Welcome New Trustee Olney Reynolds; Learn about the First New Yorkers

SUMMER VIBES AT JAY

We're hitting our stride this summer as the Jay Estate Gardens continue to mature. We're growing rye in Rye and native plants - early sunflowers, salvia and butterfly weed - are delighting pollinators! On any given day you'll see lots of wildlife from careening red-tailed hawks to nesting box turtles.

Our outdoor classrooms are also ideal places to simultaneously volunteer and learn with hands-on activities from braiding garlic to harvesting chamomile flowers - we are always enormously grateful for any amount of hours that you can lend us. Volunteers receive their own custom newsletter - click below for a peek - and there are special volunteer gatherings each month too.

Check out our Garden Volunteer newsletter!

In addition to frequent house and garden tours, programs continue this July - all are FREE and open to the public. Come check us out and bring a friend!

JHC WELCOMES NEW TRUSTEE OLNEY REYNOLDS

Please help us welcome Olney Reynolds to our Board of Trustees! Olney's record with advancing underserved youth is outstanding. We look forward to working with him to expand our outreach more widely to schools in Westchester. He has been an active supporter of JHC for almost 13 years, first participating in Stand Against Racism panels held at our site in conjunction with the YWCA of White Plains and most recently bringing youth groups to our park for environmental workshops.

Olney is deeply committed to community service, spending over 25 years as a member of African American Men of Westchester, an all-volunteer nonprofit formed in 1987 to strengthen communities. He was honored with a 2021 Trailblazer Award for Civic Engagement.

Learn more about Olney here

"BONEYARN" POET

and CEMETERY STEWARDS GIVE VOICES TO ANCESTORS

Poet David Mills, a Fellow at the Schomburg Center, gave a positively electrifying performance on Sunday, June 11th, as he read works from his collection "Boneyarn" which pays tribute to the 15,000 forgotten and nameless Black women and men buried in downtown Manhattan at Wall Street. The event was a commemoration of Juneteenth co-sponsored by the Jay Heritage Center(JHC) and Friends of the African American Cemetery (FOAAC) and funded through a generous $3000 grant from ArtsWestchester.

FOAAC and JHC have been partnering since 2010 to restore the stones and narratives of Black individuals interred in Rye who have been erased from the pages of history. Mills presentation reminded people of how easily humanity can be erased from history by neglect and unchecked development.

Read more and see photos

from the day here

Dust off that Rubik's Cube because it’s back in vogue!

FOR KIDS AND FAMILIES

JULY 9, 11AM - 12 NOON

Ask your kids, grandkids, neighbor kids, kids at heart--any kind of kid!--and they’ll probably have heard of Max Park and his latest world record in speedcubing, a competitive sport involving solving a variety of combination puzzles, the most famous being the 3x3 puzzle or Rubik's Cube.

Come learn more about this competitive puzzle solving that’s spreading worldwide when professional speedcuber Phil Yu, CEO of Westchester's The Cubicle and Evan Liu from the World Cube Association will speak about speedcubing at a free, in-person program at the Wachenheim Center. The talk will be followed by a demonstration and then a question and answer session.

Learn more about speedcubing here

THE FIRST NEW YORKERS with HEATHER BREUGL

JULY 9 at 4pm

Join us for a discussion about the original New Yorkers with public historian Heather Breugl. Heather is a citizen of the Oneida Nation of Wisconsin and first-line descendant Stockbridge Munsee. She is an activist, and independent consultant who works with institutions and organizations for Indigenous sovereignty and collective liberation.

Our program will also provide an opportunity to discuss Rye’s Indigenous heritage. Did you know? The original New Yorkers that were stewards of what we call the Jay Estate today were a Mohican tribe known as Siwanoy who spoke Algonkian – they called the land overlooking Long Island Sound Apawamis. It wasn’t until November 12, 1661 that Chiefs Shanorock, Rawmaquae, Rackeatte, Pawwaytaliau, Mawmatoe, and Howinse signed a deed that rendered possession of their land to an English Quaker named John Budd.

The talk is FREE but registration is requested.

Read more and register here

SAVE THE DATE!

WORKSHOP with RENOWNED ROSARIAN STEPHEN SCANNIELLO

JULY 16 at 3PM

This July 16th at 3pm, meet Stephen Scanniello, rosarian and international authority on roses. The celebrated horticulturist, garden designer and author serves as curator for both the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden and the Helen S. Kaman Rose Garden at the Elizabeth Park Conservancy in West Hartford, Connecticut.

In addition, he provides design, maintenance, and consultation services for private gardens of notable patrons across New England, the Hamptons, California, Texas, and London. Stephen’s workshops are popular and draw on his extensive knowledge of roses, spanning from practical to obscure, as well as his research on the flower’s rich history, lore, and often peculiar personalities associated with it over the centuries.

The event is free but registration is required.

Learn more here.