Erin Wright tends to her garden on Fauquier Avenue. (Photo by Jay Paul)
There’s a 10-foot-wide stretch of land cutting diagonally through North Side’s Bellevue neighborhood. It rests in the middle of Fauquier Avenue, separating lanes of traffic. Some might call it a median, but here? Residents might call it their front yard.
About 10 years ago, Erin Wright, who owns Little House Green Grocery, planted her first vegetable garden on Fauquier. Over the years, the grassy patch has been home to dinner-plate dahlias and a field of sunflowers. One year she grew so much lettuce she planted a “Pick Me” sign and donated the rest of her bounty to a food pantry. Even the herbs for sale in Little House come from the median, arriving on shelves with the tiniest of carbon footprints.
Further up Fauquier, others have added their spin on urban gardening, stocking the median with herbs and vegetables, towering bushes, and flowers tumbling out of wheelbarrow planters. The annual planting is a community event as neighbors coordinate their plans and chat with passersby while tending to their seedlings.
Throughout the city, neighbors have taken undeveloped patches of land — some in medians and intersections, others in alleyways and city parks — as their own. They’ve turned graffiti-covered concrete into playgrounds and dog runs.
And in the process, they’ve created impromptu community centers.
Rick Bridgforth's alley garden (Photo courtesy Rich Bridgforth)
Just look at Rick Bridgforth’s garden in an alley off Robinson Street. Few would expect to find an idyllic escape behind a cluster of Fan bars, but Bridgforth’s vegetable and flower beds and his container gardens encourage those passing through to treat the area with a little more care.
Bridgforth started the project when he moved into his Floyd Avenue home about 30 years ago and was disgusted by the trash he saw in the alley every day while walking his dog. “I thought, ‘Maybe if I make this pretty, people won’t litter,’ and that’s what happened. It’s gained respect.”
Now neighbors walk the alley regularly to enjoy the garden through the seasons, from tulips and delphinium in spring to hydrangea, zinnias and artichokes in summer. Bridgforth especially enjoys when parents visit with their children to show them how their vegetables grow.
In spring, he hosts a “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” party in the alley to showcase his garden and raise money for organizations dear to him, such as Maymont. This fall, he planted 5,000 tulip bulbs to prepare. “In my mind, it ain’t done until it’s overdone,” he jokes. “I try to share it.”
Head three blocks east, and you’ll find more residents who saw potential in an alley. Scuffletown Park, tucked into the space between Strawberry Street and Stafford Avenue, is one of Richmond’s many pocket parks. While it’s a city-managed space, the vision for the park was driven largely by the people living in the surrounding homes.
Community members tending to Scuffletown Park (Photo courtesy Steven McKay)
Laura Blaylock, president of Friends of Scuffletown Park, says the park was established with a federal grant in the 1970s, but by 2000, the area was showing wear and tear. Neighbors banded together to donate benches and fencing, and they worked with the city on a design reminiscent of Parisian parks. Now everyone chips in to rake, mow and sweep.
Blaylock says Scuffletown’s canopy of trees makes the space feel far removed from the city — perfect for leisurely chats over takeout from nearby restaurants. It’s even become a destination for birthday parties and intimate weddings (there were four this spring).
“It’s everybody’s backyard, and that’s how we treat it,” she says. “It’s evolved because a lot of neighbors have worked hard to make it good.”
While Scuffletown’s lush grass softly begs for children to run and play, the nearby Lombardy Park screams for attention from the Fan’s youngest residents. When the city installed swings and slides, it converted the triangle where Park and Hanover avenues meet into a playground. But it’s the scattering of bikes and shovels — like a sharing economy for toys — that make it clear residents see this yard as an extension of their own.
Reema Badr, who lives two blocks away, is a regular at the park, along with her husband and daughters, ages 1 and 4. “It’s obviously great for them to be outside and play,” she says, “but it also gives us time to meet other adults.”
These pocket parks make sense in The Fan, where backyard space is at a premium. But even to the west, where residents have a bit more room to stretch, neighbors have found a collective vision for their outdoor spaces.
Take Bandy Field Nature Park on Three Chopt Road. For decades, Richmond and Henrico residents have fought to preserve the area as an undeveloped green space chock-full of butterfly, wetland and wildflower habitats.
It’s also a destination for dog lovers who gather every afternoon for walks. “The group changes over time, but they’re always an interesting group of characters,” says Elizabeth Cogar Batty, who frequents Bandy Field.
She says most only know each other by their dogs’ names — although one human eventually became her husband thanks to those walks in the park — but it’s a true community.
And that’s what makes these spaces so special.
A median or an alley could be steadily maintained by the city but otherwise left up to nature’s devices. But when houses and apartment buildings sit on a tenth of an acre or less, residents look for space to run and grow and play.
And so they get together, get creative and realize the potential of unexpected places.
It’s what keeps Erin Wright tending her herb garden in the middle of a road. “It makes such a big difference,” she says, “in how you feel about your neighborhood or your city to see things being made beautiful.”
