A few years ago Sarah Steedman noticed that most of the vegetables grown in her Uptown community garden ended up rotting on the vine. “No one was harvesting them because they were on vacation or forgot or lost interest or whatever,” she says. “I thought it was terrible, because there was a lot of poverty in that neighborhood. I thought it would be a good idea to give it to a soup kitchen so it wouldn’t be wasted.” She brought some of her neighbors’ surplus to the Inspiration Cafe, which serves free meals to homeless people in a restaurant setting. There she met Jill Swan, a fund-raiser for the cafe, and together they decided to start the city’s only organic food-bank garden.
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In 1994 they found a city-owned, tax-default double lot tucked between two six-flats on Kenmore just north of Irving Park Road. “The lot was used as a playground for kids,” says Steedman. “I felt bad and got them involved with the cleanup and turning it over. But we sort of took their play lot.”
These days the garden has a flagstone path that winds past the ginkgo tree through a maze of native and perennial plants. The fenced-off back area is partially accessible to the handicapped and houses 27 beds of heirloom vegetables, edible flowers, tea, and herbs. For pest control the garden uses what Salus calls organic pesticides–ladybugs, praying mantises, and companion plants that draw the pests from more productive plants. Each volunteer is given a small space; one has a tea bed, and another grows medicinal herbs. Last year Salus grew tobacco, dried and powdered it, and plans to use the dust as an insect repellent at the Kilbourn Park Organic Greenhouse, where Steedman works as manager and seedlings are grown for the Ginkgo garden.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jim Newberry.
