Program Overview
Most kids think of science as something that happens inside — in a classroom, behind a screen, in a lab. The NYBG EcoQuest Challenge flips that entirely. Every month, the New York Botanical Garden issues a new mission: go outside, find something specific, photograph it, and submit what you find to a live scientific database. The target changes monthly — maple trees in April, salt marsh shrubs in November, beech leaf disease in July — but the premise stays the same. Your child's observation matters. Scientists at NYBG actually use it.
What Your Child Is Actually Doing
EcoQuest is part of the larger NYC EcoFlora Project, NYBG's effort to build a comprehensive, living inventory of every plant, fungus, and associated organism in New York City. Participants use iNaturalist — a free mobile app — to photograph and document species across all five boroughs. Each submission gets added to a shared dataset that NYBG botanists and conservationists actively reference for research and conservation decisions.
The challenges are specific enough to teach real field skills. When the quest is bryophytes — mosses, liverworts, hornworts — kids learn to identify non-vascular plants by their spore structures, using a magnifier held over a phone camera lens. When it is oak galls, they are learning that the unique shape and color of a gall can identify the specific insect or fungus that caused it. These are not simplified activities dressed up as science. They are the actual methods, scaled for curious people of all ages.
Why This Is STEM
Ecology is the science of relationships — how species interact with each other and with their environment, why some thrive and others disappear, how a single invasive plant can reshape an entire ecosystem. EcoQuest puts those questions directly in front of your child, in the parks and sidewalks and shorelines of their own city.
The STEM skills here are woven into the activity: species identification builds observation and classification skills; photo documentation is standardized data collection; and the iNaturalist platform lets participants explore the aggregated dataset and see what their observations contribute to. When a child tracks beech leaf disease spreading borough by borough, or documents a fern species that hasn't been recorded in NYC before, they are doing ecology.The city is the lab.
How It Works
Download the free iNaturalist app and join the NYC EcoFlora Project. Each month, check theEcoQuest page on the New York Botanical Gardens website for the new challenge and instructions. Photograph your target species anywhere in New York City, upload through iNaturalist, and you're done. NYBG provides identification guides for each monthly challenge, so your child doesn't need to be an expert walking in.
One thing worth knowing: iNaturalist is technically a social network for naturalists, so it requires users to be 13 or older for their own account. For younger kids, parents should create and manage the account and upload photos together — which, honestly, is part of the fun.
Once you submit an observation, other naturalists in the iNaturalist community review and confirm your identification. When two or more people agree on a species ID, the observation earns "Research Grade" status — the gold standard that scientists actually use. For kids, seeing that badge appear on their photo is a genuine moment. Their observation just became data.
There is no season, no registration, no fee. Participate once or every month. Pick it up in October, skip November, come back in March for bryophyte season. The flexibility is real.
Who It's For
The child who has ever crouched down to look at something most people walk past. The one who notices the weird orange cluster on the underside of an oak leaf, or wants to know why certain mushrooms only appear after rain. Kids who like having a specific mission — something to look for, a question to answer — tend to get absorbed by this quickly. And because each monthly challenge comes with an identification guide and a scientific explanation of why this particular species matters right now, there is always something new to learn.
In practice, EcoQuest tends to click best for kids around 7 and up, when the focus required for clear photography and the back-and-forth of the app become genuinely engaging rather than frustrating. For younger children, the value is different but just as real — this is a beautiful way to build the habit of noticing, of slowing down outside and paying attention. The data entry can come later. The curiosity starts now.
It also works well as a low-pressure entry point for kids who haven't yet connected with formal STEM programs. No application, no commitment, no prerequisites. Just go outside and look.
Cost & Session Information
Participation requires a free iNaturalistaccount. No NYBG membership or registration needed.