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 Mural Art Gardens
Dan Simon
Vacant
lots.
Philadelphia has 31,000 of them. Many of them just sit there, becoming dumping grounds for piles of illegally discarded trash, draining city resources every time a sanitation crew comes by to clean them.
Not every lot becomes an eyesore though. A few, maybe 600 or so, have become a bit of green, an oasis from the asphalt and pavement that make up city life.
Some of these are privately managed community gardens. These are areas where a group of neighbors work out an arrangement to farm a nearby vacant lot. Others get their start as part of a combined effort by the Philadelphia's Mural Arts Program and the Philadelphia Horticultural Society's Philadelphia Green Program.
"We started working together with Philadelphia Green," said Jane Golden of the Mural Arts Program. "And we'd take parts of the city where they'd do intensive work in urban gardens and they would call us in to do murals as backdrops to the gardens.
"Or we'd be working in the same area and would be doing a mural and people would want the lot dealt with too. We were philosophically aligned. It's been a great partnership. It's been a real neighborhood transformation initiative issue."
One
current project the two groups are working on is the "Peace Garden"
on 29th and Wharton, a few blocks from the Schuylkill Expressway.
The effort has young people planting heritage birch trees and grasses
to go with a spectacular mural of clasped hands of different races.
At the lot's center point is a mosaic of a dove marking the spot where
different paths into the lot meet.
"In Grey's Ferry, there is a huge parcel of land in front of this inspiring mural," Golden said. "It was a real trash bin, and really needed to be cleaned up almost continuously.
"The neighborhood is really behind doing something here. They wanted it to be a meditative space, not a sitting garden, but someplace you can walk through. It's going to be quite something. So for me, having been involved in that neighborhood since 1998, I have seen some amazing changes."
The people working on the project are members of an art education program the Mural Arts Program runs. Included in the manpower are students from local schools who helped out during their summer vacation.
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