Green sprouts have started poking out of the earth on Cumberland Street in Kensington.
At the former and perhaps future Greensgrow Farms, the first dots of planted rye grass are showing in the hoop houses. The tiny yellow fruits of a prickly horsenettle glint from their hiding place amid the spreading branches of a venerable rosemary bush in a corner of a raised bed.
“There are so many great plants hiding along the perimeter here that people will be able to enjoy as they walk by again,” Catherine Reuter said. She walked along the property’s eastern fence line one morning last week, pointing to pink plastic ribbons shifting in the breeze. “Every flag is marking something, whether it’s a native False Indigo plant, or asparagus hiding along the edge here, or baby pawpaw trees.”
Reuter is the community farmer and urban agriculture program manager at New Kensington Community Development Corporation. She joined NKCDC in October, and she and a colleague quickly set to work clearing the asters and morning glories that had taken over after the former Greensgrow Farms organization shut down in July 2022.
“Those plants, they didn’t understand that this nonprofit profit had ended and then this nonprofit was taking over,” she said. “It was fun to get to see that secret garden, and a little sad to uproot it. But also, me and my team are promising these plants that, okay, we’re here, we’re going to try and take on the job and do our part to make it green and thriving again.”
For two and half decades Greensgrow Farms ran a host of activities on the lot: the staff grew and sold herbs, produce, and garden plants, cared for a pet pig, chickens, and turtles, and sold gardening supplies. The farm hosted classes, workshops, and a popular CSA crop-sharing program, and delivered food to low-income families.
As the landlord, the community development corporation was not involved in running those programs. But after struggling through a series of financial and management problems over several years, Greensgrow Farms ceased operations and NKCDC took direct control. The property is now part of its Urban Agriculture and Community Garden initiative, which launched last year and also includes two other gardens.
Reuter, who was previously a farmer-educator at Emory College’s organic farm outside Atlanta, is tasked with not just cleaning up the one-acre site and fixing its dilapidated infrastructure, but also finding funding and organizing a planning process for its future.
She said community activities could restart as soon as this summer, but cautioned there’s still a lot of work to do to make sure Greensgrow is safe and ready for visitors.
“Urban farming is hard, you know. Every site has its own challenges that are people-related, site-related, society-related, and it’s not an easy thing that people are trying to do,” she said. “We’re thinking about, okay, how can we guarantee another 20 years of growth and learning and rehabilitation?”
Great success and great failure
Greensgrow Farms was founded in 1997 by Tom Sereduk and Mary Seton Corboy. Corboy and her staff revived a contaminated former Superfund site, built its gardens and greenhouse, and installed raised beds and hydroponic systems.
The much-admired Corboy won national acclaim for bringing agriculture and fresh food to a neglected neighborhood and was hailed for creating a model of how to run a financially sustainable urban farm.
But after she died in 2016, a myriad of problems in the farm’s operations surfaced and it went through several directors. It owed the state $200,000 for failing to charge its customers sales taxes and it was hit with health code violations, the Inquirer reported.
A lack of training led to a serious employee injury, there were dangling electrical wires and other hazards, and workers weren’t getting overtime pay. Workers said the farm’s chickens and its pet pig, Milkshake, didn’t have enough living space. They were given new homes, and several seriously ill turtles kept in the farm’s greenhouse were euthanized.
Revenues plunged, and after a check fraud scheme cost Greensgrow $32,000, the latest director shut it down. NKCDC took control under the direction of its executive director Bill McKinney and a new vice president of programs, Roberta Dubuclet.
The lot appears to have then gone mostly unused. In April, NKCDC distributed supplies there for the Philly Spring Cleanup and hosted an Earth Day event, and in June it held a community meeting about its future.
The organization was working to fix issues with plumbing, irrigation and drainage, and to address “structural concerns” with the farmstands and greenhouses, Dubuclet said last summer. It planned to use funding from a state Department of Community & Economic Development grant to build permanent restrooms.
NKCDC was also considering holding pop-up events like farmers markets, green space workshops, yoga classes, and arts and food festivals, and was planting fruits and vegetables that would be used for nutrition programs or sold.
Last September Dubuclet told Green Philly she was still expecting to host some small events such as produce markets, pumpkin painting and Christmas tree sales. But she noted the space continued to need extensive work, and none of those activities ended up taking place. Dubuclet left the job for personal reasons in December.
Overcoming an industrial legacy
Urban farming is just a small part of NKCDC’s broad portfolio. Working in a section of the city that has many challenges, the organization offers a range of services, from real estate development and housing counseling to street cleaning and health resources.
As Mayor Cherelle Parker’s administration prepares to roll out an expected crackdown on the neighborhood’s open-air drug markets, McKinney has been a prominent and vocal advocate for taking a humane approach that does not rely primarily on policing and incarceration.
NKCDC’s Urban Agriculture and Community Garden initiative is meant to accomplish some of the same goals as its other programs, Reuter said.
“How can we grow green space in this neighborhood so that people can reap all of the benefits that green space offers, whether it’s violence reduction, growing food, or mental health benefits? Green spaces just have this unique ability to hit all of those points,” she said.
“That’s why urban ag was brought into NKCDC. We’re trying to tackle some of these larger community issues more holistically. Green space is part of that holistic approach,” she said.
The effort got a boost in 2022 from a $400,000 Rite Aid Health Future grant, which supports three gardens — Greensgrow, Tusculum Farms, and McPherson Gateway Garden — and nutrition and health worker programs. NKCDC is also offering microgrants to community gardens along Kensington and Indiana avenues and elsewhere in the neighborhood.
As a particularly large and well-built-out space, Greensgrow needs that aid and much more to get fixed up, NKCDC officials said. They’re looking into applying for federal funding, such as U.S. Department of Agriculture grants for urban farming and local food promotion, and for support from charitable foundations and other potential donors, Reuter said.
In addition to funding, other hurdles to projects like building new bathrooms are the site’s toxic industrial legacy, patchy records of past environmental remediation, and complexities resulting from Greensgrow Farms’ shutdown, she said.
“You have to tell the EPA before you disturb any soil. All of those plans have to be approved, and we don’t know exactly what the steps are. That’s what we’re figuring out,” Reuter said. “With lots of people involved in changing hands of records, there’s no clear record of, this is what has been done, this is what you need to do. With those layers of history, there’s just a lot to sift through.”
That said, they have made some progress already. With help from volunteers, they’ve pulled plants they “weren’t intentionally trying to grow” (i.e., weeds), put in intentional plantings, and swept up broken glass and other trash, she said.
Workers from PowerCorpsPHL, an AmeriCorps affiliate, visited the lot and bagged up valuable loose soil for future use.
Reuter promised the property won’t be developed into condos, an oft-voiced fear among community members. She envisions once again growing plants in the hoop houses, with community involvement, and holding events. The lot could even eventually serve again as a nursery that sells garden plants in the spring, as Greensgrow Farms did for years, she said.
There will be opportunities for people to get involved with the farm later this year, possibly over the summer, Reuter said.
But she said there’s still a lot of work to do — establishing a planning committee, pulling the rats’ nests out of the greenhouse heaters — before the site’s future becomes clearer.
“If there’s anything that farming has taught me, it’s patience. Things happen in their own time. You can’t make that plant grow faster than it’s gonna grow,” she said. “The community aspect is the same. It has to grow organically.”
