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Film documents community gardeners' faceoff with Temple
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Film documents community gardeners' faceoff with Temple
For the past 60 years or so, residents of Cheltenham's La Mott neighborhood, just across the city line from Philadelphia, have been tending to their plots within a 1.8-acre community garden. For the past three years though, the La Mott Community Garden has been the source of not only a harvest that feeds gardeners and Philly and Montgomery County food banks, but also growing frustration with Temple University. That's because Temple owns the land — having picked up the deed for these and about 12 more acres for $1 back in 1933 — and now wants to sell it, most likely for development.
Stephen McWilliams, a documentary filmmaker and Villanova University film professor, has spent his Saturdays for the past year filming the gardeners and following their attempts to win the property, alternately by donation, sale or conservation easement. The film, called Sacred Soil, is showing at the African American Museum of Philadelphia this Sunday at 2 p.m.
McWilliams says the film is an advocacy effort. But more than that, it's the story of Diane Williams, gardener, president of La Mott Civic Association and determined activist. "The film is about one woman's quest to exercise her democratic rights to protest and save a historically significant piece of land." (Significant, he says, because the site once contained Fort William Penn, the first training ground for black soldiers in the area, and housed a stop on the underground railroad.) "It raises some issues that are always with us about development versus preservation and what's valuable. Temple is a big player in Philadelphia and they keep expanding and expanding. And it's a good thing they're reclaiming a lot of neighborhoods that are really undervalued and decayed. But this is a situation where they could give this away and they wouldn't miss it."
Williams has been working in the garden with the 65 other community members, mostly retirees, for the past six years. She's the type of person who can put a positive spin on anything -- even the unyielding denials by Temple University of the gardeners' requests. (She sees it as progress, because the gardeners have been able to move forward with a new idea following each rejection.) "We really do feel as though we'll get the garden; it's only a matter of time. It will take time though! I had no idea it would take three years."
Williams says the property where the garden lies could easily be separated from the larger plot, and that the land trust Neighborhood Gardens Association is willing to take on the lot. But Williams knows it won't come easily, and anyway, she and her fellow gardeners are used to adversity. "The most amazing thing about this entire garden effort is we have no running water. People bring the water from home, in jugs, they carry the water in here. When you look at how green it is in here, the life in here, it's just amazing."
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