SEND plans to sell the lot

A lot has happened (no pun intended) but nothing has also happened.  The lot exists, but in a sort of limbo.  No one really wants to put any effort out for it because SEND has decided it has more value to them in $$$ than in community trust.  But it's their right to pull this rug out from underneath us if they so desire - to be perfectly honest, it's says so in the MOA!

We all know what's right.  I see FSQ on the up and up, but green space has a value too.

Whatever happens, no hard feelings.

Summer Progress

Frankly, I don't know who's been using the garden beds, but someone is doing a fine job of upkeep in the park.  It's not perfect, but it's a far cry from the vacant lot and slummy rentals that surrounds this lot a few years ago.

Thanks to everyone who has put out some effort to fill the beds, mow the grass and maintain the small peace of mind in the 'hood.

Let's get composting

Thanks to Katelin & Andrew Ryan, we now have a compost tumbler for the pocket park community garden!  I tied a chain around its leg and locked it to the fence to make sure it stays put. The bin is located on the inside of the fence at the very back of the lot.

If you're new to composting like me, check out this link to a "how to compost" DIY guide.  There are lots of resources out there.  Anyone from the surrounding neighborhood is welcome to start saving their food scraps and yard waste (take it easy on the yard waste as this bin is relatively small). It might help to start by getting a gallon sized container with an air tight lid.  Whenever it fills up in your kitchen, bring it over to the lot, dump it in the compost bin and give her a few spins.  There is a locking pin that needs to be disengaged in order to spin the tumbler.  Once turned, the pin should be re-engaged.  I think there is a balance to the types of waste that should be added to the tumbler, but for now we just need to get it started with a good mix of browns and greens.

Special thanks to whoever mowed the lot too (above)! Looks like one of the watermelons has already been harvested.  Whoever it was, please let us all know how it tasted in the comments!  The strawberries are looking GREAT as well (below).  I planted some arugula in furrows between the strawberries. Arugula is a peppery leafy green that grows best in cool weather.  It should be ready to harvest in 30 - 45 days.

The black-eyed susans that Karen planted are proliferating and creating a great balance of color with the pink roses (below).  It is so nice to see a tidy garden with such potential.  Thanks for supporting this endeavor!

Summer Progress

Thanks to yesterday's efforts of many Indiana University School of Medicine volunteers, the pocket park is looking better than ever!  THANK YOU IUMS VOLUNTEERS!!!

Not only do we have our first few watermelons (play "Where's Waldo" with the watermelon below), but the generous volunteers led by second year med student, Jose Pena, performed outstanding work to cut beds, mulch, weed and maintain the lot, which was looking pretty raggedy late into the summer.  Here are a few before pictures:

 Half finished bed cutting and planting needed to be tidied up (above), and the beds needed to be weeded a bit before plating a fall garden (great idea, Jack Graves!).  And the transformation continues with enlarged perennial beds (below):

The cantaloupe and watermelon bed (below) looks fantastic for having been planted fairly late in the season.  Behind this is the strawberry bed with a few starts getting their roots on.

Four unused garden beds are clean from weeds and ready to become something great (below).  Fall planting might include arugula, spinach, asparagus, broccoli, cauliflower, and butternut squash.  What a bountiful harvest THAT would become!

The IU volunteer team even built a large sandbox frame for the park area in the back of the lot (above).  We just need to find some sand!  That shouldn't be hard with all the gravel and sand pits on the SW side of town!  And to top off the day, the team mulched our back fence line (below).  This multi-purpose public space is really beginning to shape up!

Thanks again to the IUMS Team from the Neighbors of 1401 Olive.  We look forward to building this relationship moving forward.

Has it been that long?

Here we are on May 12th, well into the Spring, and so little has been done!  What can be said is that we have a bunch of GREAT new neighbors in the area, hopefully willing to share in the work load that will result in the beautification of 1401 Olive Street.  Based on some discussion had by neighbors after the Great Indy Clean-up a couple weeks ago, we saw a few projects that need immediate attention:

·        Mulch Installation & bed cutting

At our last pow wow (during the neighborhood clean-up), we discussed adding mulch to the existing bed along the west, and cutting additional soil out to install mulch also behind the fencing (enlarging the mulch bed essentially).  Scott and I will plan to provide enough bulk mulch for the pocket park front fence line at a minimum.

·         Landscaping

There seem to be plenty of opportunities locally to cull plants from overgrown yards and gardens and to transplant them over to our park area.  We can use lilies, lambs ear, daisies, black eyed susans, periwinkle, clematis – basically ANY type of perennial that isn’t invasive and would complement the idyllic park setting.  There is no landscape plan, alas there is no landscape planner.  Karen Dunivan has suggested that she would transplant a few natives, but she’s the only one who has really indicated intent to act.

·         Water service installation

I believe there is an opportunity to connect to a nearby water meter.  We’ve had brief discussions with the new owners and desire to create a win-win whereby the park can access their water line and pay them for the usage.  We’d just need a valve installed with some kind of metering device and a yard hydrant to which we could connect near the fence.  It would be nice to have someone who could investigate this as a package deal.

·         Raised Bed Gardens

I’ve kept my eyes out for old pressure treated framing lumber, but I haven’t come across any recently.  I’d rather not buy lumber for the raised beds, although it wouldn’t take much to create a few to get started.  We could also try to get some donated stock from a local lumber yard, perhaps warped stuff that would otherwise be scrap.  We really just need someone to cold call local dealers of lumber to see if we can get enough lumber to build about six short raised beds (for now we could even just do three).  I don’t have a source for soil yet either, although there is a heap behind my house at 1342 Linden Street as well as a heaping mound of soil from a sanitary line installation behind a house just north on the 1300 block in the alley.  It’s not great soil, but it would be a good start, and we could potentially top off with compost from the City of Indianapolis compost pile at the Kentucky Avenue landfill.

