THOUGHTS & OBSERVATIONS
Welcome to Shanfan Huang’s Lab
🌱🍁🍀🍄🟫🌵🐞🐛🦋🌻🌿
Welcome to Shanfan Huang’s Lab 🌱🍁🍀🍄🟫🌵🐞🐛🦋🌻🌿
NYC is counting its trees again (and you can help) 🌳
New York City is home to more than 883,000 trees, and every decade they get their own census. The high-tech gadgets cover the street trees, but the park trees still need hands-on care. Volunteers (like you and me!) can learn to ID species, check their health, and help keep the city’s green spaces thriving.
Digging Up Goutweed, Finding Roots
One Saturday at Inwood Hill Park, I joined volunteers pulling out goutweed, an invasive plant with roots that stretch for meters underground. As my teammate and I dug, we uncovered more than just rhizomes—we found ourselves in a conversation about migration, history, and belonging. The work was humbling, and the questions it raised lingered long after.
The Tree Wells of New York
On a Saturday morning, I joined NYC Parks’ Tree Stewardship program to care for 19 street trees in my neighborhood. From loosening compacted soil to learning why healthy tree wells matter, I saw how small acts of care can make a city more resilient. Here’s how you can help your local trees—and the streets they shade—thrive.
The Soil
The story follows a spontaneous gardening effort that, over 24 hours, intersects with conversations about compost, safety, generosity, and what it means to quietly care for overlooked corners of the city.
Great Finds at East Village Zine Fair
The fourth annual East Village Zine Fair in New York took up the street of St Marks Pl! Let’s see what interesting zines and pamphlets and more importantly, noticeable artists I found!
Artists’ Book as Expanded Literacy: What We Learned from Asemic Writing
If the “normal” books are on a mission to disseminate information as efficiently as possible, then we can say the artists’ books are here to push the boundary of human cognition. What can commercially produced and circulated books learn from artist’ books?