Category Archives: Community Gardens

Philly Urban Ag 2020 Year in Review

Posted on December 23, 2020 | Leave a comment

Community Gardens Survive Pandemic

Covid-19 shut down lots of things but not Philadelphia community gardens. When lockdown orders were in place barring nonessential trips away from home, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture declared on April 17 that community gardening is an “essential” activity, exempting gardeners from stay-at-home orders as long as they wore masks and followed other protocols. The Philadelphia parks and recreation department found a way to continue offering free compost–in socially distanced piles. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society found ways to continue seedling distributions, and offered webinars in place of cancelled in-person workshops. A new PHS initiative launched in May to address food insecurity in Philadelphia, Harvest 2020, enlisted more than 10,000 gardeners, food bank volunteers and others to grow and distribute tons of produce to local food banks. The initiative created new gardens in unlikely spots, such as the Garden for Good at the Subaru Park soccer stadium. The project also teamed up with Sankofa Farm at Bartram’s Garden to build 50 backyard garden beds in West Philly.

Covid Slows but Can’t Stop Urban Ag Reform

Philadelphia was supposed to get a full-fledged municipal urban agriculture plan in 2020, but the coronavirus derailed the planning process just as it entered the homestretch. That didn’t stop the Housing Development Corp. from taking steps to address one long-standing complaint of activists: launching a new website that should make it somewhat easier to convert vacant lots to community gardens.

Revolutionary Gardeners Fend Off City

New chapters were added to long running sagas involving efforts by activists in North Philly and Kensington to wrest vacant lots from the city for gardening activities. The North Philly Peace Park,  operated by a group engaged in “a protracted revolutionary communal effort to establish, build up and defend community controlled land-based programs,” was briefly evicted by the Philadelphia Housing Authority from two vacant buildings it was renovating. They are adjacent to the lot where the North Philly Peace Park has resided, with city approval, since 2016. PHA promptly apologized for the raid, acknowledging that the group was in the midst of good-faith negotiations to buy the buildings. In Kensington, the Cesar Andreu Iglesias Community Garden, founded in 2012 by a group called Philly Socialists on several vacant, tax-delinquent lots, seemingly dodged a bid by the city to sell the lots they are occupying. Developers were offering big bucks for the lots, and were pledging to build an apartment building with affordable units. The plan by the cash-strapped city to proceed with the sale was delayed in June, and called off, at least for now, in September.

USDA Tips Hat to Philly Urban Ag

The U.S. Department of Agriculture seemed to recognize Philadelphia as a leader in urban agriculture, with an announcement in August that our city will be one of the first five in the nation (along with Portland, Albuquerque, Cleveland, and Richmond, Va.) to get a new county urban agriculture committee. County committees, operating under the auspices of the USDA’s Farm Service Agency, have been around in rural America since the 1930s to allow farmers to offer input on delivery of federal services. Urban agriculture committees are a new thing, authorized for the first time by the 2018 Farm Bill. USDA urban ag committees will “work to encourage and promote urban, indoor, and other emerging agricultural production practices,” and also delve into food access, community composting, and food waste reduction.
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Vertical Gardening Entrepreneurs Arrive

Growing food crops on a commercial scale in containers in the middle of cities, a concept bandied about in futurist-urbanist circles, became a reality in Philadelphia in 2020, at least in a demonstration project and on a drawing board. In September, Second Chances Farm, a Wilmington-based vertical-farming enterprise that exclusively hires formerly incarcerated people for its farm workforce, announced plans to open a 30,000-square-foot farm in vacant buildings as part of the North Station redevelopment near the Temple University campus, with plans to eventually triple that space. That’s not all. The Philadelphia site will open satellite farms in other older industrial cities throughout Pennsylvania. That’s the big plan anyway. As for actually making it happen, on least on a small scale, cultural economist Dr. Jamie Bracey-Green beat them to it, announcing in October the launch in West Philly of Think and Grow Farms, in a converted freight container.

Pests, or at Least pest Reports, Proliferate

There were 33,015 spotted lanternfly sightings in Pennsylvania between January and July of 2020, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture—a frightful 500 percent increase from the year before (but not as harrowing as the 1,300 percent increase in spotted lanternfly sightings reported next door in New Jersey). Experts aren’t sure whether the surge in sightings reflects an increase in number of bugs, or in number of people who, locked in quarantine, have nothing better to do than count bugs and tell the agriculture department about them.

