Not your typical "community garden", Corwin Street Community Garden features over 100 species of California native and other non-native, drought adapted plants. Located on the steep south slope of Eureka Valley, the Corwin Street Community Garden (CSCG) is one of several dozen community gardens owned and supported by the San Francisco Recreation and Park Department (SFRPD) - the same agency that o
wns Golden Gate Park. All community gardens under the auspices of RPD are maintained through volunteer effort, with support, guidance and resources offered by RPD and personnel assigned to the Community Garden Program. In the 1980's the land was purchased by RPD as a buffer to the adjacent brand-new mini park which had been built in 1973, just downhill: The Seward Street Mini-Park (SSMP). For years after this spot was put under RPD ownership and after everything else around it was built (except for SSMP), it sat as a neglected, w**d-choked urban wasteland. Each year, Civilian Conservation Corps or other crews were bought in to cut down the fennel and other w**d which sometimes reached 10 feet in height. By mid-to-late summer, these w**ds had long since turned brown and were an extreme fire hazard. So although the site was not being actively gardened, it was by no means low or anywhere close to zero maintenance. In 1995, a group of neighbors decided that they wanted something better than a ugly, fire prone patch of wild fennel. At the first community meeting, held on the sidewalk overlooking the site, a consensus was reached that, due to the extreme slope and poor soils (conditions at odds with developing typical individual community garden plots) a native plant garden should be established.
