Where is this "South End" you're talking about?
The South End is built upon a former tidal marsh, a part of a larger project
of the filling of Boston's Back Bay and South Bay, from the 1830s to the 1870s.
Fill was brought in by trains from large trenches of gravel excavated in
Needham, Massachusetts. The South End was filled and developed first, before the
adjoining Back Bay, which was mostly built after the American Civil War.
Nineteenth century technology did not allow for driving steel piles into
bedrock and instead a system of submerged timbers provided an understructure
for most South End buildings. (any even minor earthquake here is going to
devastate our neighborhood, just saying...)
The South End was once bordered to the north and west by the Boston & Providence Railroad, which terminated at the B&P RR
Station bordering the Boston Public Garden. The railroad line is now covered by
the Southwest Corridor Park. Most of the cross streets in the
neighborhood are named after cities and towns served by the railroad: Greenwich,
Connecticut, Newton, Canton, Dedham, Brookline, Rutland, Vermont, Concord,
Worcester, Springfield, Camden, Maine, Northampton, Sharon, Randolph, Plympton,
Stoughton, Waltham, Dover, Chatham, Bristol, Connecticut, and Wareham.
The primary business thoroughfares of the South End are Tremont and Washington
Streets, from Massachusetts Avenue to Berkeley Street. Washington Street, the
original causeway that connected Roxbury to Boston, experienced considerable
reinvestment in the 1990s. The street was once defined by the Washington Street
Elevated, an elevated train that was moved to below Southwest Corridor Park in
the 1980s. Columbus Avenue, the third main street of the South End, also has
numerous restaurants and provides a remarkable straight-line view to the steeple
of Park Street Church. Today the modern MBTA Orange Line rapid transit train
runs along the partially covered Southwest Corridor, with neighborhood stops at
Back Bay (also an MBTA Commuter Rail stop due to its proximity to the Copley
Square employment center) and Massachusetts Avenue.
As the South End geographically grew from filling in marsh land, the city of
Boston envisioned a large inner city residential neighborhood to relieve the
crowded downtown and Beacon Hill neighborhoods. The city also hoped for a large
and stable tax base. A burgeoning middle class moved to the South End including
business owners, mayors, bankers, and industrialists. Though the neighborhood's
status as a wealthy neighborhood was relatively short-lived, myths of a dramatic
white flight in the 1880s are not entirely true. A series of national financial
panics, combined with the emergence of new residential housing in Back Bay and
Roxbury fed a steady decline of whites of English Protestant ancestry. Still
whites remained in the neighborhood, but increasingly they were Catholic and
recent immigrants.
By the close of the nineteenth century the South End was becoming a tenement
district, first attracting new immigrants and, in the 1940s, single gay men. The
South End also became a center of black middle class Boston life and culture.
The largest concentration of Pullman
Porters in the country lived in the South End, mostly between Columbus
Avenue and the railroad bed. As the decades progressed, more buildings became
tenements and by the 1960s absentee landlordism was rampant and the neighborhood
was one of the poorest of the city.
The South End's population has been diverse since the 1880s when Irish,
Lebanese, Jewish, African-American, and Greek populations began to settle in the
neighborhood. In the 1930s a substantial immigration from Canada's maritime
provinces found economic opportunity in Boston, and homes in the South End
neighborhood.
Beginning in the 1940s, particularly after the end of WWII the South End's
rooming houses became home to growing numbers of gays and lesbians. The
environment of single sex rooming houses provided home, and social cover for
unmarried GLBT people. In the late 1940s a growing population of Hispanic
people began settlement. At first much of this settlement was centered around
the Cathedral of the Holy Cross.
Today the neighborhood remains diverse, integrating people of nearly every
race, religion, and sexual orientation.
Income levels are anecdotally reported as stratified: a concentration of the
wealthy and the poor. Though gentrification is sometimes cited as a reason for
flight of poorer and non-white residents, the neighborhood has maintained
racial and income diversity due to a large number of subsidized, publicly owned,
or otherwise low-income housing units and a homeless shelter. The South End is
known as an increasingly upper middle class neighborhood, although is still home
to many lower income residents. Some long-time residents are being pushed out by
rising rents and property taxes. Because of a strong low-income agenda from the
city, and the presence of several low income housing projects, the South End
will likely remain economically and racially diverse.
