Schuylkill River Park Community Garden
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The Schuylkill River Park Community Garden (SRPCG) is a unique approximately 70 plot (over 22,000 square feet (2,000 m2) of land) community garden located at 25th and Manning Streets in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The Garden is one of only a very few located on Fairmount Park land, a part of Philadelphia's Park System.
The site that is now the Garden and Schuylkill River Park was previously a B&O Railroad Station, which ran passenger service to New York City among other places, and the Kelly Brickyards. In the early 1980s, Gardeners began to dig out homemade plots, lay borders from cinder blocks and scrap wood, and start growing. They continued in this way happily for several years until the City of Philadelphia acquired the land and in 1984/1985 attempted to adsorb the site into the nascent Schuylkill River Park, writing the Garden out of these plans.[1] Behind the effort to remove the Garden was the city's Managing Director at the time, Leo Brooks, who lived directly across the street and did not like looking out at a bare patch during the winter months.[2] Like many community gardens, the future of this one was in jeopardy.
Through the extraordinary advocacy efforts of the Center City Residents' Association, led at the time by Bob Davidson and other neighbors, and particularly the strong support of Ernesta Ballard, then a commissioner of Fairmount Park and later president of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the city was persuaded to keep the Garden as part of the Park but only with substantial renovations such that it would prove a beautiful site in summer and in winter. John Collins, architect of Schuylkill River Park, was given this task. At its completion in 1988 the City of Philadelphia via Fairmount Park leased the land to the Center City Residents' Association. The Center City Residents' Association currently acts, through the Garden's Steering Committee, as manager of the site. As a tribute to its uniqueness, in January 2007 the SRPCG was invited to become and became part of the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Gardens. In 2009, the Garden joined PHS' City Harvest Program. In 2010, the Garden became a National Wildlife Federation certified Wildlife Habitat.