One of Philly’s oldest community gardens gets preserved in rare deal with the city
The roughly one-acre garden was stitched together in 1976 from privately held vacant properties and was vulnerable to development.
The Summer Winter Community Garden serves as a colorful bridge between Powelton Village and Drexel University’s campus as students on their way to classes cross a paved path bordered by fruits, vegetables, and flowers grown by residents.
The roughly one-acre garden was stitched together in 1976 from privately held vacant properties that were eventually taken over by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, leaving the land vulnerable to development.
Now, the garden will be preserved under a resolution approved Thursday by City Council that grants the property’s title to the nonprofit Neighborhood Gardens Trust.
“This is a keystone garden for the city of Philadelphia,” said Jenny Greenberg, executive director of the trust. “It’s one of the oldest, it’s one of the largest, and it’s in a neighborhood that has seen a lot of redevelopment and a lot of pressure in the real estate market. For the gardeners who’ve been cultivating it, this is a huge success story.”
Now, Greenberg said, the 60 or so regular community users “have the assurance and peace of mind that this garden will continue to serve their community for decades and generations to come.”
A valuable property
The garden, at 33rd and Race Streets, is named after the adjacent Summer and Winter Streets. It is also used by students enrolled in Drexel’s culinary arts program and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s Harvest program, which donates produce to combat food insecurity.
The two-step process of transferring the land began in the fall, when the redevelopment authority voted in October to deed the three properties that make up the garden to the trust.
Those properties have become valuable over the years and are now worth $1.7 million, according to the office of Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, who sponsored the resolution. Gauthier’s resolution finalizes the process through a contract between the redevelopment authority and the Neighborhood Gardens Trust.
Under the arrangement, the city will hold a 30-year mortgage valued at $520,000 on the garden, but the trust will not have to make payments. However, the trust will have to adhere to terms in the mortgage, such as upkeep of the property.
Though the trust will hold the title, day-to-day management of the site will be left to community members.
A difficult process
The transfer of the title is a rare win for community gardens.
In Philadelphia, community gardeners often work on vacant lots that have been abandoned by private owners and fallen into neglect.
Community gardeners often have difficulty taking full possession of the land through a complex city process involving both the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority and the Philadelphia Land Bank.
The redevelopment authority turns vacant properties into projects that can produce tax revenue while addressing the city’s affordable housing issues. As part of that, the city’s land bank acquires tax-delinquent properties through sheriff sales.
The challenge for many gardens, which have turned blighted land into communal areas that produce food, is that the community gardeners do not have legal ownership of the land. Because they don’t hold the title to the land, they risk losing it to developers in a tax foreclosure sale.
A community gardener can make a request to city officials to take possession of the title to a land bank-held property, but it’s a slow process.
A policy by the Philadelphia Land Bank requires community gardens to assume 30-year, city-written, self-amortizing mortgages in order to take possession of land. Because the city owns the land, it writes a mortgage for an appraised value without expecting the groups to actually repay the money.
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That is how the Neighborhood Gardens Trust came to hold title to the Summer Winter Garden.
Philadelphia has at least 100 community gardens operating on private land. Additionally, the city’s parks and recreation department hosts 19 community gardens on parkland.
‘An oasis of calm’
Gauthier said that the new agreement involving the city, Neighborhood Gardens Trust, and Summer Winter Garden will permanently preserve “an oasis of calm and beauty.”
“For decades, neighbors have been doing this lifesaving work even as the city disregarded the importance of community gardens,” Gauthier said. “I am glad that this generation of City Council is correcting course. This is just the start. I look forward to protecting other community gardens from speculative development as well.”
Alex Charnov of West Philly, a member of the Summer Winter Community Garden’s executive committee, called the title transfer “great news” and credited the Neighborhood Gardens Trust.
He is wary of the mortgage, fearing it gives the city a way to take back the land in the future. But for now, he said, he is excited.
Charnov said the garden produces hundreds of pounds of food that the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society donates to the Mantua Haverford Community Center. And residents grow tomatoes, zucchini, lettuce, cucumbers, herbs, and other produce, as well as native flowers.
“We’ve got everything under the sun growing at Summer Winter,” Charnov said.