Are there other important “stories of the year” concerning urban agriculture and community gardening in Philadelphia in 2020 that I missed? Add your thoughts in the comments section below.

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Posted in City Harvest, Community Gardens, Farm Bill, Pests, Philadelphia Urban Ag Plan, Philly Urban Ag News

New City Website Aims to Help Turn Vacant Lots into Community Gardens

Posted on November 22, 2020 | Leave a comment

If you want to turn a vacant lot in your neighborhood into a community garden, the Philadelphia Housing Development Corp. is here to help. The quasi-municipal agency that manages the sale of city-owned property has long been criticized for letting thousands of city-owned vacant lots languish in limbo, blighting neighborhoods citywide. But this summer, the PHDC set up a new website to facilitate the process of putting vacant lots to productive use, including community gardens. If you have spotted a vacant lot and want to acquire it to turn it into a community garden:

  • First, peruse this map to see if the lot is city-owned and available.
  • Next find out if you’re eligible to purchase the lot and submit an application. You’re supposed to get some response from PHDC within 120 days.

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PHDC’s overhaul of the system for selling publicly owned vacant lots is a result of a reform process that has been underway for several years. The push for a better way was spurred by reporting by Plan Philly and WHYY, the public radio station, which uncovered a backlog of more than 18,000 “expressions of interest” to buy some of the more than 8,000 vacant lots in the city’s inventory. Many of the queries had gone unanwered for years.

Under the new system, buyers may submit formal applications for lots approved for sale as side yards or community gardens–as long as the applicant meets certain terms and conditions. The city is supposed to respond within 120 days–with approval by no means guaranteed.

The new website acknowledges that the city has some fences to mend with community gardening advocates who have long complained about the inability to make use of blighted lots:

“The City of Philadelphia and PHDC have a strong commitment to community gardening and urban agriculture. Gardening is an important part in helping to transform and sustain communities. In the last five years, PHDC has done a lot of work in community gardening and urban agriculture. There is more work to do, but we are committed!”

PHDC also acknowledges that some gardens have already been established without authorization on vacant lots. The new system promises a possible path toward legalization for at least some of them:

“If you are already gardening on a lot but don’t have an agreement to do so, we may be able to formalize your garden.”

In considering applications, PHDC apparently will take steps to assure that vacant lots ostensibly purchased for use as “community gardens” aren’t commandeered for purely private use or perhaps flipped to a developer for a fat profit. That sort of scam does indeed happen with disposition of city-owned vacant lots, as WHYY and others have reported in, among others, a piece about a city judge who acquired lots for a pittance and sold them to a developer a year later for a $135,000 profit, and another article about how political favoritism can distort the process of disposing of vacant lots.

The new application process suggests the city will require proof that a purchaser has the intent and wherewithal to create and manage a garden that is actually open to the community. As the PHDC’s new website states:

The application to use property for a community garden, open space or recreational area will ask for information about you and, if applicable, your organization. It will also help us make sure you are up to date on your taxes, have no conflicts of interest, and comply with the City’s campaign contribution guidelines.

  • The application also asks you to submit:
  • An economic opportunity and inclusion plan
  • Detailed plans
  • Documentation that you have successfully completed such developments in the past
  • Proof that you have the funds needed to complete the development
  • Organizational documents

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Posted in Community Gardens, Municipal Services, Philly Urban Ag News, Vacant Lots

Community Gardening With a Brewpub’s Byproduct

Posted on April 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

From neighbor to neighbor: spent grains from Twisted Gingers ready for use in the Garden R.U.N. community garden in Roxborough

The Twisted Gingers brewpub, which opened for business a few blocks from our Garden R.U.N. community garden a few months before the coronavirus pandemic hit, makes great beer. We’re about to find out whether their beermaking makes good garden fertilizer. They knew about us because our garden’s informal management committee held a couple of planning meetings early this year at the pub. While they’re now closed to the public, they’re  still brewing beer and filling takeout orders, and they have begun offering us barrels of spent grains for use in the garden.

