The High Park Community Garden has to be the mother of all community gardens in this city. It’s nestled in the middle of this 500 acre park, a short distance from the famous Dog Hill and the outdoor stage for Shakespeare in the Park. The gardens takes up several acres, and are in an idyllic setting surrounded by oak forest.
It’s next to impossible to acquire a plot in these gardens — believe me, I’ve tried. People hang on to them tenaciously from year to year, and the few that do become available are subject to a ferocious phone battle on one morning every February.
So, I continue to visit, and admire, and look longingly through the fence. To me, there is nothing more beautiful than the creativity and diversity of these gardens, the riot of colour, the bent backs of people of every nationality and age carefully tending their charges. If Monet were still with us, no doubt he would have painted it.
POLLENATRIX 