Gardens in Hyde Park with links and some events/opportunities dates A service of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community Conference and its website, www.hydepark.org. Help support our program: Join the Conference!

Learn more about gardening at the Hyde Park Garden Fair website. Our Garden Fair commitee page. Watch for the next gardening lecture series this winter. 50th Anniversary coming.

Find more gardens, pages below. Visit also 61st Street Community Garden.

June 17, Wednesday, time? Blackstone Branch Gardening Club- Bring gloves and get ready to volunteer at the 49th and Blackstone Community Garden. 312 747-0511.

Nichols Park's Wildflower Meadow won 2nd prize in class in the 2008 citywide garden contest and will be honored November 1 at Garfield Park Conservatory.

GreenCorps' community garden vegetable distribution day is 2nd weekend in May, flowers last in June. Don't miss the Hyde Park Garden Fair spring sale May 3rd Friday and Saturday in HP Shopping Ctr.
Clean and Green is 1st Saturday in May.

There is a new Timuel D. Black Edible Garden at the UC OMSA multicultural center, 5710 S. Woodlawn.

Near 56th Street and Kenwood	Near 56th and Dorchester
Greenwood and 54th	Woodlawn at 56th
The Hyde Park Garden Fair Committee keeps up the strip gardens along the City Lot on Lake Park and 53rd

Mayor Daley's Landscape Awards (including fall 2004 to Regents Park roof garden), garden volunteer opportunities, natural planting tips are in the Green page. See also Burnham Prairie Trail.

See results around the neighborhood from South East Chicago Commission/U of C beautification grants, such as the flowers south of Kimbark and 51st (common Corporation, which more than matched their grant), and from the Garden Fair. The Garden Fair received the Good Neighbor award in 2004 from the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club.

Enhancement Grant applications are solicited through February and announced March each year. 773 324-6926.

Be sure to see the enlarged, gorgeous garden and smaller vegetable garden of Ray School, near 56th and Kenwood. It has a plaque (not yet installed) in remembrance of Amanda Carter, child victim of a hit and run in 1990.

More gardens!

More gardens in Parks/Other Parks and Open Space, Garden Fair page, Hyde Park Garden Fair website, and hosts of sites from Chicagoland Gardening to interactive http://www.wikigardens.com.

61st Street Community Garden

Suite of park photo galleries- index in the Park News web home, incl. Nichols

Green and beautification news and events in Park News web home,

Green news, directory, calendar

LILAC. Lake Park Corridor greening

See park and green links in Parks/Other Links and the green page

Osaka Garden Festival on Jackson Park's Wooded Island, September 3rd weekend

Our Hyde Park Garden Fair Committee page (Spring Sale May 14-14, Fall Mum and Bulb Sale September 17), Hyde Park Garden Fair's website

CKP Plants New Edible Garden at 5710
Cecilia Donnelly on Jun 16 2009 on CKP Sustainability website

The CKP is hard at work planning and creating a new edible plant garden at 5710 S. Woodlawn, the University’s Multicultural Center. In partnership with the students at 5710, CKP has dedicated the garden to Timuel Black, one of Hyde Park’s major leaders in the struggle for racial equality.

Along these lines, CKP Director Bart Schultz plans to base the garden along the lines of Timuel Black’s book Bridges of Memory, three volumes of oral histories from Chicago’s South Side. Dr. Black came to visit the garden last week, and emphasized that it should carry a positive theme of hope and optimism. He told us that the bridges of memory should also carry a message of ascent, and that the garden as a whole should tell a story, preferably one that encourages talking to the elders. He encourages everyone to speak to their older relatives and friends in order to gain a true history of their lives. Dr. Black pointed out that while these stories might not be factual, they are undoubtedly true.

The garden has multiple purposes: to promote edible landscaping as beautiful, to honor Timuel Black’s work and legacy, and to give modern students and visitors a sense of Bronzeville in its heyday, when it was three or four times as densely populated as the rest of Chicago. This dense population gave it unique culture and community feeling, which CKP intends to reflect in the garden’s design. Since the garden has these multiple layers, it will take a while to complete. Most of the ground planting and design is now in place, but many sculptural elements lie ahead, which will help the garden to tell a story in accordance with Dr. Black’s wishes.

The students at 5710 look forward to a fall harvest, which they plan to donate to a local soup kitchen. Along those lines, the garden now contains late-ripening varieties of blueberries and tomatoes along with fall crops like kale and sweet potatoes. Planting edible plants gives city residents the opportunity to eat fresh food and, for the children, a chance to see where their food comes from, something not all of them know.

We hope you will stop by 5710 S. Woodlawn to see the garden in progress. Check back for an announcement of the grand opening!

If you know of a garden that deserves to be added to this page, please let us know! Also, the Hyde Park Garden Fair wants to know and put such gardens up on its website-find out how to contact them.