STANISLAUS CONNECTIONS
By Dan And Barbara Pollock
Dear friends and fellow gardeners,
The other day while I was driving to work, I was listening to an editorial on National Public Radio (NPR) which caught my attention. A reporter was interviewing a woman in the suburbs of Philadelphia who decided to plant a garden. Normally this would hardly be noteworthy, but this wasn’t your typical backyard garden phenomenon. It seems the woman lived in an inner city area, a place run down, where buildings were boarded up, and others left to decay. Vacant fields were left for the weeds to overtake, sharing space with vandals and other unsavory characters.
It was on one such lot that the woman decided she would grow a garden. Clearing the rubble and left over debris, she then hauled in several cubic yards of soil, amendments, fertilizer, and went on to plant the garden she had longed for. In addition to planting vegetables, the woman planted trees and flowers to give the little plot some color and character. It didn’t take long for the neighbors to catch interest in what she was doing, and soon they too began clearing areas, making small parks and community gardens in the once crumbled and broken down lots.
A transformation began to take place in the community. People who were once too fearful to venture out of their homes were making appearances in the gardens. Neighbors who had built up a wall of fear and caution towards one another began to relax those divisive burdens, and soon were relating to each other as never before. Terms of endearment such as "honey" and "dear" became commonplace. Street-wise teenagers began to take interest in learning gardening techniques. They were gaining an appreciation of something overwhelmingly positive and beneficial, in surroundings where life can often appear negative and bleak.
Soon the Philadelphia Planning Commission became interested in these green vestiges of life sprouting up in the din of urban blight. Before long, community gardens abounded, postage-sized parks became common, and vacant land owners were being approached and asked by the city to donate their properties. The idea of creating green belts of life caught on.
When the immigrant woman who started this self-actuated phenomena was interviewed about the success of growing gardens in the city, she stated with candor that she never saw her crude garden as a paradise. Then, one day she observed a butterfly alight on a flower, and noticed birds in the trees she had recently planted, and she felt a sense of well being, a sense of community. This coming together of individuals has grown as a positive force, and even has come to work together in protecting the gardens. NPR mentioned an incident in which someone had taken a tree from a community garden and was in the process of walking away with it when the neighbors gathered together. They tackled the thief, recovered the tree, and immediately replanted it.
This is a remarkable story. It isn’t just about growing an urban garden, but of growing a community where people were once just individuals fending for themselves. It gives a sense of hope to all of us, in lieu of depressing urban realities. In this light, I challenge every reader to do what you can to promote the use of gardens and parks in your communities. Take back the vacant lot, the debris fettered area no longer used by child or sensible adult, and turn it into a small oasis. Make it a place for people to wander free from crime, violence, or squalor. It will not just bring higher property values to the area, it will help to restore a sense of pride and dignity to the community as a whole. Sometimes all we really need in a run down area is greater revegetation rather than redevelopment. Until next month, peace to you all!
Editor’s note: For more stories about how urban gardeners can take back their neighborhoods, read A Patch of Eden: America’s Inner City Gardens by H. Patricia Hynes.
