Featured Community Gardens

Juan Diego Community Garden
8851 S. Exchange
Contact: Olivia Hernandez
The Centro Communitario Juan Diego maintains two gardens on former empty lots. This not only helps the community volunteers learn about gardening but reduces crime activities.

Drake Gardens
4643-45 N. Drake
In the mid 1990s the wide expanse that today is Drake Gardens was a vacant lot on the site of a former synagogue that the surrounding neighbors didn’t quite know how to utilize for the benefit of all residents. Because the space is in the middle of a dense residential block a community garden seemed natural.

Frankie Machine
1800 W. Haddon
Contact: Marjorie Issacson
Named after a character in a Nelsen Algren novel, this garden has allotment plots that may be rented for growing as well as an ornamental border and resting area. Located in the heart of Wicker Park, this garden is a place of calm in a rapidly changing landscape.

Ginkgo Organic Garden
4055 N. Kenmore
Contact: Tim Iteen
Ginkgo Organic Gardens was founded in 1994 by Uptown community gardeners as a response to local hunger. They saw, on the one hand, surplus produce in urban gardens end up on the compost pile, and on the other, not-for-profit organizations unable to afford fresh produce for the homeless and hungry persons they serve. Ginkgo Organic Gardens—a community garden that operates as a food bank—solves this problem. Volunteers grow organic vegetables, herbs, fruit and flowers, and then donate them to Uptown-area not-for-profit organizations.

Paradise Garden
652 N. Latrobe
Austin Green Team
Paradise Garden wasn’t always a “paradise.” In fact, the property once housed an abandoned building that the neighborhood children had to pass on their way to school…

Slumbusters
1960 South Trumbull Avenue
Since 1962, Gerald and Lorean Earles have been residents of the North Lawndale community, an economically depressed neighborhood three miles from downtown Chicago. Awarded a ‘Point of Light’ by President Bush in 1993, this garden and the various beautification projects of the Earles are addressing the issues of the neighborhood head on.

Turtle Park
4900 N. Troy
Contact: Elmer Lorenz
A NeighborSpace site in Chicago’s diverse Albany Park neighborhood featuring a peaceful gazebo and trellis. Exotic vegetables can be seen in the allotment beds in the rear of the garden including bokchoy and colorful chards.

East Village Block and Garden Club
Parkways between Damen, Ashland, Chicago and Division
Contact: Jeanne Felknor
Jeanne and her group of neighbors have been adding to the identity of this part of the East Village Neighborhood since 2001. With over 150 parkways beautified, Jeanne has been recognized as Chicago’s Gardener of the Year.