Keeping the Community Green Keeps the Neighborhood Clean

By J. Coyden Palmer May 17, 2024

When lifelong Chicago resident Leiana Gary was walking through her South Side neighborhood with her mom in 2007, she noticed something that disturbed her. The street planters in her Chatham community were in rough shape. The soil looked like it hadn’t been turned over in years. There was trash strewn inside of the planters and some of the planters themselves were damaged, with large cracks in the concrete that seeped dirt and water.

“In my own little snide way I said to my mother, “somebody really needs to do something about that. That’s a mess,’” said Gary. “My mother didn’t say a word. When we got about two blocks away, she said, ‘and who might that someone be?”

Gary’s mother died two months after that conversation from pancreatic cancer. Every time Gary walked by or drove past that planter, she could hear the question her mother asked her in her head. Two years later, after fighting her mom’s voices, she decided that the person responsible for maintaining the planters should be her and founder the Cottage Grove Planter Society.

Chicago has planted over 100 miles of landscaped medians in an effort to beautify more communities, in addition to the planters that are on sidewalks on various main thoroughfares. The project started in 1991 under former Mayor Richard M. Daley at the urging of his wife Maggie, who was the co-founder of Gallery 37, a cultural arts program for teens and a longtime supporter of beautification projects.

Gary said she immediately started asking her alderwoman at the time Freddrenna Lyle, who was actually responsible for maintaining the planters? According to the American Society for Landscape Architects, the City of Chicago contracts out the maintenance of the planters to at least two organizations, one being A Safe Haven Foundation, a social organization that for over twenty years helps the homeless, those fighting addiction and formerly incarcerated individuals get job training and education to improve their lives.  

Gary still remembers the first time she started actually working on one of the planters. She said the problem was more than she had bargained for, but still she moved forward.

“We dug up the planter I had walked by that first time and it was hard as concrete” Gary said. “The dirt hadn’t been touched since it had been installed. It took us all day just to even soften the dirt up enough so that we could put anything in it. I just kept going. I had no idea how many planters there were in this condition.”

A former speech pathologist for the Chicago Public Schools, Gary knew first-hand what it was like dealing with the city and the sad history of not maintaining taxpayer funded projects. In 2012, as she was about to retire, she decided to go back to all the previous schools she and worked and start collaborating with the art teachers. An idea was hatched to have students do artwork that could be installed on the side of the planters to give them a fresh look and allow the students to learn something about their own neighborhood.

Later that year, Gary planted flowers and just figured rainwater would keep the flowers going on their own. But that year, Chicago went through a drought and the newly planted flowers were dying. Gary visited every fire station in the community she could to see if they could help, but was told the firehoses they used were too high-pressured and would simply blow the dirt out of the planters. She decided to take matters into her own hands and started using five-gallon buckets from Home Depot to water the planters by hand. She did this for two months before she caught a break. She saw a landscaping truck driving down the street and quickly wrote the phone number down. She reached Helene Sanders, owner of the company, who for a year watered the planters for free. Eventually, one fire department lieutenant also allowed for trucks to be parked on one side of the street and arc water from the hoses onto the planters in a way that did not destroy to plants or disturb the dirt.

Fast forward to 2024 and Gary is still taking care of the planters and is still involving CPS students in the process. Last month, similar to the initial project completed in 2012, the Cottage Grove Planter Society began a new revitalization project. The four-sided planters are now themed with updated artwork from students. However, this time around, instead of the school mascot or logo facing the street, the focus will be on many local businesses in the area. The north or south side of the planters (depending on their location) will display a Ghanian Adinkra symbol and a floral panel. The sidewalk side will display a quote by a notable community-related resident.

Joseph Caldwell, Master Tailor and owner of TailoRite Cleaners is one of the featured businesses. A business icon in Chatham, Caldwell said he was honored to have his business displayed as part of the project.

“I love that we are involving the youth from the community in this project,” Caldwell said. “They are very creative and this allows them to have their creativity displayed for all of their friends and family to see.”

Seven different CPS schools participated this time, along with one community organization. Grant monies also enabled the organization to refresh the plants contained in the pots and water them with the assistance of their own water tank purchased with grant funds. There will be no more need for the Home Depot buckets as the watering source.

Although it is primarily a beautification and community service project, there are other benefits that can come from it as well. Cleaning up vacant lots, removing homes in disrepair and planting vegetation have also been shown as an effective tool at reducing crime. In an interview with the Chicago Reader in 2019, University of Michigan School of Public Health Dr. Justin Heinze, said the following:

“There is something about physical space that signals whether or not this is an area where crime can happen. This literature goes way back into the 1970s, and there’s a lot of evidence to support it. The more of those properties that we get greened, I think the stronger the effect on violence and crime reduction is going to be.”