by Katherine Sacks/MEDILL
Rogers Park community sprouts vegetable garden in former victory garden lot from Katherine Sacks on Vimeo.
Waiting in line at Muller Meats, her local butcher, LaManda Joy, had an epiphany- of the gardening kind.
Looking over at the wall of old photographs, she noticed a photo of a victory garden, a topic Joy had recently begun to research. Suddenly, the spark.
The photo was the empty lot at Peterson and Campbell, an intersection a few blocks from her home, a lot she regularly drove by. Joy began to dream up the community garden she would re-create in the space and she immediately contacted Patrick O’Conner, the alderman for the community.
“I told him the story and he was like, absolutely,” she said. “I mean he said, ‘Yes,’ before I was even done.”
Within a matter of weeks, Joy, an award-winning home gardener, started the Peterson Garden Project and soon volunteers, sponsors and donors were on board. People eagerly contacted Joy to donate supplies, their time, space or even a few seedlings for the future garden plots. The group has held fund-raisers, a seed swap and sing-alongs to help build community spirit, excitement, and funds for the project.
The 140 garden plots will be tended by community members ranging from families, the elderly, young children, and singles, who will grow organic vegetables from June through October. Volunteers will tend several of the garden plots to donate produce to local Rogers Park food shelters. Joy even sourced seeds similar to those grown in the original 1940s era victory gardens to grow several plots with historical vegetables. She calls this “history re-eating itself.”
Although many of the participants, both volunteers and gardeners, have no prior gardening experience, the project’s members, like volunteer Jamie Wolfe, are excited to be participating.
“I like the history of the victory garden and the organic gardening,” she said. “It’s great to get back to the basics.”
At the ground-breaking ceremony on Friday, many of the gardeners and volunteers sang the popular depression-era Hank Williams song, “Wait for the Light to Shine,” an example of how the group will combine gardening, community activities and the arts into the project. Joy chose this song because it focuses on neighbors working together and helping each other, which are key for the success of the garden project.
Over the next week, Joy and her team of more than twenty volunteers will prepare the land for gardening. The lot will be mowed, cleared, and leveled with fill and wood chips. The garden beds will be constructed and a small stage may be built, so the community can gather on the weekends for music. The gardeners should begin planting seeds and seedlings into the finished plots over the Memorial Day weekend, just in time for the summer gardening season.
With support from the alderman’s office, the Peterson Garden Project will be allowed to use the land, which is owned by Asian Human Services, for the following two years. During this time, Joy, the volunteers and gardeners hope to raise the funds to buy the lot and make the garden a permanent setting in the community.