·         Fence maintenance (painting / latch repair)

The fencing needs minor maintenance including additional stain and fixing of the latch mechanism for the back alley fence.

·         Grass maintenance

The grass installation seems to have fizzled out this year.  Scott dumped some grass clippings that we can use as straw.  I’m going to contact the guy who reseeded the lawn to see if he will provide additional coverage.  We may have to wait until the fall to see how it fills in and how much is left over the summer.  The last time we seeded, the Summer pretty well delayed seed sprouts for three months.  The yard area will most certainly need some general weeding, although we should probably try to perform regular broad leaf weed control and fertilizer as time and money permits.

 These are just a few of the items we need to think about for the 1401 Olive Pocket Park.  If you have a special interest, please let us know.  Don’t let the lack of a formal meeting out there stop anyone from organizing their own effort to address any of the above-mentioned items.  In due time it will pay off.

Christmas Update

First of all, I wish everyone a Merry Christmas!  What a Fall / Winter we've had so far...who would have thought that we'd have such cold weather so soon this year.  Compare this to a couple years ago when the temperature hardly went below 30 degrees!

Over at 1401 Olive Street, things have seemed a bit crazy in the past couple months.  For those not aware of the work going on adjacent to the lot, Jason Blankenship, owner of Indy Remodeling and Restoration, purchased the houses located at 1405 and 1345 Olive Street late last year.  Below are a few pics of the current progress:

1345 Olive (above) is behind schedule but moving along to be completed by the end of January.

1405 Olive (above) is nearly done with the exception of the garage (below to the left).  I believe that the entire second story was added as a part of this renovation.

An expansive deck was added to 1405 and privacy fence along the entire back yard.

The red tone fence is what was installed by the Pocket Park Volunteer Crew this past Summer of 2013.  The back yard of 1345 is a work in progress.

So back in October, Jason and I verbally agreed to allow his crews to utilize the 1401 lot as staging and access for those two houses during construction.  This seems to have ruffled a few feathers for local residents who thought perhaps that he was taking advantage of the arrangement!

As someone who has renovated a house or two, and with my experience as a design professional, I better understand the relationship between developers and local residents.  On the surface there is an adversarial shade cast on this relationship.  But if trust can be established, a true partnership can be reached which can result in a win-win situation.  I believe this is what we have at 1401 Olive.

In our conversation, Jason assured me that he would leave the lot in the same or better condition as he had found it.  While we are planning various improvements for the sake of the garden and play area (see this earlier post for the proposed site plan), Jason was planning on adding better quality privacy fencing to each of the above-mentioned properties and ensuring that the lot was re-seeded and cleaned up if necessary upon completion of their renovations.

I believe that allowing Jason's team to utilize the lot was the right move.  We've gained a supporter, lot beautification and enormous improvements to the immediate surroundings, which would likely have taken many months had this opportunity not come along when it did.  Our park is good for his future residents (i.e. his ability to sell those properties), and his renovations are good for our park.  And to boot, all of this occurred during a period of time over which no one really wanted to be outside anyway!

So, Merry Christmas to everyone on Olive and Linden Streets, for the renovations and improvements so longed for are slowly transforming our block of Fountain Square into a more neighborly and beautiful place.  Come Spring 2014, we'll plan a build / gardening event to begin the additional transformation of the 1401 Olive Street Pocket Park into something for which we can all care and use graciously!

PS.  Stay tuned also for features on some local gardens -- I still haven't quite gotten around to posting photos from my early Fall research around SE and East Indy...

Happy New Year,

Jason Burk
1401 Olive Pocket Park Community Coordinator

Other Indy Urban Gardens

Over the past couple weeks I've been trying to visit a few of the urban gardens around the near Downtown neighborhoods.  If you ask around the 'hood, you might be surprised about the resources we have nearby.  I found at least three urban gardens within a few miles of our neighborhood, all very good examples of what can happen with neighborly support and input.  I've identified them below; future posts will detail the features of the gardens to start compiling a list of ideas we can implement on Olive Street.

In our neighborhood, we have the Southeast Model Urban Garden (as reported in a previous post) across from Fountain Square Center at approximately 924 Shelby Street. This garden appears to have a good foothold in the community with sponsors for raised beds among being very visible along Shelby.

Another very impressive local garden is located in Bates Hendricks at the corner of Lincoln and Alabama. This garden appears to be connected with the James A.Garfield School #31 / Phoenix Academy. It is a very well kept garden with a lot of nice features we could certainly use to improve 1341.

On the Near East Side just north of Washington & Oxford Streets (one block east or Rural) there is a wonderful garden connected to Englewood Christain Church. The've called it both, Gardens for Growth as well as their Nature Playspace and Gardens. And it's a fantastic community garden. A lot of good ideas are going to stem from looking at this space for ideas.

Finally, a stop into the Pogue's Run Grocer preceded my trip to visit another garden located just north of 16th and Sheldon. I know very little about this garden, but judging from the look, it's a very fine example of a lot of hard work and planning. And if you haven't been to the Grocer, I highly recommend heading over for delicious deli sandwich. I can't wait to help the Pleasant Run Grocer get established in our neighborhood if it's going to be anything like this place!

I'm hopeful that with these four nearby examples we can brain storm the best and highest use of 1401 Olive Street and provide a space for play and utility which can enjoyed by residents now and long into the future.  Stay tuned for more on each of these spaces...