Lead testing...coming soon to a lot on Olive Street near you

As a part of the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Olive Street Block Club (OSBC) and SEND, the soil on the property must be tested for lead prior to use as a garden.  Let's back up a bit actually, and explain the MOU:

The 1401 lot belongs to SEND.   They own it.  Before they would allow the neighborhood group (OSBC) use the property, an MOU was drafted.  The MOU required a land use plan detailing projected improvements and alterations to the property as well as denoted responsibilities for the maintenance and upkeep of the lot after the acquisition and agreement is signed, such as mowing of the grass, monitoring the use of the property and obtaining a soil test to indicate the presence of hazardous materials.  Remember, there was a home on the property prior to it becoming a vacant lot, and that home likely had lead based paint all over it at some point.

Recognizing that lead testing is an important step prior to creating a community garden (and required by the MOU in our case), we needed to find an inexpensive (i.e. FREE!) way to get the soil tested, for we have little money at the moment to spend.  Knowing that Debra Boyer, 2012 Vice President of the Fountain Square Neighborhood Association (facebook page), has recently been active with another local garden, the Southeast Model Urban Garden across from the Fountain Square Center at 901 Shelby Street, I figured she'd be a good source.  See below for a couple pics of their garden:

Love the fence.  Basic pickets, but they're set at varying heights to create a very nice wave.

Small but effective garden plots.  I hope ours can be more sizable.

I think these are some kind of squashy / pumpkin kind of thing.

Debra pointed us toward IUPUI as a resource and is still looking on my behalf to see if the program she used is available.  I went a step further and contacted another friend who had their home's soil tested for lead a few years back.  They went through "the City."  The dreaded CITY.  What does that mean?  Well I started with the most logical choice:  Health and Hospital.  By searching for Health and Hospital Indianapolis I was pointed to their web site.  Further investigation to determine what local source would be best sent me toward the Marion County Public Health Department.  A search of their programs and services yielded this result:  The Marion County Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program.  We signed up by calling (317) 221-2155.  After confirming that they test soil for lead, we await someone to schedule an appointment to visit the site.

If any residents of Marion County are concerned that their soil may have harmful lead, don't hesitate to call the program mentioned above.  It's a great resource to have; I hope it works out for us and we can move forward from this point without needing to field an additional testing agency, it was almost too good to be true to find someone willing to do the test so quickly.

Stay tuned for a post upcoming with some examples of a few of the other urban gardens around downtown (the ones I know of at least).

Makings of a Pocket Park

Well, here we are on this beautiful Sunday afternoon in July.  It's been over a year since the Olive Street neighborhood partners formed an official group and began looking into ways to spend a small amount of grant money awarded to Scott Severns and this band of motley, south side residents.

For the record, they are (in no particular order and if I've left anyone off, let me know and I will add you to the list!):  Jason Burk, Scott Severns, Jimmy Pringle, Jack Graves, Sue Amyx , Matt & Jessica Yoder and SEND.

In the past year and a half the pocket park has been slowly inching along (in somewhat chronological order):

• The house that used to occupy 1401 Olive was condemned and torn down (sorry, no pics!  You'll have to trust us that it was a dump!)
• Scott, Matt and I built the street front decorative cedar picket fencing and the rear "shadow box" style protective fencing:

• The lot was smoothed over by some friends with a Bobcat (Gardens of Growth in Indy) and seeded by yours truly and Jack.
• We tried to install a four-sprinkler watering system connected to Sue's house, but there wasn't enough pressure to make it work.  Plus, the Summer of 2012 was too dang hot to bother trying to water anyway, so we gave up.
• Grass started growing when the temperatures cooled back down later in the year (late 2012).
• Sue, Jimmy and Jack provided much needed maintenance to weed growth and grass mowing as the season progressed.
• Matt stored the various tools and materials needed in his garage.
• Finally, a year after we started the fence project, Scott and Jason built the gate components and installed them:

• Someone left us a small pile of mulch in the middle of the inadvertent "drive lane."  Not that we wanted a drive lane, but without a gate the lot was someone's parking area for a short amount of time.  I'm sure the mulch will come in handy, I just wish whoever delivered it would have put it off to the side or actually IN the spot that was most likely to be mulched!

• So now we have a mostly grassy lot, with a protected alley side, and a long narrow open sunny area, ripe for raised planting beds.  Next step:  Find some funding and / or materials and start making the dream come alive.  More to come on the future plans for the lot...

That's it for the first installment of the 1401 Pocket Park Blog.  It's taken a year for us to get here and grant funding from local neighborhood sources to bring together this small but effective group of residents.  We hope to bring together a desire to beautify this small piece of SoPro (South of Prospect) and to create something which all participants can be proud to use and call a little piece of their own neighborhood!

Sincerely,

Jason Burk

Past Resident and Current Supporter of Fountain Square