2019 is the 43rd anniversary of the Southwark Queen Village garden. It has been a major part of the social and community life in the Queen Village area. We are a group of neighbors who have joined together to garden and contribute to the city. We estimate that 255 families in the neighborhood share our harvest. We’ve also donated over 1,000 pounds of fresh produce to City Harvest annually.

In addition to 67 garden plots worked by 74 gardeners, the garden has common flower beds, a wide variety of irises and other flowers including native species, an herb garden, a grape arbor, an orchard and berry patches all shared by the members. We have bee hives and a honey bottling facility that we call the honey house. We have installed solar panels to fully reimburse our energy needs to our energy company, PECO. As part of our desire to be sustainable and responsible we have installed a composting toilet and have designed over 12,000 sf of garden areas of permeable soil including a green roof on our honey house in order to eliminate our stormwater runoff and associated charges from PWD. This fall we expect to replant parts of our orchard with low maintenance dwarf trees and expand our fruit production.

For all of these reasons we are a special place and a special garden.