History
Soo Line Garden is a green space and park, created and sustained by neighbors, in the high-density, racially and economically diverse neighborhood of Whittier in Minneapolis. The Soo Line Garden provides educational opportunities for children, fresh organic food for the neighborhood, and is a pollinator-friendly oasis and place of peace in a chaotic world. And it has been since 1991.
1886 - 1987: industrial beginnings
In 1886, the Sheffield Elevator Company built grain elevators at 2845 Garfield Avenue South in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis. Archer Daniels Midland bought the elevators in 1912 and ceased operations in 1976. The city demolished the elevators in 1987.
Photo: Sheffield Grain Elevator “K,” looking east from the Lyndale Avenue bridge at 29th Street, in the 1960s. Courtesy of Hennepin County Library.
1991: Soo Line opens
From 1987 to 1991, the future Soo Line Community Garden site was a grassy field, strewn with litter, junk, car parts and broken glass—in other words, neglected urban land.
In 1991, led by neighborhood resident Martha Boyd and assisted by the Sustainable Resource Center (SRC), Whittier residents and families built the garden with sweat equity, volunteer effort, and a small bit of grant money for tools and materials. And thus began the Soo Line Community Garden.
Photo: Soo Line Garden sign, circa 1991. Courtesy of Hennepin County Library.
1991 - 2000: growth
In the summer of 1993, SLCG received a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council grant that funded improvements like a rock garden, flower beds, an archway for the entrance, and a storage shed.
Summer 1995: Soo Line received a Multi-Use Green Space grant from the SRC’s Urban Lands Program, funding rainwater collection, a prairie garden, and the Big Woods reforestation project.
Summer 1996: Soo Line grew to over 80 plots and over 100 gardeners.
Summer 1997: A water system is installed with funds from the Wedge Community Co-op’s Green Patch Program.
1999: Soo Line Garden receives the Blooming Boulevards award from the Committee for Urban Environment.
Summer 2000: Midtown Greenway opens
The Midtown Greenway opens, forever changing the garden’s character. After years of being an oasis along an abandoned rail line trench, Soo Line Garden becomes a feature along the trail, and the largest green space on the premier biking trail in the city.
Summer 2005: 1st fight to save the garden
Soo Line gardeners and community members mobilize massive support for the garden in a series of public process events, thwarting Hennepin County’s efforts to sell the site to developers.
2010: Soo Line joins Minneapolis Parks & Recreation
Thanks to the advocacy of the Whittier community and legendary environmentalist and Park Board commissioner Annie Young, the Soo Line Garden is transferred from Hennepin County tax forfeited land to the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, securing its status a permanent neighborhood park.
2011 - 2023: more growth
In 2021, Soo Line celebrated its 30th anniversary, grew to 101 plots and over 200 gardeners, along with countless volunteers!
The garden also improved the Moen Memorial site, front flower and herb garden, and added children's plots.
2021 - 2024: 2nd fight to save the garden - Hennepin County bikeway threat
In 2021, years after the community defeated Hennepin County’s plans to sell the garden to developers, neighbors learned of Hennepin County's new plan to pave a "bike expressway" through the garden, stretching 12 feet wide (8 feet paved and 4 feet of un-plantable turf grass buffer zones) and over 500 feet in length. The plan involved raising the Midtown Greenway by 3 feet, along with removing over 25% of garden plots and all gathering areas where kids play and have outdoor classes. Even though the County owns empty land across the garden, it refused to consider using its own property.
A committee immediately got to work to stop the destruction of this untamed green space in our dense urban neighborhood. Learn more about our successful campaign!
In March 2024, after years of resistance, the local community, including families, teachers, kids and non-profit organizations successfully defeated the County’s unsafe, unwanted, and destructive plans. But at the end of the struggle, the community was told that the top layer of the soils are too contaminated to garden, and the Park Board temporarily closed the garden.
2024 - 2025
Despite the Soo Line home garden being closed for the 2024 and 2025 growing seasons, gardeners, neighbors, Whittier Elementary teachers and kids, and local community groups banded together to build new garden sites at nearby Whittier Park and Pillsbury Avenue. The Whittier Park garden kept a close tie with Whittier Elementary, where kids played and tended to the plots. The Pillsbury Avenue lot is a communal space that donates all produce to a food bank and neighbors.
2025 - present
In the summer of 2025, after securing unanimous approval from the Minneapolis Park Board to rebuild the garden, Soo Line gardeners, Hennepin County Master Gardeners, and local community members spent months planning and building the site anew with raised beds to avoid the soil contamination. The community also continues to steward the Pillsbury Avenue garden as a source of fresh food for the community.