Neighbors work to restore natural beauty to Hunting Park

A weekend morning in Hunting Park used be the time for Leroy Fisher and Catalina Hunter to assess the damage to their beloved neighborhood green, the flotsam of needles, condoms, and trash that had washed in from the previous night's revelries. But the only serious trash on this broiling Saturday was neatly tucked under the tables where an Amish farmer was stacking blushing peaches, fresh sweet corn, a cooler of homemade lemonade, and bricks of goat's-milk soap.

Yes, a farmers' market has come to the so-called badlands of Philadelphia.

The social theorist Richard Florida claims the arrival of a Starbucks outlet is a bellwether of urban change, but a farmers' market may be the next-best thing - and healthier. Can an organic community garden and a dog run be far behind?

Actually, they're in the works.

After years of grasping at small ways to help their long-suffering North Philadelphia neighborhood, which takes its name from the historic, 87-acre park, Fisher and Hunter are finally able to boast some concrete results.

Soon after the Saturday market started operating in June near Old York Road, bulldozers were dispatched to reconstruct the baseball field - thanks, in part, to a donation from the Phillies' Ryan Howard. Flowering borders, which now stand as colorful sentries at the entrances to Hunting Park's winding drives, were planted by residents during a neighborhood service day. The 80 raised beds in the community garden should be ready in time to put in a fall crop. Meanwhile, the new playground on the park's Ninth Street side is getting heavy use.

"It's been there a year, and no vandalism," Fisher marveled as he showed off the improvements.

That might be a small accomplishment for some Philadelphia neighborhoods, but it is a big deal in Hunting Park, the section just east of Broad Street and south of Roosevelt Boulevard. Once a solid, working-class enclave that supplied the brawn for the Budd Co. railcar plant, its tight blocks of rowhouses were literally torn apart first by the factory's gradual downsizing, then by the crack invasion of the 1980s.