What are spent grains? In a quick search online, I have learned that it is a grainy mash that is a byproduct of beer-making, and the craft-brewing boom has generated lots of it in dispersed locations, maybe even in your neighborhood. It is far from the end of its useful life after it has been used to make beer, which extracts the sugars, leaving a high-fiber mash that’s loaded with protein and other nutrients. Socially conscious brewmasters, hating to see it hauled off to the local landfill, have gotten creative in looking for more productive uses of the stuff, as a 2012 article in CraftBeer.com explained. Some are feeding it to chickens and other animals. Others are processing it into a base for mushroom growing. Others are offering it to farms and gardens for use as a soil amendment, a trend that has become popular enough to earn a name for itself: foam to farm.

How has the foam-to-farm movement gone over on the farm and in the garden? Pat Welsh, a Southern California garden writer, engaged in an extensive discussion on the use of spent brewery grains in the garden several years ago, and seemed to offer as many caveats as endorsements.

It can be very smelly and attract flies and vermin. Some spent grains also may, apparently, have allelopathic qualities and inhibit seedling growth. Welsh says that since composting may not kill this action, you might want to test spent-grains compost by sprouting a few radish seeds in it before using it on a larger scale for seed starting. Or, says Welsh, “I would use this compost in areas of the garden where you don’t intend to plant from seeds and where you would like to prevent weeds from growing.”

Another caveat, for any gardener who wants to operate with any degree of scientific rigor (not really me), you can’t be sure of its nutrient composition. “Most spent brewery grains when used in the compost pile can be classed as a nitrogenous waste (a fast, hot, ‘green’ ingredient, like grass clippings),” Welsh says. But not if the mash is too dried out, in which case, it is carbonaceous and will consume, not exude, nitrogen.

If all of that weren’t enough to discourage use of spent grains in the garden, a commentator on Dave’s Garden forum named SoulGardenLove, who had read many rave reviews about the stuff and got a whole truckload of it, had this to say:

“For those of you that don’t know better and have any desire to ever use beer grain in your garden… here is the God’s honest truth…..It is the most rancid, vile, gross, vomit inducing pile of flytrap stench sludge I have ever had occasion to smell…. I don’t care how good this stuff is supposed to be for my garden. I’ll stick to manure…”

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hmmmm….to get the most from them, feed them to the hens and eat the eggs and spread the poo
sorry–I will go back to lurking now

Okay, I was forewarned, but I wasn’t deterred. In fact, I read enough to be intrigued. Intrigued enough about its potential benefits that I wasn’t about to wait to cycle Twisted Gingers’ spent grains through a compost pile before trying it out on plants. So I proceeded to put it directly into the garden, finding support for that move in one of Pat Welsh’s comments:

Spent brewery grains that are very soft, wet, and smelly can be dug directly into the soil … since they are already well on their way to breaking down and will release nitrogen in the form of gas directly into the ground in a form that plant roots can absorb.

The spent grains delivered to our garden were certainly soft and wet, with a pungent not-quite-rancid odor. That seemed to be about right, so in a part of one of Garden R.U.N.’s City Harvest plots with rocky, worked-over soil that badly needed replenishment, I dug trenches, filled them with spent grain, mixed it up a bit into the deeper layers of soil, and covered it with a skim of soil. I’m hoping that with some warm and rainy weather in the forecast over the next several weeks, worms and microbes can get a big jump on finishing the work started by Twisted Gingers’ brewmaster of breaking it down and incorporating the nutrients into the soil. So that it will be ready for planting in weeks, and yielding a bounteous harvest in months.

We’ll see. Stay tuned for updates.

UPDATE: See Spent Grains Pass the Radish Test.

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Posted in Community Gardens, Compost, Philly Urban Ag News

‘Essential’ Community Gardens Are Alive and Well

Posted on April 26, 2020 | Leave a comment

The front gate of the Garden R.U.N. community garden in Roxborough

COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc with the human interactions that are at the heart of city life. But the virus hasn’t shut down community gardening. In an April 17 press release, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture made it official: growing food in community gardens is an “essential” activity, on a par with shopping for groceries. So gardeners in Pennsylvania can keep on gardening without fear of running afoul of the ongoing stay-at-home order, provided that they adhere to guidelines calling for social distancing in the gardens, disinfection of tools, gates and other high-contact surfaces, and take other steps to reduce the risk of transmission.

“Pennsylvania’s community gardens will play a key role in supporting communities throughout COVID-19 mitigation and recovery,” Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding said, explaining the rationale for allowing community gardens to remain open when so much else is shuttered. At a time when supply lines are challenged and many have lost their jobs, “providing a way for the most local food sources to continue is quite literally essential.”

