BEAUTIFYING THE WARD

June 20, 2006

'Sunshine Garden' unifies neighborhood

Leslie Baldacci ; The Chicago Sun-Times

What was once a barren field across from an Uptown apartment building is now the pride of a community, a graceful garden where seniors play chess and children hope for pumpkins in the fall. Named by neighborhood kids "The Sunshine Garden," this patch of green is a page right out of the book Seed Folks, the story of a diverse group of neighbors finding "common ground" in a community garden.

Residents of Lakeview Towers, 4550 N. Clarendon, broke ground on the summer solstice a year ago during the worst drought in 30 years. Nigerian women in Yoruba dress tilled the soil alongside immigrants from Mexico, Korea and Eastern Europe and born-in-the-U.S.A. Americans. Aided by a $5,000 grant from the Chicago Botanic Garden, dozens of volunteers from elders to toddlers cleared the land, planted and spread 10 tons of gravel to build a winding path. Some 25 to 30 volunteers showed up to work for five days straight, toiling in 90-degree heat under cloudless skies.

"This ground was so hard -- and full of rocks, screws, bolts and glass," said resident Charlene Wease.

"And not a worm in sight," said Katherine Boyda, the neighbor who wrote the grant application.

"Kids wanted to help so bad they'd take a spoon of dirt, carry it 100 feet and dump it, just to help," said Wease, whose 4-year-old son moved soil and water in a toy dump truck.

Neighbors wanted a garden that was "colorful, beautiful and safe." Eliza Fournier, coordinator of community gardening for the Botanic Garden, guided the design, a mix of flowering bushes and perennials including roses, salvia, lavender, day lilies, dogwood, lilac, Smoke Bush, Scabiosa, Cat Mint, Black-Eyed Susans, purple cone flowers, yarrow, asters, goldenrod, flox and astilbe. Children plant and tend their own flowers and vegetables in three raised beds.

Under urging by board member Serafin Kogan, Lakeview Towers contributed $2,500 for a chess and checker table, arbors and plants. Ald. Helen Shiller's office helped with lighting and benches. Others pitched in to add trellises and concrete patios, including the popular "elder's circle," where three benches form a conversation circle in the shade of a 70-year-old honey locust tree.

One thing no one wanted? A fence. And to date, not a thing in the garden has been harmed or stolen. In fact, the opposite has occurred.

The regulars showed up one day last year to find that someone had planted vegetables -- tomatoes, squash and peppers. By midsummer, a decorative metal rooster had appeared in the center of the garden. It disappeared in the fall just as mysteriously as it had come. Fournier said the garden's "openness" gives it a special place in her heart.

"A diverse group of people use it, love it and work in it," she said. "It was really inspiring to me."

The garden celebrates its one-year anniversary on Saturday.

"People in the neighborhood, people walking by will stop, water, pick up trash or pull a weed," Wease said. "There's always somebody doing something."

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