The hardest part, Soria says, is not knowing—not knowing whether her commitment to this place will matter in the end.
In the car, on her way back from the Beckett Street Garden, she gestures to the streets. “I’m not sugar-coating anything,” she says. “That is reality. But the part that’s beautiful is the resilience that children have, that families have, that people have. Growing up in this city, and still making some kind of life. That’s the part that’s beautiful.”
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Last winter was the worst in recent memory. The hardy greens, herbs, and roots, everything that usually survives the winter, died—even Rodriguez’s bees froze to death. Spring planting was weeks behind. But by late May, when I talked to Soria over the phone, she was gushing: Beckett Street garden was going gangbusters. They had so much extra produce they hardly knew what to do with it, and Rodriguez’s two brand-new hives were humming industriously.
Sometimes resilience means surviving long enough to get out, to build something new somewhere else. But sometimes, it means staying put. In Camden, that requires a certain grit, something the city’s gardeners have in abundance. As Devlin says, “gardeners are a tenacious lot”—they work through rain, heat, and drought, hunkering down to weather each year’s winter, trusting that seeds will grow.
Correction: This article originally stated that Camden was across the Schuylkill River from Philadelphia. The river separating the two cities is the Delaware.
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People's love and work make all the difference. Technology can be a good tool.
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This was where my immigrant maternal grandparents settled when they came from Italy to America. And also where my mom and her 6 siblings were raised. Elated to read this article and see individuals doing their part in healing people and a city in distress.