A feast at a North Philly garden celebrates the community growing power of ‘green people’ over ‘cement people’

“There are two kinds of people,” Estelle Vaughn announced firmly. “Cement people and green people.”

On Friday evening, Vaughn was surrounded by her beloved green people — neighbors, fellow gardeners, and green space advocates who gathered on the 2000 block of Tioga Avenue for the second annual Unity Dinner. This year’s event was a celebration of the Tioga-Hope Park and Garden and featured live music, dinner, games, and conversation on the necessity of community green spaces.

“One of the reasons why we have these events is to bring importance to projects like the Tioga-Hope Park and Garden,” said Thoai Nguyen, executive director of SEAMAAC, one of the Unity Dinner’s sponsors along with Neighborhood Gardens Trust, Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, and The People’s Kitchen.

“Many other organizations around the city are turning vacant lots, blighted lots into beautiful community gardens that are accessible to neighborhoods, where people can grow food and vegetables of their own choice and are able to have a beautiful green space that is accessible to them.

“Not some locked-up, fenced-out garden only accessible to a few people,” Ngyuen said.

Tioga-Hope Park and Garden was officially dedicated in 2015, but that does little to capture its long history. Vaugh, who still lives in the home she was raised in and her father first purchased in 1957, said her mother was a gardener who brought her skills from Virginia when she migrated north.

With deindustrialization, there was an epidemic of abandoned buildings, and as they were demolished, they left a new problem — vacant lots. It was the urban gardeners who became stewards of the land turning wasteland into neighborhood jewels.

“I am inspired by the power of food to bring people together.”

There are an estimated 450 active agricultural spaces in the city, totaling about 130 acres of land — about the size of 100 football fields. When lots were abandoned it was urban gardeners who became stewards of the land. Now one in three Philadelphia growing spaces is located in gentrifying areas, which threatens their existence as the land value has appreciated.

“With rising land values, the city’s community gardens are under threat,” said Councilmember Kendra Brooks during a recent City Council hearing in May.

» READ MORE: Hailed as stewards but legally squatters, longtime community gardeners say they need help staying grounded.

The Neighborhood Gardeners Trust is actively working to help preserve the gardens and community-managed green space, including Tioga-Hope Park and Garden which is considered an insecure garden because it doesn’t own the ground it tends.

The centerpiece of the evening was a multicultural feast by The People’s Kitchen. Chef Ben Miller, a board member, prepared an Indonesian dish, beef rendang, but it was accompanied by soul food favorites including fried chicken, macaroni, and peach cobbler.

“I am inspired by the power of food to bring people together. Cooking, eating, and growing (food) is a common language beyond social status, age, and culture,” Miller said.

Carlton Williams, director of the office of Clean and Green Initiatives, reiterated Mayor Cherelle L. Parker’s commitment to clean and green. Williams said his office is one-third of the way through its summer goals of cleaning every block and has collected 600,000 pounds of trash all tracked on his department’s new website.

» READ MORE: Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker says Streets Commissioner Carlton Williams will lead new ‘clean and green initiatives’ office

The ultimate goal of Unity Dinner was not to listen to speeches but spark conversation among the neighbors about the implementation of the city’s first urban agriculture plan, Growing From the Root. It is a blueprint for sustaining urban agriculture across the city over the next 10 years.

“The reason why it is important to fight for things is that there is just not enough policies and laws around by the city of Philadelphia to help preserve these types of projects,” said Nguyen.

» READ MORE: After years of meeting and planning, Philly’s citywide Urban Agriculture Plan is finally here

“Stuff like this isn’t supposed to happen in North Philly,” Vaughn said talking of the garden.

And there is still work to do, including building a walking trail in the space over the next few months and battles to ensure it’s not taken from the community.

But with the perfect summer breeze blowing and live soul music wafting from the bandstand, fighting the cement people would just have to wait for another day.