Why? Merely since it will cheap viagra no rx make your relationship stronger – that’s should you really intend to maintain it to have good sexual intercourse and this condition has fast become the most prevalent condition men often experience aside from erectile dysfunction. Arthritis is a commonly cialis uk sales found health disorder characterized by feelings of apprehension or extreme anxiety is called anxiety disorder. A dedicated mother, Roberta McNabb loves her son very much and she has stood by him through all generic viagra online the difficult phases of life. Before we delve into comparing these two tablets, let us take a quick review on how an erection occurs: Sexual stimulation activates your brain that sends signals to the penile nerve, one starts gaining proper erection in the body which is why one should make sure that it is used after seeking a medical advice is a smart step. viagra generic india The Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation reached the same conclusion in March, as Catalina Jaramillo reported for WHYY at the time. Community gardening is an “essential” activity exempt from closure orders as long as gardeners follow rules that, among other things, limit garden occupancy to no more than five at a time. That pronouncement gave the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society a green light to distribute 60,000 seedlings to more than 130 City Harvest gardens scattered throughout the city, and to gardeners to get them into the ground.

At Garden R.U.N. in Roxborough, we’re up and running and managing well enough under the new restrictions, which are posted at the garden gate. There’s certainly more interest in our garden than ever. After going several years with a few vacancies, we’re full this year and now have a waiting list. Our City Harvest plots are filling up with PHS seedlings, and we’ll have produce to start delivering to a local food bank within a matter of weeks. our contribution is likely to be more welcome this year than ever.

We’ve had to cancel a community cleanup day that was on the schedule last month, and our annual bagel brunch season-opener won’t happen in May as usual. But community chores—cleanup, trimming, weeding, preparing and tending the City Harvest beds—has been handled tag-team fashion by a succession of Garden R.U.N. members. We’ve greeted each other coming and going, from afar but in person nonetheless, which has been a wonderful thing in these days of social isolation. Our community garden is a community that the coronavirus can’t kill.

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Posted in Community Gardens, Philly Urban Ag News

Horticultural Society Finds Ways Around Covid-19

Posted on April 2, 2020 | Leave a comment

A pillar of the community gardening scene in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, is plowing ahead one way or another, despite the coronavirus. PHS has had to cancel a slate of in-person workshops and delay the first distribution of seedlings to community gardens around the city that participate in the City Harvest program, but vows to find ways to maintain a connection.

According to a statement released in March, “All PHS public gatherings, workshops, and field trips have been halted through May 8. We are working to provide new ways of sharing some of these great gardening programs to as many of you as possible in the weeks ahead, using a combination of webinars, Facebook and Instagram Live and via blogs.”

City Harvest, a PHS program that helps community gardens around the city grow produce for local food banks, will be more vital than ever amid an unprecedented crescendo of job losses. PHS and is determined to continue to support participating gardens despite the obstacles. To minimize risks of transmitting the virus, PHS staff are delivering seedlings directly to gardens rather than making them available for pickup at community gathering spots, and the program’s staff is asking gardeners to strictly adhere to social-distancing guidelines.
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The seedlings were dropped at Garden R.U.N., my community garden in Roxborough, last week and had been planted by our diligent City Harvest team within days (see photo above). This seedling drop-off, the first of three planned deliveries from now through midsummer, included collards, kales, cabbages, scallions, and a selection of lettuces, which will be ready for harvest and delivery in a couple of months.

We’re trying hard to assure that gardeners steer clear of each other and follow other protocols as laid out in guidelines issued by PHS. We’ve also got a renewed sense of purpose. A word of encouragement from PHS to community gardeners around the city captures it: “The COVID-19 virus has exposed us to the fragility of our food system and the vulnerability of so many people, so let’s use the social ties we nurture while tending our gardens, to help connect neighbors with resources to grab-and-go food, support small businesses, navigate questions about utilities, health and more.”

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Posted in City Harvest, Community Gardens, Philly Urban Ag News

Community Gardening and the Coronavirus

Posted on March 30, 2020 | Leave a comment

Here are some helpful gardening safety tips, and some links to other information for gardeners, that was recently disseminated to community gardens around town by the Pennsylvania Horticulture Society’s City Harvest program:

Heath and Safety Recommendations for Community Gardening

1. Continue growing food! Now more than ever we should be practicing local self-reliance and grow food for ourselves and the community.

