Smith of the City College of New York was a consultant.