The racial makeup of the South End in 2000 was 45% non-Hispanic white, 23%
black or African-American, 17% Hispanic or Latino and 12% Asian-American.
-disclaimer- most of the above info was lifted from wikipedia, and edited and/or updated where necessary.
Victory gardens vs Community gardens.
Victory gardens were vegetable, fruit and herb gardens planted at private
residences and public parks in United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Germany
during World War I and II to reduce the pressure on the public food supply
brought on by the war effort. In addition to indirectly aiding the war effort
these gardens were also considered a civil "morale booster" - in that gardeners
could feel empowered by their contribution of labor and rewarded by the produce
grown. This made victory gardens become a part of daily life on the home front.
Amid regular rationing of canned food in Britain, a poster campaign ("Plant more
in '44!") encouraged the planting of victory gardens.
Although at first the Department of Agriculture objected to Eleanor
Roosevelt's institution of a victory garden on the White House grounds, fearing
that such a movement would hurt the food industry, basic information about
gardening appeared in public services booklets distributed by the Department of
Agriculture. The US Department of Agriculture estimates that more than 20
million victory gardens were planted. Fruit and vegetables harvested in these
home and community plots was estimated to be 9-10 million tons, an amount equal
to all commercial production of fresh vegetables.
Victory gardens were planted in backyards and on apartment-building rooftops,
with the occasional vacant lot "commandeered for the war effort!" and put to
use as a cornfield or a squash patch. During World War II, sections of lawn were
publicly plowed for plots in Hyde Park, London to publicize the movement. In New
York City, the lawns around vacant "Riverside" were devoted to victory gardens,
as were portions of San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
The Fenway Victory Gardens in the Back Bay Fens of Boston, Massachusetts and
the Dowling Community Garden in Minneapolis, Minnesota, remain active as the
last surviving public examples from World War II.
Since the turn of the century there has existed a growing interest in victory
gardens. A grassroots campaign promoting such gardens has recently sprung up in
the form of new victory gardens in public spaces, victory garden websites and
blogs, as well as petitions to both renew a national campaign for the victory
garden and to encourage the re-establishment of a victory garden on the White
House lawn. In March 2009, First Lady Michelle Obama, planted a 1,100 square
foot "Kitchen Garden" on the White House lawn, the first since Eleanor
Roosevelt's, to raise awareness about healthy food.
Typically found in cities, "community gardens" are small patches of land that
1) are ostensibly owned by the local government but have actually been
abandoned, and 2) have been cleared, planted and cultivated by groups of
volunteers (usually people from the immediate neighborhood). Unlike "Victory
Gardens", community gardens are intended to reclaim public space.
Lessons learned from the NYC community garden movement.
The first community garden in NYC was established in 1973 by the "Green Guerillas"
group. In the following 20 years numerous community gardens sprang up in the
city, wherever lots were abandoned and local residents took up rakes. In 1978,
to keep up with and maintain control over the burgeoning community-garden
movement, the NYC government began "Operation Green Thumb," which mandates that
gardens can only exist if the gardeners declare that they know the property they
are cultivating isn't theirs but the property of the city, which can lawfully
evict them with as little as 30 days' notice, and pay the City a nominal fee ($1
per year). In 1994 newly elected Mayor Rudolph Giuliani directs the city to
identify "abandoned lots" (community gardens) that should be sold at auction to
help the City pay its bills. In response, community gardeners form the "Garden
Preservation Coalition."
In 1999, the Mayor Giuliani announces the auction of 112 community gardens. In
February, 31 people are arrested at City Hall in protest of Giuliani's garden
policies. In April, a "Reclaim the Streets" protest on Avenue A blocks traffic
for hours. In May, 62 people arrested during civil disobedience at Chambers
Street and the West Side Highway. On May 11th, one day before the gardens are to
be sold off, two organizations committed to preserving the gardens (the Trust for Public Land and Bette
Midler's foundation New York
Restoration Project) make a deal with Giuliani to buy them for $4 million.
