Katie Grier believes some of the best lessons can
be learned in a garden. That means the Wilmore Community Garden was the
Harvard of Charlotte's near south side last summer.
A group of nine students and 13 adults
collaborated on a project to compile oral histories of some older Wilmore
residents -- and to learn a little about life and gardening along the way.
"We worked, and we talked," said Grier,
77, a Wilmore resident since 1969.
Cultivating Common Ground was the title of the
project, sponsored by the Wilmore Neighborhood Association.
"We saw some great links built between teens
and the people they interviewed," said June Blotnick, who managed the
project.
A collection of the essays and photos are on
display through April at UNC Charlotte's Atkins Library and will move to
the Levine Museum of the New South later this year.
The project's centerpiece was the community
vegetable garden behind the Wilmore Community Center off West Boulevard.
Wilmore was developed in the mid-1920s as an
upper-class neighborhood not far from Charlotte's center. It deteriorated
over the past three decades but is the subject of renewed interest by
developers, given its proximity to fast-growing South End.
Armed with grants from the Arts & Science
Council-Charlotte/Mecklenburg and the Grassroots program of the N.C. Arts
Council, a state agency, the teens and adults worked together.
They spent dozens of hours in the garden, which
was started about 10 years ago and was in need of work by last year.
During work breaks, students interviewed the older adults about their
lives.
The students then wrote the essays, which were
edited and compiled by community activist Don Boekelheide into a booklet
with photos. Blotnick said money from the grants will be used to print
about 1,000 copies.
"I told them what it was like for me,
growing up in a farm family," said Grier, who was reared on a farm in
the Steele Creek area.
She said learning how to garden was an important
part of her childhood education but said today's youth "probably
found it hard to believe the differences between then and now."
For information about the exhibit or the project,
call Blotnick at (704) 491-5646.