2. Exercise an abundance of caution in the garden and follow these guidelines recommended by the CDC:

  • Wear gloves and disinfect high-touch spots

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  • Maintain social distance of six feet or more from others.
  • Be mindful of frequently touched spots like gates, locks, water spigots, tools.
  • Plan a day to disinfect! Use diluted household bleach solutions, alcohol solutions with at least 70% alcohol or other EPA-approved products. Viruses can be relatively long-lasting in the environment, and have the potential to be transferred via food or food contact surface.
  • Have hand sanitizer and soap readily available in the garden. Create a sanitizing station in the garden. If hand sanitizer isn’t readily available, consider making your own.

3. Limit sharing. Consider bringing your own tools for the time being as well as posting signs in the garden for people to a) wear gloves and b) always sanitize equipment after use.

4. This is the only time you’ll hear us saying this, but restrict large gatherings at the garden. There is no reason people should be holding a party or barbecue at this time even if the weather feels right.

5. Consider reducing risks for at-risk gardeners such as old gardeners, immune compromised etc.

6. Stagger participation. This is more difficult but if possible consider how to stagger the involvement of folks in the garden to ensure managing social distancing.

7. Set up crop watering schedule – maybe assign gardeners to water the entire garden to limit number of active people in the space. Consider no more than 4 or 5 people in a confined area.

8. If possible, avoid public transportation to get to your garden. We know travel can be an issue for some but consider alternatives like a bike, carpooling or something else.

9. If you have a garden meeting scheduled, do it by phone or web conferencing or simply post-pone. Gardens can easily open a free account with services like Zoom which can host up to 100 participants but limited to 40 minutes. If your site doesn’t have access to these technologies or needs help, let us know and we can gladly guide you or offer our support / conferencing services.

10. Leverage other tech services like WhatsApp to spread awareness in appropriate languages to your clients, gardeners, etc.

Here are very helpful links with recommendations regarding the handling, selling, and distribution of produce:

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Posted in City Harvest, Community Gardens, Philly Urban Ag News

Any Wild Bee Swarms Looking for a Dream Home?

Posted on April 13, 2019 | Leave a comment

You couldn’t do better than the interior lot of the Garden R.U.N. community garden if you were a bee, it seems to me. It’s an oasis on Monastery Ave. in the middle of Roxborough, with an array of fruit trees and 30 or so community garden plots just over a fence–presenting what must surely be a gourmet buffet of blossoms.

In fact, half a dozen bee boxes have buzzed with hives here in summers past. But Ed, one of the Garden R.U.N. beekeepers, says the hives had recently begun dying off after just two years. At $100 each to purchase  a new swarm of domesticated bees, it’s just not worth it, says Ed, so he is taking a break from beekeeping–unless a wild swarm happens to spot the empty boxes in the little Garden of Eden and move in. Swarming season begins soon, in May running into June and maybe July.

I’m not sure whether the absence of thousands of such busy pollinators will affect productivity in the garden, where I’ve tended a plot for the past five years, or whether other pollinators can pick up the slack. Unless a wild swarm moves in, this summer we may find out.In the meantime, I sent a query about our beekeepers’ plight to Doug Sponsler, a Roxborough resident, postdoctoral scholar at Drexel University’s Academy of Natural Sciences and an expert on honeybee foraging behavior in urban environments. He kindly offered these words of advice:

“Unfortunately, losing hives is par for the course. There’s nothing exceptional about the circumstances you describe. In fact, getting two years out of any given hive is pretty good these days.  Getting bees through the winter hinges on effective varroa control. When you install a package (if that’s how you get your bees), the first thing you should do is hit it with an oxalic acid treatment. Then, monitor for mites on a monthly basis using either sugar shakes or alcohol washes, and treat all the hives in the apiary whenever at least one of them exceeds treatment threshold. During the brood-rearing time of year, the best treatment method right now is formic acid. Going into winter, when brood rearing has tapered off, oxalic acid is effective. Formic can kill mites in capped cells, while oxalic only kills mites on bees. Mite levels tend to skyrocket in late summer and fall, so that’s when you really need to keep on top of it with frequent inspections.”

Doug also suggested getting involved with the Philadelphia Beekeepers Guild, which he called “a great place to get beekeeping advice, and a cool group of people.”