In June, New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer sues New York City to
prevent any more auctions.
The South End follows suit.
As the lawyer's and activist's battles with Mayor Giuliani make headlines,
Boston organizes and the South End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust is formed
to head off any such heavy handed tactics by the city and it's Boston
Redevelopment Authority, which prefers to see condos built in every
available empty lot. The South
End Lower Roxbury Open Space Land Trust works to acquire, own, improve, and
maintain open space for community gardening in the South End and Lower Roxbury
neighborhoods of Boston, for the public benefit in perpetuity.
The (SELROSLT) Land Trust was established in 1991 with the intent to
incorporate and protect eight established community gardens. The existing
gardens were owned by a variety of institutions, none of them with long term
legal protection. The legal incorporation as a non-profit organization with an
elected board composed of neighbors created an entity that was able to partner
with The Trust for Public Land to purchase the range of properties from a
variety of owners, and set in place a process to use and care for the gardens
in perpetuity. Many of the original eight gardens were primarily food producing,
helping to augment the budgets of low and moderate-income urban families. Land
Trust gardens continue to be places of food production, as well as gardeners
growing ornamental plants.
Today SELROSLT holds and operates sixteen community gardens, gardened by
approximately 700 gardeners, and accessible to their adjacent neighborhoods.
Individual gardens have received awards from the Massachusetts Horticultural
Society, the City of Boston, and Horticulture magazine. Three SELROSLT community
gardens have been the subject of the nationally distributed WGBH-produced
program The Victory Garden.
Membership is open to individuals and families living in the South End and
Lower Roxbury. Most individual community gardens have a membership committee
which manages their waiting list, works with the garden's. Members pay an annual
plot fee, a portion of which is given to the Land Trust. Costs are moderate, and
payable on a sliding fee. Members vote in their leadership committees at an
annual meeting and are required to maintain their plot in a clean and productive
state.
Which finally brings us to the Worcester
Street Community Garden.
Our community garden is one of the flagship gardens, both oldest and second
largest in the Land Trust. We are located in the poorer end of the South End and
take up one quarter of a good sized city block, with over one hundred plots.
During the 1960s and 70s, large swathes of brownstones in the area fell into
disrepair and were abandoned by landlords. Community activists seized a number
of these abandoned plots, where dilapidated buildings had been demolished,
hauled in compost and soil to fill in basements and cover over foundations, and
managed to turn blights on the cityscape and dangerous eyesores into working
community gardens.
In the case of the gardens that sprung up in the Worcester Street area of the
South End, the demolition of the Boston & Providence Railroad, two blocks to the
north, provided a cheap and readily available source of lumber to utilize as
garden plot borders in the form of all the railroad ties they could haul away.
This, at the time, seemed like a win-win situation for the gardeners and the
railroad demolition crews. Little did the earlier gardeners realize that along
with the railroad ties they were bringing into the garden a number of toxic
chemicals and poisons, which over time leach from the wood into the soil,
including creosol, arsenic and lead. (this is where the ominous music comes
in in the background. below you can see the railroad ties being utilized in
their capacity as borders surrounding my plots.)
Two years ago last spring, I was minding my own business, sitting quietly in
the back of the conference room and keeping a low profile during our annual
community garden meeting when the coordinating committee announced they needed
nominees to take over as garden leader. In true classic comedy format, everyone
else in the room metaphorically took a step backwards and left me "volunteering"
to take over leadership duties. At the time, I had been completely out of the
loop as far as the ambitious three year plan the coordinating committee was
about to saddle me with.
The three year plan involved three phases-
-Removal of the toxic railroad ties we had been utilizing as garden plot
borders, which were slowly poisoning both our soil and vegetables and
ultimately our gardeners.
-Soil remediation, to remove and/or dilute the toxic soil to safe levels of
poisons with "clean" compost and top soil.
-And finally, install new, environmentally sound, bluestone
borders.
In the autumn of 2007, following my "election" to garden coordinator, after
the growing season had wrapped up for the year, we removed the railroad ties.
