Winter Street Community Garden

Rob had a vision for a dedicated space for a community garden and through his dedication and resolve a space just off the Schuylkill River path, south of the Vine Street expressway located on city land with railroad right of way was identified and with a lot of Rob's and others hard labor a beautiful garden was born. Local Logan Square neighbors signed up and started growing wonderful produce and flowers during the summer of 2010. The garden was improved in the spring of 2011 with the addition of fencing, a watering system and added growing space outside the raised bed garden plots. This included clearing a large area of poison ivy. Through Rob's work we are supplied with water from the Edgewater Apartments. An expansion of the garden was created by a teacher's class through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and this added more space for growing areas for the students from the Science Leadership Academy, located in the Logan Square neighborhood, who were invited to use this space for learning about gardening and developing and implementing various science projects. This partnership continues and is anticipated to expand. This year, 2011, the Winter Street Community Garden won first prize in the City Gardens Contest! Rob had a vision for more at this unique city site and we (the garden group) plan to continue to pursue this vision with the eventual addition of a greenhouse, a pumpkin patch to grow pumpkins for the Logan Square Neighborhood children for halloween, fruit trees, involvement of many more local families in growing their own produce, expansion to be able to grow food for local distribution (in partnership with existing organizations), a water reclamation of highway water run-off to recycle the water for garden use and thus decrease the polluted run-off into the Schuylkill River, and beyond the garden - a recreation area using the vacant space under the Vine Street Expressway. This project continues and all of us involved in it will continue to use Rob's influence and dedication to make his vision come true and to take it beyond as we take Rob's example and try to emulate him in "seeing beyond the present and into the future"!