The Cooper Street gardener who feeds the whole block
Rosa Delgado turned a strip of parkway into a giving garden. Take the tomatoes, she says — just wave hello on your way past.
Rosa Delgado in the parkway garden she planted between the sidewalk and Cooper Street.
If you have walked the north end of Cooper Street this summer, you have met Rosa Delgado — or at least her tomatoes. They spill over a low fence along the parkway, that thin ribbon of city land between the sidewalk and the curb, where most of us grow nothing but weeds. Rosa grows dinner.
Three years ago the strip was hard clay and cigarette ends. Today it holds beans on cane teepees, a hedge of kale, marigolds to keep the aphids honest, and a hand-lettered sign that reads simply: take what you need. People do.
“A garden is just a slow way of introducing yourself to everyone who walks by.”
It started with too much zucchini
Rosa laughs when she tells it. The first summer, her backyard plot produced more zucchini than any two people could eat. So she moved the surplus out front, where neighbors could take it without the awkwardness of a knock. The knocks came anyway — friendly ones.
Want to grow one too?
Rosa's advice is unfussy: start smaller than you think, plant what you will actually eat, and leave a sign — the sign is the whole point.
If you would like Rosa's seed list, drop us a line and we will connect you.