South Philly Review

Growing tomatoes, herbs, carrots and more, Debbie Graci and daughter Mia, 5, opted to pick some peppers at Capitolo Playground's community garden.

"In growing season, we were out here every day," the resident of Fifth and Wharton streets said of the spring and summer.

When Graci heard about the beginnings of the neighborhood garden at 900 Federal St., a year ago, she jumped at the chance to have a 48-square-foot plot since her daughter seemed to relish the activity.

"Last year, we just grew a couple tomatoes in pots and she was really into it," Mom said of Mia's newfound love.

"I can eat it when I'm done picking it," Mia said about the appeal.

A few dozen residents gathered to celebrate the garden's ribbon-cutting Oct. 23 and its recent first-place honors in a citywide contest. Even after it started drizzling, neighbors walked out to the green space for the official opening with 1st District Sen. Larry Farnese, the city's Department of Recreation Program Director Stu Greenburg and the department's District 7 Manager Steve Goldman, which covers South Philadelphia, including Capitolo Playground.

Farnese said the effort will show naysayers the city has taken even bigger steps towards greatness.

"I think that all they need to do is come down here and see the kind of work that people like yourself are doing in the community because this is why Philadelphia is not going to be a great city, but it is a great city," he said to the audience.

The concept had been in the works for about a year after two residents compared notes at a tree-planting.

"I've been looking for vacant land to garden and she's always looking to garden," Andrew Emma, of Ninth and Reed streets, said of Kim Labno, of Passyunk Avenue and Greenwich Street.

Emma and Labno asked about the space at a Capitolo Playground Advisory Council meeting. When the Dream Park Challenge bestowed the park with $25,000 in the spring, removing a large fence to make way for the garden was on the list. The concept took flight on the group's MySpace page at www.myspace.com/capitolo, asking residents if they would be interested in the ground. Calls quickly came in, filling about 40 plots.

"Between Andrew and Kim and the advisory council, it got rolling and here we are and we're not finished yet," Council President Denise Eddis, of Ninth and Annin streets, said.

The garden is expected to expand by about 10 plots to meet demand, in addition to painting the shed and planting trees donated by TreeVitalize of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society Nov. 21, which also is the date of the cleaning event Fall Into Your Park.

The garden went on to win first place in the society's City Gardens Contest in the Combination Vegetable/Flower Garden category for small, mid-sized, large, very large and first-year gardens after Holly Keefe, an Eighth-and-Wharton-street resident, decided to take a chance and enter. Other winners in the category included Fitzwater 2000 Community Garden, 2042-2044 Fitzwater St., and Bel Arbor Community Garden, on the 1000 block of Kimball Street.

Even new resident Kay Yoon swung by the ribbon-cutting to inquire about the wait list.

"I just moved to this neighborhood," the resident of Seventh and Federal streets. "We don't have a yard. That's why we were interested in getting a plot. I haven't gardened in a little. I just want to get back into it."