OWNERSHIP
CONDITIONS
CONTEXT
HISTORY
ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES
DESIGN AND SOCIAL ISSUES
TESTIMONIES

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OWNERSHIP: 
-- The Massachusetts Audubon Society (Mass Audubon) owns the land. 
-- The Clark-Cooper Community garden is an autonomous, incorporated entity that manages most aspects of the garden. Upon acquiring the property in 1996, Mass Audubon had the authority to reorganize the gardens and assumed a limited number of responsibilities for the garden.

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CONDITIONS:
The Clark-Cooper Community Garden is one of the largest and oldest community gardens in the city. The more than 250 plots are well tended with a wide variety of vegetables, fruits, and flowers. Residents from surrounding communities, in particular Mattapan, have plots in the garden. The gardens are accessed from Walk Hill Street by paved roads with parking areas. Informal footpaths from American Legion Highway that run through gaps in the wrought iron fencing provide additional pedestrian access. A new shed provides a storage space. In May 2002 there is a sturdy wooden fence around the largest section of the garden, with netting that attempts to keep rabbits out of the garden.

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CONTEXT:
The Clark-Cooper gardeners were an early link between the Massachusetts Audubon Society and the communities it seeks to serve at the Boston Nature Center. Because the Boston Nature Center represents Mass Audubon's recent return to urban Boston, establishing a base of support in the Heart of the City is an important goal of the Nature Center. Julie Brandlin, director of the Center, sees possible connections between the Clark-Cooper garden, Mass Audubon's suburban Drumlin Farm, and issues around food security and food quality for lower-income residents. She is looking for ways to take what is already going on at the site and move it to another level, possibly through educational programs with children.

The Boston Nature Center offers a series of gardening classes to the Clark-Cooper gardeners in collaboration with a community gardening organization called "Garden Futures," which is now part of the Boston Natural Areas Network. The Boston Natural Areas Fund also offers programs in the garden for elementary and middle-school aged children to, for example, investigate the animals that help or hinder growth in a garden.

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HISTORY:
According to Richard Heath's history of the Boston State Hospital -- "The Great Meadows of Canterbury: Boston State Hospital Urban Wilds" -- the Clark-Cooper Community Garden is part of a long history of gardening in this place. Beginning in its first year, the Boston State Hospital was self-sufficient in food and dairy products. Many years later, "Families in the Mattapan and Dorchester community began growing their produce on the old planting fields of the Hospital along American Legion Highway in 1968. At that time, the use of abandoned public land or vacant lots for community gardens was quite novel, but in actuality, it was simply repeating history...The growing recession in the 1970s made community gardening at Boston State Hospital not only a social and recreational activity, but an economic one, helping people supplement family food budgets" (Heath, R., "The Great Meadows of Canterbury: Boston State Hospital Urban Wilds," 1993, p11).

The Massachusetts Audubon Society raised money to renovate and re-design the gardens, and completed that work in 1999. The gardens continue to be autonomously run by Clark-Cooper Community Garden Incorporated.

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ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES:
-- The City Compost facility and possibly the Greenleaf Compost facility attract small mammals that eat the fruits and vegetables in the community garden. 

-- The soil in the place where the gardens have been relocated is of poorer quality than the previous site. Soil improvements such as the use of quality compost are an important part of site management.

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DESIGN and SOCIAL ISSUES:
In the 1995 Master Plan for the Boston Nature Center, Mass Audubon committed to improving the layout of the garden; to providing storage for tools; and to resolving water use issues on the site through new faucets and a monitoring system for water use. Before this time, the Clark-Cooper gardeners had operated autonomously on the site for many years and the gardens were widely spread. The "improved layout" was denser and unpalatable to many gardeners and the process of incorporating the new design was painful and frustrating to some gardeners. Now that this reorganization has been completed, trust between the gardeners and Mass Audubon is beginning to be established.

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TESTIMONIES: 
"Those people [at the Clark-Cooper Community Garden] think they own the place. For years, though, they kept at it. While people were using the land as a dump, they were busy finding places to grow flowers and vegetables. Back then it was every man for himself out there. Now, there's a sense of cooperation -- it's like a real community" (Charlotte Thompson, long-term resident of Mattapan and member of the board of the Boston Nature Center, from an article by Ron Fletcher, "Multiple reconnections for Audubon and visitors; a return to their roots," The Boston Globe, March 2, 2003). 

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