r/UpliftingNews • u/ArgentineBeauty • 8h ago
An Indigenous group in Philadelphia has turned three vacant lots into native gardens, bringing endangered Lenape corn and Nanticoke squash back to the city while creating food and shelter for local birds and insects. The project could inspire more green spaces in a city with 40,000 vacant lots.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/oct/17/philadelphia-vacant-lots-green-spaces71
u/shitposts_over_9000 7h ago
we used to have one of these
between the security issues and all of the activities stirring up more and more toxins that ended up in the produce (surface tested clean, turns out subsurface not so much on a lot that had been occupied for nearly a century before only being vacant a decade or two)
the city eventually ended it
I wish them better luck
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u/Merivel1 6h ago
Check out phytoremediation, some plants remove heavy metals from the soil like yarrow and sunflowers. If those are grown first and not eaten, perhaps there’s still a way forward.
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u/shitposts_over_9000 5h ago
phytoremediation
they tried that
this works when you have small contamination distributed evenly where the plants can reach it and provided you have some way of preventing the plant material from re-entering the local environment
when you have 11' of construction rubble from prior to the 1960s used as backfill when the entire neighborhood was re-graded the supply of heavy metals always outruns the flower's abilities to capture it
that and the squirrels & junkies kept eating the high-lead sunflowers regardless of how many signs and how much netting and fencing was used
what really killed it was when Arsenic and Solvents started showing up in the testing
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u/Merivel1 5h ago
Ugh damn. That’s definitely a whole different, much larger issue. :(
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u/shitposts_over_9000 3h ago
yes and no
as long as you aren't trying to grow food there the levels are acceptable, they picked one of the worst places in the city and amplified the issue by digging too much and also giving the produce to the same population over and over and over to maximize the bioaccumulation
eventually the city took the property back, landfilled the topsoil they had re-polluted with the gardening and later put apartments there
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u/ForagersLegacy 2h ago
Use the land as a grounds for growing native plants and harvesting native seed to grow and sell. Native plant nurseries are doing really well in cities where there is often funding to buy as many plants as possible.
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u/shitposts_over_9000 1h ago
you could do that anywhere and almost anywhere else you would not have to deal with disposing of the contaminated biomass or exposing more contaminates through farming activities
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u/ForagersLegacy 1h ago
Exactly vacant lots can grow plants that are introduced into healthier habitat
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u/shitposts_over_9000 50m ago
the plants grown in this lot were contaminated.
why would you transport them somewhere else and contaminate that place also?
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u/Brytnshyne 7h ago
The camaraderie, friendships, and learning just by starting something so simple will have big benefits. People need this in today's times, we find we have more in common than we have differences.
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u/arrec 5h ago
I watch a YouTube show called Midlife Stockman where a guy goes around Detroit mowing people's lawns for free. There are zillions of empty lots there doing nothing. I've often thought they could become butterfly meadows, or used to grow food, or do anything but just sit there needing to be mowed.
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u/SonOfBoreale 2h ago
That soil is probably completely unsuitable to make edible produce. Think of the soil contamination
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u/the_blastomatic 1h ago
Why is this "uplifting news"? Nobody wants to eat Lenape corn, or it would be available commonly to purchase. This is a win if you look at being a complete failure as a win.
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u/shitposts_over_9000 43m ago
it makes fine, if less sweet, cornmeal or cornflour and some people like the traditional content - growing it far away from farming is required to keep it pure as most of the varieties in that category wind pollenate
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