Razor-Wire Oasis

A heaven in hell's despite.

by Bruce Schimmel

Bruce Schimmel

A PBS documentary recently called Philly's Las Parcelas a Garden of Eden. After a recent lunch of pigeon pea and banana dumpling soup prepared in its outdoor kitchen, Garden of Eatin' seems an apt label, too. Under a broad fig tree, I slurp caramel flan as birds sing, wind chimes ring and a cock from a henhouse crows.

It's a little slice of heaven. Though as the bump-bump-bump of a pimped ride slides by, it seems more a heaven in hell's despite.

In Kensington's Norris Square neighborhood, Las Parcelas is the dream of Iris Brown, a little lady from Puerto Rico with a wave of white hair. She hands me homemade crackers to sop up more soup.

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"We have no theater, no entertainment in this neighborhood," says Brown with a lilt. "So we have two kitchens here. We cook and cook and share the food with anyone who passes."

As she speaks, just outside the fence, a pit bull is pulling a trio of teenagers. Will they ever come in for a meal?

In 1987, the 5-foot-3 mom said "no" to drug dealers who'd turned this lot, the size of a block, into an open-air bazaar. With some 20 neighborhood women calling themselves Grupo Motivos, Brown tossed out the dealers, strung up barbed wire and locked the gate.

At the time, nobody knew who owned this block. Over the years, no one's come forward as the women planted gardens and put up fences in six more lots. Fringed with barbed wire, all are kept locked, except to trusted friends who know the code.

The kitchen garden is the most beautiful and vulnerable. Lush with veggies and flowers, it's ringed with rare medicinal herbs. Its various shacks are painted in eye-popping hues of yellow, green and blue — "the colors of family," says Brown. One shack has a tiny bedroom filled with antique toys, dolls and religious icons, evoking an idyllic life in rural 1940s Puerto Rico.

For more than 20 years, the Grupo Motivos women have successfully kept the creeps on the other side of the wire. But it's tiring, she says. This week, Brown had to have a little talk with one neighborhood teen. He'd been stashing drugs in Colobo, a Grupo Motivos park that's reminiscent of an African village garden.

At 63, Brown is now trying to bring in "young blood." Sadly, she's having little success. Her women's group has shrunk from 20 to 10, and most are late middle-aged.

"I want to share my passion for planting and cooking with young people," says Brown. "But they don't have a clue."

Ariel is Brown's granddaughter, and at 17, she's the youngest member of Grupo Motivos. But when I ask why her peers aren't coming in, she clams up.

"Is it the drug dealers?" I ask. She laughs nervously. "They aren't afraid, like they are of your grandmother?" More laughter, then a whispered "No, they're not."

Still, her grandmom remains stalwart. To entice a younger generation, she now has a children's garden and clubhouse for eight primary school kids that Ariel leads after school and over the summer.

And Brown still hopes to open her little heaven to everyone. "I hate the barbed wire," she says. "It would be wonderful to be able to take it down, so that everyone could enjoy, plant and respect the gardens.

"And little by little," she says, "I am taking the wire down."

(bruce@schimmel.com)