WOODLAWN — Six years in, the 62nd Street Community Garden is now official and is being completely redone as its waiting list swells.
The city has officially sold the two lots at South Dorchester Avenue and 62nd Street to the gardeners for $2 through the Neighborspace land trust.
In preparation for spring planting in early May, the garden is currently being completely redone with all new soil, woodchips and an irrigation system.
But if you’re thinking about trying to get one of the 100 plots, think again.
“We always have a waiting list,” said Charis Wuerffel, the co-director of the garden, on Monday. “Right now, we have waiting list of 40 people.”
For a garden started in 2010 with just 12 gardeners, that’s a dramatic rise.
The 62nd Street Garden was one of many started at the time by Hyde Park and Woodlawn gardeners displaced when the large community garden at Blackstone Avenue and 61st Street was closed and used for the heavy machinery that built the new Chicago Theological Union.
Though now officially in Woodlawn, the garden remains popular with Hyde Parkers, who tend to about half of the plots, according to Wuerffel. Woodlawn residents have snapped up most of the other plots, with gardeners traveling down from Kenwood elbowing in to get about 15 plots.
Wuerffel said they hope to have the mounds of soil spread out and irrigation pipe installed by early May when the planting season really starts in earnest.
She said the garden will still have community plots on the outside of the fence where anyone walking by can pick and eat whatever is growing.
For more information on the 62nd Street Community Garden, visit 62garden.com.
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