It didn’t always look so green. Much of the land was once a “brownfield,” with high levels of lead contamination.
Today, it’s home to more than 20 vegetable beds, a prairie with native plants, a permaculture site, beekeping and community classes and gatherings.
The change didn’t happen overnight. El Paseo Garden has been around since 2009 — around the time environmental activists and residents in Pilsen were organizing against pollution in their community. Much of that advocacy called for the cleanup of toxic waste left by an old metal smelter.
Some community residents also wanted a small piece of land to garden — and got it.
The original space has been expanded with help from Neighbor Space, a not-for-profit urban land trust for community gardens that helped secure the land and provides financial management support, technical expertise and access to resources.
The co-directors
Paula and Antonio Acevedo have been volunteering at the garden for more than 10 years.
They took over as co-directors in 2015, when the founders left. They’ve taken on projects including two murals and adding solar energy in the garden, a beekeeping program and a permaculture site.
Paula Acevedo is mostly in charge of the administrative work — going after grants and working with others to make planting stations accessible to seniors with disabilities and ensure that spaces are fully utilized. She also helped establish yoga and wellness classes.
Antonio Acevedo is in charge of construction projects.
“I do most of the physical labor, and I lead groups of volunteers and other garden leaders doing those projects,” he says.
They count on volunteers who help them each week but also are constantly thinking about how to get more people involved.
The wellness leader
Cristina Puzio, a wellness leader at El Paseo, works as a part-time home-care aid and volunteers some afternoons. She is 41 and has lived in Pilsen all her life.
She has been involved with the garden since 2016, often leading meditations, energy healing sessions and grief circles. She also helps coordinate volunteers leading yoga, fitness and flamenco classes.
“I feel like there’s so many people here with so many talents, right?” she says. “So many different leaders in the community. But this is my way of giving back to the community.”
The beekeeper
El Paseo uses beekeeping to educate people about bees and other native pollinators.
Noah Frazier, 27, who moved to Chicago years ago from Berlin, is one of the beekeepers. He does masonry work during the day. On Sundays, he’s usually at El Paseo, looking after the bees with other volunteers.
Over the last couple of years, he says the number of colonies in the garden grew exponentially. Some of the garden bees were moved to other locations across the city including Working Bikes and City Farm.
“Every time you approach the beehive, you have to kind of slow down and forget about all the other things going on in your life and then move very intentionally and kind of slowly so you don’t squash any of these living beings while you’re in there as you kind of invade their home,” he says.
The senior gardener
Carlos Nuñez usually can be found in the garden in the afternoon with the other senior gardeners.
A member of the garden since 2010, he says being there reminds him of Mexico, where he is from.
“All of this reminds me of when we were out there planting, the smell of different herbs, the fresh air,” Nuñez says in Spanish.
Nuñez has a disability. He had brain surgery years ago and loses his balance sometimes as he walks.
Before coming to the garden, he says, he was very depressed, and not very active. Now, when he’s in the garden, he loves playing guitar and singing the songs that he learned from his father in Mexico.
A changing neighborhood
Paula and Antonio Acevedo, along with other volunteers, have worked to make sure El Paseo is a welcoming space, especially for the Mexican Americans who’ve lived in Pilsen for generations.
The garden has been a target of vandalism and theft, including beehive panels being stolen and people taking vegetables and fruits outside scheduled harvesting times. It also has had problems with people using the garden as a restroom.
But a bigger challenge, the Acevedos say, is the neighborhood’s changing demographics. Pilsen has long been a Mexican immigrant neighborhood, but the rising cost of housing is pushing families out. The Acevedos are second-generation Mexican American. They rent and don’t want to be priced out of the neighborhood, either.
Paula Acevedo says some people are concerned that having a nice garden only makes the area more desirable in the real estate market. And some people, she says, are under the impression the garden is only for young, white professionals.
“They’re telling me, ‘Yeah, my friend said it was a guero garden,’ but I told them, ‘No, it’s not,’ ” she says.
They have volunteers from nearby high schools, she says, most who are Latino. And while many people who show up for their volunteer days on Sundays are younger, white professionals, Paula Acevedo says most of the people involved in the sound healing program are women of color, and the majority of seniors who have garden beds are Latino.
She says her biggest goal in recruiting volunteers is finding people committed to the neighborhood.
“The community is very transient now,” she says. “And so you have a really good leader for several years, until they have to move away again.”
Paula Acevedo says she’s excited about a half-acre lot the garden recently acquired. It’s where the Loewenthal metal smelter operated years ago. She’s been asking for ideas on how to use the space. Volunteers have installed a temporary fence for a dog run, a nature play area and a fitness equipment station.
“This is community,” she says. “This is unique. Not a sterile park that could just be in any part of the city. We want it to really identify and show the community, the culture.”
