Days 19: Build a Box

Our community garden is in danger of closing.

Will and Benjamin doing more work
than I can get them to do at home.

Two years ago a local car dealer bought an adjacent lot where they built a garage.  Since the new building only took up half the lot, the dealership offered the empty portion to neighbors for a community garden.  After a year of planning, we pulled things together enough to start the garden.  If you'd like to read more about the garden you can do so here (www.sotacgarden.blogspot.com)

Some time towards the end of 2015 we received news that the garden was in danger of closing.  Apparently the car dealership's garage needed rezoning.  They'd built a commercial building on a residential site.  Either they needed to tear the building down, build a house on the vacant portion (as they'd said they would in their plans) or get the site rezoned to commercial.  You can guess which option they chose.  They submitted a rezoning request before the end of the year.   If the lot were rezoned commercial, then there was nothing to stop the dealership from evicting the garden and building a parking lot.  You can guess how the neighbors felt about this.

Sherry and a young neighbor dump Tagro into a new bed.

After many conversations with the dealership we thought we'd reached an agreement for the lot to be partially rezoned.  Unfortunately they kept their request for a full commercial rezone, but affirmed the presence of our garden and promised no parking lot would ever be built on the site.  Some gardeners were skeptical and  resigned their membership.  Others remained optimistic and chose to stay.  This remnant decided to continue gardening this season and see what may come.

The rezoning hearing occurs in July.  I have mixed desires for the outcome.  If the rezoning fails, then the site will remain residential (yeah), but the dealership will have to build a house on the lot which will oust the garden (boo).   If the rezoning passes, then the garden can stay as long as the dealer says so (yeah), but at any moment they can evict us and build a parking lot (boo).  Let's hope Joni Mitchell's isn't singing Big Yellow Taxi at our little corner of paradise anytime soon.

In the meantime, we have decided to build more boxes.  The accompanying pictures are from our one day build a box gathering on May 26th.  Once again I was encouraged to see the power of communal work to bring folks together.   Old and young, neighbors with all manner of other differences became one for several hours on Thursday afternoon.  In the end we not only built and filled three new garden boxes, we also built multiple new relationships.  Yeah dirt!