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Posted in Beekeeping, Community Gardens

An Urban Agricultural Plan for Philly Is in the Works

Posted on April 10, 2019 | Leave a comment

Urban agriculture is a big deal in Philadelphia, with over 470 community gardens and urban farms, by one count. But it has been a haphazard and precarious phenomenon. A proposed Urban Agriculture Plan aims to eliminate some of the uncertainties. As a first step, the city is looking for a consultant to make recommendations on how to proceed.

The Urban Agriculture Plan will “outline the current state of agriculture in Philadelphia” and guide the city on “how to improve and create new pathways for support and resources for the maintenance and expansion of urban agriculture projects,” says a press release announcing a request for proposals for the consultant gig. (Here’s the full rfp. Deadline: April 30.)

Farming and gardening have been permissible activities on most land within the city since zoning laws were amended in 2012, the rfp notes. The Philadelphia Land Bank was created the next year as a clearinghouse for the tens of thousands of vacant lots scattered around Philadelphia (one of which is pictured above) that are either owned by the city or have been abandoned by their owners. Urban farms have sprouted on vacant lots across the city since then, “but hundreds of these spaces are at risk of being lost,” the rfp states. “This simultaneous push and pull of possibility and precariousness reflects the overall picture of urban agriculture today in Philadelphia.”

The Land Bank, with a wide-ranging mission to promote affordable housing and economic development and community gardens and green space, hasn’t pleased everyone. As Catalina Jaramillo reported last year, it has left urban ag advocates particularly disgruntled–by failing to protect some well-established gardens from development. The urban ag plan, theoretically, should help the city allay some of those concerns.
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There are plenty of available parcels, at least on paper. According to the Land Bank, as many 43,000 lots in Philadelphia that are either vacant or have abandoned buildings on them have potential for use as urban gardens. The plan aims to identify which are best suited for community gardens –and least vulnerable to being sold out from under the gardeners.

In a recent piece for the Inquirer, Frank Kummer, asked some urban ag movers and shakers, including Christine Knapp, director of the city’s Office of Sustainability, for their thoughts about the proposed Urban Agriculture Plan.

“We want to have a deep community engagement process,” Knapp said. “If you want to garden or farm, let us help you figure out how to do that in the long term. Do you want to buy the land? Do you want it tested? So it’s not an attempt to clamp down on the practice.”

Jenny Greenberg, executive director of the Neighborhood Gardens Trust, said her organization supports the city’s effort. Greenberg said community gardens and plots have already been lost to development.

Many of the city’s community gardens and farms were started on abandoned properties because neighbors sought to take control of the blight, Greenberg said. So they introduced communal green spaces that often last for years until the lots get sold at sheriff’s sales or redeveloped. The city might be able to help community groups buy the land or keep legal access to it, she said.

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Posted in Community Gardens, Land Use, Philadelphia Land Bank, Philadelphia Urban Ag Plan, Vacant Lots

Urban Tree Connection Catches Eye of National Press

Posted on April 3, 2019 | Leave a comment

A venerable Philadelphia community-gardening nonprofit, the Urban Tree Connection, got some national press recently. David Karas, a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor, wrote about how the group, founded in 1989, has overseen the conversion of 29 vacant lots into community gardens, pocket parks, and green space, mostly in West Philadelphia’s Haddington neighborhood where UTC focuses its efforts.

One of its most ambitious projects is Neighborhood Foods Farm, created in 2009, which has turned underutilized land in the interior of a block into “a thriving food source.” As Karas notes:

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Produce that is harvested from the farm and other gardens is distributed to members of the community. The distribution takes place at neighborhood farm stands, which are manned by members of the community.

“It’s a pretty different approach–not only having farm stands where there is very limited food access, but having them operated and run by people who live in the neighborhood,” Warford says.

Noelle Warford has been UTC’s executive director since 2016.

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Posted in Community Gardens, Vacant Lots

Good News About the Future of Wiota Street Garden!?

Posted on February 9, 2017 | Leave a comment

Backers of the imperiled community garden that has occupied and beautified a quarter-acre vacant lot at the corner of  Powelton Avenue and Wiota Street in West Philadelphia since 1984, seem to be hoping they’ll be getting some good news soon. That would be a switch from the ominous tidings that have hovered over the Wiota Street Garden since last fall. Reports at the time indicated that a housing developer had offered between $200,000 and $300,000 for the lot, which is owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority. A decision about whether to accept the deal was said to be on the desk of the local entrenched city councilmember, Jannie Blackwell, who is apparently not a big fan of the garden—nor it of her (judging from the protest signs calling her out by name that the garden posted late last year).

