It primarily serves the greater South Loop area and adjacent neighborhoods. Park 540 Community Garden is a new community garden in Chicago’s Near South Side. Our garden grew out of a need in the community for more public gardening space. The only other public community garden in the area had a wait list of over 100 people and a four year wait time for a plot! Community members banded together to solve this problem by starting a new community garden, and the Park 540 Community Garden was born. Park 540 Community Garden’s organizers have spent the last year planning the garden layout, raising awareness about the garden in the community, and working towards approval from the Chicago Park District and fiscal sponsorship from a local non-profit, Friends of the Park. Through the donations of garden founders, we have already raised some money to build our first plots, and we plan to break ground in spring 2018. However, because we are literally building our garden from the ground up, we are in need of more funding for our start-up costs. To that end, we would use funds from this campaign to help build more raised beds in our garden and to buy supplies to help get our garden off the ground. However, the mission of Park 540 Community Garden extends beyond simply giving its members a place to garden. We want to build a sense of community, provide a space that is inclusive, and share produce with community organizations. Once we have our garden constructed, we plan to harvest/glean any unused produce and make it available to a local soup kitchen to help feed the hungry in our community.
