Good Gardens Never Die

I first visited Bethlehem, PA with a friend some 8 years ago for Christkindlemark - a month-long German holiday marketplace held annually in this Moravian founded city about an hour north of our home in Bucks County. My now ex-husband had been telling me how nice and affordable the area was, but 40 miles seemed so far from where I had spent the last 8 years establishing my career and friends. Though once we drove through bucolic countryside past stunning homes, then descended the steep hill into the city, drove past the rough and tumble row homes, crossed the steel trussed bridge and strolled the historic town center I knew I had finally found my "home." Here was everything I wanted: diversity, beauty, decay, art and crime - hell, it even had it's own public radio station - all in one tiny city with a shining star on the hill. It was so full of promise.

My husband and I bought a house there in 2008 - 8/8/08 to be exact - we closed on it just two days before the bubble burst and the credit market began to dry up; friends of ours lost their financing. We had been the "lucky ones." It was an adorable Cape Cod with a slate roof on the hill overlooking the city. In fact, it sat right behind the 50-foot lighted star on South Mountain in a mid-century development known as "Star Village." (Fellow fans of the show Gilmore Girls will understand how excited I was to have my own "Star's Hallow.") August was an incredibly hot month that year - sweltering. I took a month off running my business to clean out and prepare the house, the elderly couple we purchased it from were entering a retirement home and as part of the deal left us with everything they had accumulated during the last 50 years, including a carpeted bathroom and 4 couches in the basement. Alone I struggled and sweated and scrubbed, filling a dumpster with their stuff and slowly filling the house with ours. We moved in September 1st - just in time to celebrate our 6th wedding anniversary.

Bethlehem was everything I had hoped and it welcomed me with open arms. Before long I had met my neighbors, including three generations of the same family who lived in three houses on my street raising some 60 different varieties of apples. I took my dogs for walks to the star and I enjoyed the many festivals, museums and culture the city offered. Late that winter I saw an ad for a community gardening group that was forming, inviting potential members to meet and brainstorm ideas for reclaiming a neglected patch of city property. It was being spearheaded by a wide-eyed college student interested in "permaculture" and filled with her professors, friends and leaders of various community groups. As a landscape designer, and a bit wide-eyed myself, I immediately offered to be her right hand.

The Maze Garden, as it was known, was on the working-class side of the river on a highly visibly corner populated by college kids, drug addicts, neighborhood families and overlooked by city hall. We plotted the garden, purchased fruit trees, tended vegetables, served them at soup kitchens and hosted pot-luck dinners. I met local politicians and artists, homeless men who slept on the benches at night and children who didn't know where food came from. The garden was a community unto itself. It spawned unlikely friendships, forged business networks and served to connect volunteers from many local organizations. Suddenly it seemed I knew everyone in town and was helping to steer the city's reinvention. I even grew bold enough to corner the mayor when I spotted him out in a local bar, plead the garden's case and try to force him to promise the city would never sell the land on which it sat.

My marriage began to fall apart at the end of that summer - by  8/8/2009 I had left my husband - but the roots I had put down in the garden were even stronger than that. I continued to drive the 40 miles each way several times a week to tend the garden, attend community meetings and serve on the boards of several organizations. I even had the Star of Bethlehem tattooed on the back of my neck.  The following year the college student transferred and I assumed leadership of the garden. Enthusiasm waned but we still hosted events and raised hundreds of pounds of produce, we even managed to refurbish the garden pond with the help of a local business - an event that gained us coverage by the local television station and newspaper. Two weeks later someone slashed the pond liner... a month later the building next door burned to the ground. It hurt. I felt like I had failed. I was too far away to protect my garden, to detached from the community to effectively rally supporters around it. I had to let it go and with it, unfortunately, my connection to the city, my membership in its future and my dreams of a "home."

That wasn't the end of the story though, the project was taken on by a Leigh University professor and the South Side Initiative, the Bethlehem Citizens Academy picked up its cause. Some of the wonderful people I had met through the garden kept me up to date on it's continued growth as the city re-connected the power line damaged during the fire, the mayor dedicated a bench in it and the garden celebrated its 15th anniversary. This summer - its 17th - volunteers continued to plant, tend and harvest. On my way to Musikfest - 8/8/13, by the way - I stopped and admired the jungle of flora it had grown into. Like a proud parent I knew it was no longer "mine" but that I had helped to make it what it was.

I just received a memo from the SS Initiative, inviting people to attend a vote regarding the city's sale of the Maze Garden property to a developer. If they cannot halt the sale, they are asking for a piece of replacement real estate. I'm not sure yet if I am sad. I long ago stopped pining for the house on the hill and a community I belonged to, though I don't ever think I will replace those feelings. I knew the garden was on borrowed land and on borrowed time. I have to admit that two vacant lots, no matter how beautifully planted, may not the best use of a prominent corner in a city rebuilding itself through tourism. No matter the decision tonight though I know I helped to plant something that continues to grow to this day; The community is stronger because of that garden, strong enough, in fact, to realize that a community is not a place, it is something you carry within you and take where ever the winds of fate send you to replant and regrow.

This is something I learned from the garden too. When I found myself back in Bucks County I decided to create my own community. I searched out like-minded people and together we planted The Sandy Ridge Community Garden. After three thriving years it has also reached a turning point, but I am wiser this time. I realize the community garden is not mine to claim. It is a part of all of those who tend it, who enjoy it and who are inspired by it to go out and create their own.