This is a simple true story about a communal flower garden that once existed along a river - a garden remembered, dreamed of and labored for again......view the picture galleries: the old and the new beginning
Once upon a time there was a coal mine in a city along a river that snaked exactly like the eel that once had been able to live there. It was the first coal mine in the area. Tall sloping breakers and miles of railroads were constructed to transport the coal. Man made mountains of culm amidst wooden housing for immigrant miners were also constructed. The houses rocked as the coal fired steam driven locomotives ran in and out of the breakers on both sides of the river filling with coal for steel mills and ports like New York City. They ran until the miners formed unions for safer working conditions and fair wages and oil carried across the same sea the immigrant miners had crossed became the fuel of cheaper choice. Slowly the operations closed down. Gas stations rose up. Trains began to be replaced with diesel trucks. Rail beds were torn up. Some things stayed a while longer, the wooden houses the miners and their families had worked so hard to own. They were constructed on the low bank side of the river and were often flooded. The miners and their descendents endured. Every house was heated by a coal stove that created tons of ash. All the residents carried their tubs full of ashes to the edge of the river and created their own levee. The soil from any newly dug basement was also added. Their yards blossomed with fruit trees and shrubs, with gardens of vegetables and flowers. When their yards were filled with flowers they brought seedlings to the bank. It became a public riverbank garden tended by those who dwelled there. By the third generation drainage and weather patterns were changing and flooding had become a more frequent problem. The eely bends in the river required larger levees to control the flow. All of the houses along the river whose owners had created the garden had to be razed in order to make way for the new and larger levee system designed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The garden too would have to go. Many had walked through the roses and lilacs of that garden as children and adults. Why not make a new garden elsewhere -along the river - a new communal garden effort to make something beautiful - roses and lilacs from the original garden were removed and heeled in and planted in the new gardens.......
Trail redevelopment along the river is planned. The current architectural design draft for the section that includes the Kosciuska Healing Garden shows no indication of the existing garden. It is hoped that the nearly decade long effort to honor Kosciuszko as well as the original riverbank gardeners' efforts to make where they stayed beautiful for themselves and others will be respected and continued.
Once upon a time there was a coal mine in a city along a river that snaked exactly like the eel that once had been able to live there. It was the first coal mine in the area. Tall sloping breakers and miles of railroads were constructed to transport the coal. Man made mountains of culm amidst wooden housing for immigrant miners were also constructed. The houses rocked as the coal fired steam driven locomotives ran in and out of the breakers on both sides of the river filling with coal for steel mills and ports like New York City. They ran until the miners formed unions for safer working conditions and fair wages and oil carried across the same sea the immigrant miners had crossed became the fuel of cheaper choice. Slowly the operations closed down. Gas stations rose up. Trains began to be replaced with diesel trucks. Rail beds were torn up. Some things stayed a while longer, the wooden houses the miners and their families had worked so hard to own. They were constructed on the low bank side of the river and were often flooded. The miners and their descendents endured. Every house was heated by a coal stove that created tons of ash. All the residents carried their tubs full of ashes to the edge of the river and created their own levee. The soil from any newly dug basement was also added. Their yards blossomed with fruit trees and shrubs, with gardens of vegetables and flowers. When their yards were filled with flowers they brought seedlings to the bank. It became a public riverbank garden tended by those who dwelled there. By the third generation drainage and weather patterns were changing and flooding had become a more frequent problem. The eely bends in the river required larger levees to control the flow. All of the houses along the river whose owners had created the garden had to be razed in order to make way for the new and larger levee system designed by the Army Corps of Engineers. The garden too would have to go. Many had walked through the roses and lilacs of that garden as children and adults. Why not make a new garden elsewhere -along the river - a new communal garden effort to make something beautiful - roses and lilacs from the original garden were removed and heeled in and planted in the new gardens.......
Trail redevelopment along the river is planned. The current architectural design draft for the section that includes the Kosciuska Healing Garden shows no indication of the existing garden. It is hoped that the nearly decade long effort to honor Kosciuszko as well as the original riverbank gardeners' efforts to make where they stayed beautiful for themselves and others will be respected and continued.