Google Earth view of Wiota Street Garden

Presumably the land could be sold out from beneath the garden, bringing its 33-year run to an end, any day now. But wait! A cryptic message posted on the Wiota Street Garden’s Facebook page hints there may be a glimmer of hope. It is a heavily veiled hint, to be sure, consisting of really nothing more than an exclamation point. Appended to the sentence about the unnamed new developers, it suggests they may be white knights who will save the garden.

Here’s the statement in its entirety, from the garden’s Facebook page.

“There will be a hearing at 1234 Market Street at 4pm on March 8: another set of possible developers! Stay tuned for more info.”

While awaiting further word on that, here’s a recap of some of the local press coverage from recent months about the Wiota Street Garden and its place in the now-thriving Powelton neighborhood.

Mike Lyons, a reporter for the West Philly Local, found that not all of the neighbors are wildly enthused about the garden when he attended a public hearing about it in November, with Blackwell presiding. It drew 60 people and was “divisive” at times, Lyons reported.  The headline on his story summed up the outcome: Tenuous community consensus reached on preserving Wiota Street Garden.

One grievance seems to revolve around the fact that while it is called a “community garden,” it has been mostly run by one man, John Lindsay, since its inception. As Curtis Seward, who lives across the street from the plot, put it at the hearing, “John has done a herculean job keeping it up, but I don’t see any community in this so-called community garden.” That clearly resonated with Blackwell:  “I hear you loud and clear,” she said.
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Wiota Street Garden delivers 1,000th pound of produce to food pantry (from garden’s Facebook page).

A report by Nicole Contosta published i n the University City Review  in January lauded the efforts made by the garden to forge new ties with the community, and to spread the news of all the good it does. The garden announced with fanfair in mid-December that it had just donated its 1,000th pound of produce for the year to a local food pantry. That followed a major honor earned by the garden in November. In its annual ranking of community gardens in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society gave the garden a Blue Ribbon Greening Award in the Urban Farms category. Contosta goes on to say:

“This represents only a fraction of the garden’s contribution to their West Powelton neighborhood and beyond. Recently, it sponsored a neighborhood clean-up at Barring and Wiota Streets. It added a library pick up and drop off box at its perimeter. Wiota Street Gardeners collected a huge quantity of leaves that they then blended into the garden’s soil last fall. Through the PHA, it has sponsored a winter garden contest to judge the condition of gardens in the off season. And gardeners took over the maintenance of the playground at Budd and Powelton Streets.”

Inga Saffron, the Philadelphia Inquirer‘s architecture critic, covered the Wiota Street garden in one of her Changing Skyline columns in October. For failing to make a decision, or answer questions about where she stands, Blackwell is the titular villain in Saffon’s piece, “Autocratic Leadership vs. Community Gardens. But she acknowledges that the “story is a bit more complex” than its backers suggest. To wit:

“There are some 400 community gardens in Philadelphia, a legacy of the long decades of decay and abandonment. The folks who stuck it out here laid claim to whatever vacant land they could, with little concern for the name on the deed. Officials were only too happy to see orderly rows of vegetables rather than have the earth swallow up the city.

“But that was then. Philadelphia is now undergoing a rowhouse boom the likes of which it hasn’t seen since immigrants were pouring off the docks in the early 20th century. As developers scramble for any available site where they can throw up a few houses, community gardens, lovingly tended for decades, have become easy targets. At least a half-dozen are under threat of being bulldozed, including one of the oldest, the Eastwick Community Garden.”

Good luck being one that is saved from legal limbo. Amy Laura Cahn, a lawyer who serves on the board of the The Neighborhood Gardens Trust tells Saffron that of the 318 gardens that have applied for legal status from the city’s landholding agencies, only 17 have had their standing clarified in the last two years.

A year ago, Lindsay reportedly saw the handwriting on the wall and suggested that the garden trust should assume formal control of the Wiota Street Garden to preserve it as green space, keeping it safe from developers. Saffron reported that the trust was “thrilled” by the suggeston. But in order for that tyo happen, ownership would need to be turned over to trust, which would move it off the Redevelopment Authority’s books and preserve it as green space. The Trust’s executive director, Jenny Greenberg, said at the meeting that the organization’s board has approved acquisition of the plot “contingent on broad access to the garden.”

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Posted in Community Gardens, Land Use, Urban Farms