What looks the strongest has outlived its term

The future lies with what's affirmed from under.

                                                    Seamus Heaney

For close to a decade, a diverse group of gardeners has cultivated a community garden at the corner of 61st Street and Dorchester Avenue on the South Side of Chicago.  Over time, they have transformed vacant land in a precarious area into a singular urban amenity.

The land on which the garden is located belongs to the University of Chicago.  The University made it available with the explicit understanding that use of the site for gardening was provisional.  It was always clear the day would come when the U of C would reclaim the land for its own purposes. 

Early this year, that moment arrived.  The University announced it intends to use the garden site as a staging area for construction of a new building for the Chicago Theological Seminary a block away at the corner of 60th and Dorchester.  It has set October 30th as the deadline for gardeners to vacate the site.

I speak as a gardener.  My wife and I are among the 135 households that participate in the 61st Street Community Garden.  We are a diverse mix.  Racial and class integration are the least of it.  The true diversity of the garden is at the level of individual experience, character, and sensibility.  The garden may look rural, but it is a quintessentially urban space where we savor difference on common ground. 

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