[Re]Creating the Healing Garden at The Commonwealth
In the summer of 2023, Sweet Water engaged in a month-long effort to re-create the Healing Garden, a ~15,000 square foot site on the Sweet Water Community Farm. The re-creation of the Healing Garden was integrated into the Summer 2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellowship program, serving as the focus of their capstone project. The re-created Healing Garden was opened to the Sweet Water Community for an End-of-Summer Celebration during the final Wellness Wednesday of the Summer Fellowship. Read on to learn more.
Background
The Healing Garden is situated in the northeast quadrant of the Sweet Water Community Farm, an area with lower soil levels that was particularly prone to flooding. In 2016, two years after SWF began cultivating the land, an effort to transform the quadrant into a healing garden was initiated by volunteer Michelle Nordmeyer. Fruit trees and bushes, perennial flowers, and native plants were planted to create a regenerative, closed-loop garden inspired by elements of permaculture practices.
Over the years, the trees, bushes, and plants have produced a diverse array of fruits and flowers and created a unique space at The Commonwealth. The resonance of The Commonwealth means SWF has seen a growing number of community members, especially children, engaged in Wellness Wednesdays. In 2023, the Sweet Water team began an effort to refresh and reprogram the Healing Garden further to expand it as a site for Urban Ecology education and a play space for humans of all ages. As such, the Healing Garden was selected as the focus of the Summer 2023 Urban Ecology Global Fellows program to do the work of RND to re-create a space.
The POWER AND IMPACT of Re-Creating Space
Each summer, Fellows not only engage in the daily, hands-on practice of Regenerative Neighborhood Development (RND) through farming, gardening, and carpentry but also participate in daily seminars and research that examine the historical context and present-day realities of The Commonwealth. After an initial period of “dis-orientation,” Fellows begin looking outward with a critical lens, using The Commonwealth to demonstrate what is possible.
This summer, Fellows were tasked with the question, “How can we “re-map” the city and its resources to improve the quality of life in the city and nurture our shared urban ecology?” Fellows analyzed and compared their experiences practicing RND at The Commonwealth with traditional city planning and development methods/efforts. This analysis was particularly relevant in the Summer of 2023, given the real-time transition of mayoral power in Chicago as newly elected Mayor Brandon Johnson released his transition report on July 6, 2023, and completed his first 100 days as mayor in August 2023.
As Fellows conducted research and analyses in preparation for their Capstone Presentation, they also engaged in a capstone project to re-create the Healing Garden at The Commonwealth, demonstrating in real-time how the hundreds of hours of time/labor and resources used to convene residents to gather their input in planning processes could, instead, be re-mapped to add immediate value for neighbors.
Re-Creating the Healing Garden
The SWF team, community members, and Summer Fellows converged in late July through early August to re-create the Healing Garden. With ~15-20 people working a total of 10 hours over 3 weeks, readily accessible tools and materials, and nearly zero financial investment, the Healing Garden was transformed.
The effort began with Fellows’ developing an understanding of the historical context of the site and performing a site analysis to understand the social, ecological, and spatial dynamics of the Healing Garden. Fellows also began to spend time in the Healing Garden each day to get to know the site through exploration, afternoon seminars, testing out new spatial configurations with the furniture they made, and through work on the site.
As fellows weeded the garden, they were introduced to new herbs, bushes, trees, and plants and invited to study their healing and medicinal properties. They transformed ‘wastes’ to resources by laying new garden borders with bricks recovered from demolished housing and monuments -- a way of honoring the materials by keeping them in use and weaving the history into this new space. They helped to reinforce the existing bamboo shade structure and supported the SWF team in designing and building a new cabana. The cabana activates the Healing Garden in new ways, designed to be a swingset, playspace, classroom, art space, workstation, reflection space, and, with the addition of polycarbonate in winter, a greenhouse.
Collectively, the fellows practiced planning and neighborhood development through action. By re-mapping existing resources at The Commonwealth to re-create the Healing Garden, Fellows demonstrated how people can work together to build and see their work's immediate and longer-term impact -- directly bringing to life many of the goals published in Mayor Johnson’s Transition Plan.
End of Summer Celebration in the Healing Garden
On Wednesday, August 16, 2023, Sweet Water hosted an End of Summer Celebration, inviting the Sweet Water community to experience the re-created Healing Garden. Children and families joined the SWF team and fellows as we engaged in civic arts ( building bird houses, making wind chimes, creating macrame banners, and designing garden stone mosaics), activated the sunflower patch maze, and shared a farm-to-table meal prepared in the Healing Garden.
The re-creation of the Healing Garden offers a clear demonstration of SWF’s underlying belief that every neighborhood has the seeds for its own regeneration and the possibilities of transformation if we re-map our city's resources.
SWF is excited about the possibilities of the Healing Garden as a space of healing, learning, and regeneration. There GROWS the neighborhood.
