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When Stephen Drain was growing up in Southwest Philadelphia, the vacant lots between rowhouses on Reinhard Street attracted trash and debris.
Now, these lots grow sweet corn, watermelon, collard greens, jalapeños and chilis.
“Over the last five years, we’ve been able to develop the lots into a thriving food oasis that also has space for people to sit and reflect,” said Drain, farm director at the Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen. The organization runs a community fridge and delivers free produce to neighbors.
But like many community gardens in Philadelphia, the Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen does not own most of the abandoned land it operates on. The farm has struggled with the threat of land speculators or developers purchasing the land out from under it.
But the farm inched closer to securing the land in August, when the Philadelphia Land Bank purchased six of the more than two dozen lots that make up the farm at sheriff’s sale. The Reinhard Street Community Farm and Kitchen hopes to eventually buy these parcels from the Land Bank.
“We’re in a more secure position than we were when we first started growing,” Drain said.
Plan to secure 91 garden lots moves forward
The Reinhard Street plots are among 35 garden parcels once tangled up with privately held tax liens that the Land Bank bought at sheriff’s sale in August, said Land Bank spokesperson Karen Guss. The purchases are part of a multistep plan orchestrated by garden advocates and some City Council members to transfer abandoned land now used for agriculture to gardeners or nonprofit land trusts.
“We’re talking about community gardens that have been in the hands of community for 20-plus years, where neighbors have created a garden oasis in the middle of blight,” said at-large City Councilmember Kendra Brooks, one of the architects of the plan.
