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Let's Add Some Color to the Greening of America

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The benefit of tackling environmental woes is one of the ideas inspiring Michael Howard, a burly former construction contractor who formed a nonprofit development organization with his wife 16 years ago on Chicago's South Side. At the center of their work is Eden Place, an environmental-education center that Howard built on what had been a vacant lot used for illegal dumping.

Nestled between an elevated freight-train track and blocks of working-class homes, boarded-up buildings and empty lots blanketed in old lead-paint dust, Eden Place stands out almost shockingly, 3.5 vibrant acres of color and natural life. It boasts a large vegetable garden, flower beds planted by neighborhood youth and seniors, a wooded area, a swath of prairie grass, a bustling chicken coop and a composting center.

Howard likes to take troublemakers from the nearby grade school and have them work in the garden until they're exhausted. He has taught unemployed men and women how to plot and plant throughout the neighborhood.

"Most of our ancestors were part of the great migration of African Americans from the South," Howard says. "When we left, we left the land. One of my dreams is to reconnect people to the land. If you're growing on that land, you're not going to abuse it."

mickdumke@gmail.com

Mick Dumke is a Chicago-based journalist who writes about the environment,

race and politics.

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