Garbage to Garden: A Vacant Philly Lot Gets Some Green-Thumb Love

kikid26: I, too, live in Philly, in Center City near City Hall, and the huge planters outside my building are always being destroyed and puked on by nightclub-goers and trashed by passers-by. So I can seriously empathize with you! As for the use of the gravel, I am pretty sure that the entire transformation was paid for by the coffee-shop owner, and he also had incurred legal fees and other costs related to the fix-up and fight with the city, so cost was a serious consideration. Hopefully this is just a temporary design that will be made more permanent and a lot prettier as (or IF) the neighborhood improves over time.

I agree Debi, I just wish they would be honest about the cost issue instead of overdoing it with statements like they were "forcing visitors to slow down" or that "It’s easy for dog walkers to clean up after their pets." Since when is cleaning poop out of gravel easy?!!? And sorry about your planters too. It's a shame you have to work so hard to try to keep things nice!

I don't work hard to keep our planters looking good. I just pay through the nose (high condo fees) to have someone else do it. But it seems like a waste of money anymore, since people are always throwing trash in them or stealing the flowers and plants. And I was thinking the same thing about the dog poop and the gravel, but I will go out on a limb and bet that since many people in that neighborhood don't pick up their litter, they probably don't pick up their dog's poop either.