By Sue Conner
For more than 40 years, the St. Anthony Park Community Garden, owned by the SAP Community Council, has been a colorful enhancement to our neighborhood.
Totally managed and funded by volunteers, the community garden provides plots for gardeners, a prairie area of native flowers and grasses, a native plum grove for foraging and a colorful flower border along Robbins Street.
In cooperation with the District 12 Equity Committee, there are three plots set aside where we grow produce for people living at Seal Hi-Rise. The garden, as a whole, is a buffer between the railroad yards and the residences across Robbins Street.
Here are some new things in the works for 2026:
Plum grove: Early in spring, some neighbors did a heavy pruning of the native plum grove. Pruning should help improve fruit production and prevent disease. Plans are to continue with a renovation of that area.
Prairie: There will be a burn and reseeding of the prairie area. Burns are a natural part of prairie ecosystems. A burn will remove accumulated dead plant material, thus returning nutrients to the soil. It will also help kill woody plants that would shade out the native prairie plantings.
Raised beds: Sometime this season, a few raised beds will be installed in the main garden area for use by gardeners who need that adaptation. This is in collaboration with the Equity Committee.
Habitat: The biggest change and biggest challenge is a project that has been started on the east end, behind the gardens and in front of the railroad tracks. Many large, old and decaying trees have been removed there.
Volunteers are creating a native plant orchard and habitat improvement area for birds and pollinators. The plan includes serviceberries, elderberries, native plums, native cherries and more.
All this will be available for foraging by creatures, humans included. This long-term project is well underway; walk over and take a look.
There is a lot happening along Robbins Street this year! We could use volunteer help from neighbors who enjoy this beautiful addition to the city.
If you are interested in being part of it, by helping with the plots that serve the food shelf, the prairie, the old plum grove or the whole new orchard, contact [email protected] or [email protected].
Sue Conner is a long-time volunteer and co-manager of the St. Anthony Park Community Garden.
Changing Times book group to read ‘Soil’
At the center of “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden” is author Camille Dungy’s “prairie project” to diversify the landscape around her home in Fort Collins, Colorado.
But “Soil” encompasses more than gardening. Dungy digs into the challenges of being a Black woman in America, especially in a mostly white town, and of mothering through the tumult of the 2016 election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
She contemplates wilderness and weeds and weaves them into reflections on how dynamics of power and dominance disrupt relationships between people and between humanity and our ecosystems.
Join the Changing Times Book group for a discussion of “Soil” at the St. Anthony Park Library from 3 to 4:30 p.m. on Saturday, May 23. Light refreshments will be served.
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