history
Soo Line Garden is a green space, created and sustained by neighbors, in a high-density, racially and economically diverse urban neighborhood in Minneapolis. The Soo Line Garden provides educational opportunities for children, a fresh organic food source for the neighborhood, and is a pollinator-friendly oasis, a place of peace in a chaotic world. It has been for over thirty years.
Before 1991, the Soo Line Community Garden site was a grassy field, strewn with litter, junk, and broken glass—in other words, underutilized neglected urban land.
In 1991, led by neighborhood resident Martha Boyd and assisted by the Sustainable Resource Center (SRC), the garden early adopters through sweat equity, volunteer effort, and a small bit of Community Crime Prevention/SAFE money for tools and materials, established Soo Line Community Garden.
In the summer of 1993, SLCG receives a Metropolitan Regional Arts Council grant that funds improvements like a rock garden, flower beds, an archway for the entrance, and a storage shed.
In the summer 1994, SLCG is featured in the Star-Tribune and on Minnesota Public Radio.
Receives 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.
SLCG has over 80 plots and over 100 gardeners.
A water system is installed with funds including those from the Wedge Community Co-op’s Green Patch Program.
Soo Line has 97 plots and 150+ gardeners.
The garden improves the Moen Memorial site, front garden and adds children's plots
