08/24/2026
In the early morning, before the hustle and bustle of everyday life in Philadelphia, the Summer Winter Community Garden is filled with the songs of birds and insects. You can usually find a handful of gardeners tending to their plots, dew still present on the grass as they make time for their crops before starting their work or school day. Nestled between Drexel’s campus and Powelton Village at the intersection of Race Street and N. 33rd St., the garden offers a pathway between neighborhoods, a community of gardeners, a chance to connect with the earth and so much more. 2026 marks 50 years since a vacant lot in Powelton became a community garden, shaped almost from the start by one man who never stopped tending it.
Since 1976, the Community Garden has become far more than just a place to grow produce. It is a pillar of the community, offering affordable food to the more than 100 gardeners who tend its 78 plots. It is a classroom for Drexel students, a gathering place for neighbors who might otherwise never meet, and a habitat for pollinators, birds, and small wildlife increasingly squeezed out of the city around it. At the center of it all is Joe Revlock, 75, who helped turn what was once a vacant lot into the garden a half-century ago and has shaped nearly every inch of it since. But what has 50 years of the Community Garden given to the people who tend to it, and the community around it? The answer depends on which gardener you ask, but all of them keep coming back.
Continue reading at thetriangle.org (link in bio)
✏️ - Nathan Zwirn
📸 - Nathan Zwirn