Environmental regulations had become more strict in the 20 years since the ties
were installed, and we had to dispose of them as hazardous waste, which took
quite a bite out of the Land Trust's budget.
In the early spring of 2008, the mayhem of soil remediation kicked into full
gear. We, in collaboration with a research team from the Boston University School of Public
Health, had soil samples taken from throughout the garden area and sent to
the University of
Massachusetts Amherst for thorough examination. Statistical analysis of
these test results allowed the B.U. team to make recommendations for how
extensive the soil remediation portion of this project would need to be in order
to make our soil safe for the growing fruits and vegetables for regular
consumption by our gardeners. Luckily, it was determined that roughly a foot
under the space where the rail ties rested and a foot into the plots from those
borders, diluted one-to-one with clean compost would sufficiently dilute the
levels of toxins to make our gardens produce healthy for our members to consume.
The City of Boston graciously provided the necessary compost.
The make up of our gardening membership has roughly half of our members
retirees and/or senior citizens, so the task of digging ditches and moving large
quantities of soil was certainly not something that would be within their
physical capabilities. So with the aid of, and in spite of the aid of, the kind
folks at City
Year, we got the ball rolling with the labor intensive process of digging
the trenches under and adjacent to where the rail ties had rested. One damp, early spring saturday, a multitude of energetic young
volunteers descended upon our Worcester Street Garden with shovels, plenty of
enthusiasm and strong backs and dug most the necessary trenches and gave us a
good initial push towards the soil remediation phase of this massive
undertaking. They also came with a few carpenters in tow and reconstructed
four of our raised beds for our physically challenged gardeners. My back aches
just looking at these photos again!
Little did I know that the soil remediation wasn't the most labor intensive
phase of this project.
The brains behind my brawn in this undertaking, Carol, managed to cut us a
deal for bluestone border material with the kind folks at the T.H
McVey Stone Company, who supplied us with all the border stones we required
at 25% cost. We received roughly $40,000 worth of bluestone slabs cut to our
specifications for $10,000. These slabs measured 1 inch thick, 14 inches deep
and were cut into 4, 5 and 6 foot lengths, since the size and shape of our
plots vary dramatically.
The weekend following the visit by the City Year helpers, had our able bodied
gardeners out en masse to install the bluestone slabs around each of our
100+ plots. These slabs weight anywhere from 200 to 400 pounds depending on
their length. So hauling them from our staging area to the individual plots,
over and around mounds of soil and trenches was a very challenging and
backbreaking endeavor. We managed to install a third of the new bluestone
borders on that first weekend. It wasn't just a matter of hauling the stone
slabs into the needed trench, but the soil removed from each trench needed to be
mixed with an equal portion of fresh compost and the resulting mixture used to
fill in around the seated bluestone slabs.
A second fine organization here in Boston stepped up to the plate the
following weekend and with just a handful of volunteers from Boston Cares helped us
install the second third of the bluestone borders. The trenches we dug were a
good 12-14 inches deep. Installing and properly seating the stone slabs meant
filling the lower third of each trench with pea-sized gravel, to minimize any
downward settling of these enormously heavy pieces of stone. We buried 6 to 8
inches of the 14 inch wide slabs, leaving roughly 6 inches above ground, which
effectively contained the excess soil and compost that resulted from the
needed dilution, as recommended by the researchers from Boston University.
As more and more of these slabs were installed and the obstacle course of
mounds and trenches thinned out, in addition to having two full weekends of
working the kinks out of the protocol, the task of installing the final third
of the bluestone slabs became manageable. I pretty much installed the final
third myself, with an hour or two each early morning, before work; and an hour
most evenings after work, over that next month.
An unintended benefit from this project has been that our plots, by virtue of
that soil remediation/toxin dilution protocol, are now raised beds. This allows
us to plant a few weeks earlier in the spring than previously, because the soil
slightly above ground warms earlier in the season.
