Cultivating Community Gardens Histories Project: Preserving Philadelphia Community Gardeners' Memories

This is a digital archive hosted by McLean Library and Archives of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society and created to support community gardeners and urban farmers throughout Philadelphia. The collection includes images, videos, and audio stories created to preserve the long history of community gardening in Philadelphia and to help others to better understand the meaning and value of gardens – today and in the future. The Philadelphia Community Gardens Memory Collection is the digital home for sharing and preserving the stories of gardens and the gardeners who make them grow.

Listen to the oral histories of Philadelphia Community gardeners. This is a growing collection of interviews in which participants reflect on what gardening has meant to them over the years and how they’ve connected with their neighbors to create their urban oases.

PHS McLean Library's contribution of web archives of its own site and Philadelphia community garden sites and social media during the time of COVID.

PHS McLean Library has created a web-archive collection focusing on the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s programmatic COVID-19 response, launching campaigns to engage our audiences to garden at home. In addition, the collection includes Philadelphia-area community gardening responses through social media sites as well as web-based documentation of recommendations for urban agriculture during COVID-19.