green space

South Camden may not normally evoke images of verdant foliage and bountiful vegetable gardens. With an assortment of industries, an incinerator, a sewage treatment plant, and toxic areas including two federal Superfund sites, the neighborhood is severely affected by pollution. Respiratory and other health ailments are widespread, and neighborhood groups have decried the environmental racism that has rendered their very air a dire health hazard.

Fair Hill: To Badlands and Back Again the history of a 300-year-old Quaker cemetery in North Philadelphia on Germantown Avenue. Deeded to local residents by Quakerism founder George Fox in the 1700s, the burial ground is the resting place of many of women and men who were active in the Underground Railroad. Philadelphians such as feminist and abolitionist Lucretia Mott and abolitionist Robert Purvis are buried here.

Historic Cliveden Park sits in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia, a few blocks from the site of the Battle of Germantown during the Revolutionary War. And in the park sits an enormous oak tree estimated at over two hundred years old that neighbors call their "tree of life." Across generations, the park has been a place where residents of East Mt. Airy, through their care and upkeep of this green space, show their love for their community and each other.

Living adjacent to 9200 acres of parkland has its advantages. “I have the biggest backyard,” says Strawberry Mansion resident Hillary Briscoe, “and it’s right across the street, and I don’t have to take care of it.” Strawberry Mansion, the neighborhood that sits along the eastern side of Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, is a mixture of city and country.

Queen Village Community Garden is one of Philadelphia’s oldest community gardens. Located on Christian Street in South Philadelphia since 1976, the garden is a vital green space set aside for the enjoyment of the ethnically diverse neighborhood. Since the garden's beginning, diversity among the membership has been consciously encouraged, and the garden quickly became a bridge between whites and blacks in the community. "Our goal was to bring together all the parts of the neighborhood," says Libby J. Goldstein, one of the garden's founders.