8th Annual Daffodil Project Benefit Breakfast

At the 8th Annual Daffodil Project Awards Breakfast, on April 22nd, 2009, we were pleased to have Charles Osgood, host of CBS Sunday Morning program, as our emcee.  We were delighted First Lady Michelle Paige Paterson, Borough President Scott Stringer, Council Member Helen Foster, and NYC Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe were all on hand to recognize the project and the organizations that do so much to beautify the City's parks and open spaces. 

2009 Daffodil Award Winners

Myrtle Avenue Brooklyn Partnership is a local community organization centered in the Fort Greene and Clinton Hill neighborhoods. The organization is a committed steward of Myrtle’s street trees. They used many of the daffodil bulbs to beautify tree pits along the Fort Greene section of Myrtle Avenue. In the Fall 2009, they worked with Citizen Schools at Urban Assembly Academy of Arts & Letters. To help teach the students about the intrinsic value of parks and open spaces, 75 students and 10 adults planted over 2,000 bulbs on an afternoon in the late fall.

Mosholu Preservation Corporation is the community Development Affiliate of the Montefiore Medical Center Corporation. Working with an invigorated horticultural staff at the parks department and building on capital projects, MPC has installed or maintained a dozen entrance gardens in five parks in the district. Mosholu Preservation Corporation and their partners are stewards of over 45 gardens where there were virtually none before as well as working on erosion control, pathway maintenance and tree planting. Since the project’s inception, they have planted over 7,000 daffodils as part of the Daffodil Project.

Friends of Brookville Park, located in Rosedale, works with community residents to plant, clean up and maintains a safe park. They used the Daffodil Project as an anchor volunteer project to beautify their park. Brookville Park is essential to a community where only 10% of all the land in the council district is actually parkland. Their efforts have been recognized by The Victorious Organization of Women and Councilman James Sanders.

Staten Island Cricket Club, founded in 1872, is the oldest continuously active cricket club in the United States. In 1886, it acquired and instituted Walker Park, on Bard Avenue as a ground for cricket and other sports.  Staten Island Cricket Club continues to this day to play at Walker Park and over the years has, with the collaboration and help of the parks department, acted as the park's summer custodian, preserving a unique place in the history of the city and of cricket in the United States. The members of the club are drawn from all parts of the world, although chiefly the players come from South Asia and the West Indies. In recent years, members of the club have regularly planted flowers at the perimeter of the cricket field for the purpose of its beautification. This past year, they expanded their planting efforts to beyond the perimeter of the playfields, by planting 1500 bulbs throughout the park.

PS 40 Manhattan is a thriving NYC public school that promotes academic excellence and a strong commitment to community outreach and environmental programs.. Through a unique partnership between PS40, The Gramercy Park Block Association and the NYC Parks Department, the school identifies a local park and cleaning/gardening Project in the Spring and Fall. PS 40 was recently named the Best Recycling Elementary School in Manhattan in an award presented by the Department of Sanitation. For the past two years, students at PS 40 have planted over 1500 daffodil bulbs in Stuyvesant Park.

Christy M. Dailey is the Gardener of the Madison Square Park Conservancy. Last year, during her employment as Assistant Gardener and as a volunteer with the Parks and Recreation Department she organized many community bulb planting events in several downtown parks including Stuyvesant Square Park, Washington Square Park, the Living Memorial Grove, and City Hall Park. Christy was the gardener who taught and helped the kids of PS 40 plant over 2,000 bulbs in Stuyvesant Park. She has also worked extensively with volunteers of the Friends of Bleecker Playground and Abingdon Square Alliance where her bulb displays have been featured in several magazines and films. To date, she has helped to plant over 30,000 daffodils.

To RSVP and to learn more about the Daffodil Project Benefit Breakfast, please contact Lynn McCary, Events Coordinator at or (212) 629-8748. 

Hope by Sherman J. Sussman (A.K.A. SHY), winner of the 2006 NYC Daffodils photo contest.