This year, our first full year since this project was completed, has seen an
incredible increase in garden productivity. Tomatoes, cucumbers, squash, beans
and peas are extremely bountiful, and the callaloo, a
Jamaican green that many of our gardeners plant exclusively is overflowing many
of our plots. Bobby, our Jamaican callaloo guru shown kneeling below, claims
that the Jamaicans all live well beyond 100 because of the health benefits from
eating the high fiber green callaloo in many of their dishes. Bobby btw, was a
member of Bob Marley's band in his younger days and is still hawking reggae cds
that his record label produces when you run into him in the garden. He erected a
Jamaican scarecrow to ward off birds feasting on the callalou seedings.
This current summer saw us complete the final leg of this project, by adding
a new stretch of pathways, which makes a previously poorly accessible corner of
the garden much more easy to maintain. We sliced a three foot wide swath
through three existing plots and installed more of the bluestone slabs, this
time without the soil remediation complication. This puts an exclamation point
on my three year stint as leader of this fascinating and important piece of
urban life here in Boston's historic South End. We've done ourselves proud.
The refurbished, raised plots for our physically challenged gardeners-
Last month we held a garden party/fundraiser to raise a few dollars to pay
for new shed doors and bronze remembrance plaques commemorating longtime
gardeners who have passed away in recent years. The event was held under the
gazebo, which was designed, built and donated by the Boston Architectural College
5 summers ago. Turnout was fine and we managed to raise enough money to pay for
the shed door construction and the engraved brass plaques.
Just recently, the South End's community gardens were written up for our efforts to help Boston's sizable Haitian
community with our "Plant a Row for Haiti" program. Each week we put out
collection bins for gardeners to donate freshly harvested produce which is
delivered to a food pantry that serves the Haitian community in the Dorchester
neighborhood of Boston. By helping subsidize our neighbors summer diets we free
up funds they are then able to send to family and communities still struggling
on the island to cope with the devastation in the earthquakes aftermath.
Navigating the diversity.
Perhaps the greatest facet to life in the South End is the richness of
diversity present here and the fact that the city of Boston and our neighborhood
leaders have done an exemplary job of preserving it for the most part.
Interestingly, the racial/ethnic and sexual orientation divides rarely seem to
cause any backlash among the gardeners. What is however prevalent is an "Old
South End" vs "New South End" friction. The newcomers to the neighborhood are
much more affluent than the longtime residents. With gentrification, rents have
gone up, way up; but so have property values, so those who owned or bought
property back when it was dirt cheap and the area was a war zone are now sitting
pretty. Since then, the city has gone to great lengths to try to keep low income
community members in place with subsidized and public housing. The tall building
at the end of the block that is visible in a photo up above is public housing
and where quite a few of our gardeners currently reside.
The garden has a two tiered fee structure for our membership dues, which helps
keep the garden from becoming the exclusive domain of the 'interlopers', but
there is still some resentment as the old school/long term gardeners fade away
and are replaced by this more affluent crowd. Trying to keep a foot in each camp
is perhaps the most challenging aspect to being garden coordinator. New members
all communicate by email, old members don't go online or in many instances own
computers. We have a pair of Chinese gardeners and one Latina who speak no
English, so we contact their children when we need to get them garden news. We
sent out regular updates as the remediation project was unfolding, to keep
everyone up-to-date with the latest info, and for those not online, a news
letter was printed. Midway through the project we realized that a number of the
older gardeners don't read, so we now make sure the most prominent garden
leaders from that camp are kept up to date with any information we need folks to
be appraised of, and the others are contacted by way of phone tree or word of
mouth.
When all was said and done, this massive undertaking didn't cost our
gardeners one extra dime. Contributions to the Land Trust over the years were
reinvested by that organization in the garden and the only out of pocket costs
were raised in our garden party. I'd like to think we not only helped improve
the health of the soil and the crops that spring from that soil, but helped
improve the health of the community and the individuals that reside here.
A closing technical note.
Apparently the use of railroad ties for plot borders is not that uncommon an
issue nationwide. And the example we set and the approach we took are now
models for other community gardening groups throughout the nation. The fact
that my efforts and the strategy Carol and I employed to get this huge job
accomplished will result in healthier foods on the tables in dozens of low and
moderate income families is quite rewarding. Next on our agenda is outreach to
area elementary schools, to teach the students about gardening and the
environment. Our pilot program this season, with a group of parents and
pre-schoolers has been very successful.
