Gardeners must unite to save plots

This is a response to your Sept. 12 article "Naperville residents will be surveyed on future of garden plots."

There are two competing parties in contention for the garden plot site - School District 203 and the gardeners themselves. To date the gardeners have been kept out of the process, except for being permitted to make comments at park district meetings. The school district was one of the designated "stakeholders" with a seat at the table as the recommendations to consider converting the garden plots to sports fields was developed. They are highly involved.

At this point, having one of the competing parties, District 203, control the survey of the community is improper and ludicrous. They are not going to come back with a verdict to deny themselves new sports fields.

The gardeners find themselves in a very difficult position. This all came up at the end of the gardening year, when it was difficult for them to quickly organize. There is a core group of about 50 gardeners out of approximately 500 who are in the know on this issue, and know when meetings and events are to take place.

We gardeners had petitioned the park district in June to send notices in the mail to all gardeners announcing any meetings on this subject. They refused to send these notices. In light of this, we asked that we be given the names and addresses of the gardeners so that we might send the notices ourselves. We even offered to let the park district approve each of our letters, which we promised would be informational, not inflammatory. They have refused.

This is not going to be a fair survey of the community. The power of the school district, especially when placed in control of the process, will win out.

Understand with this scenario, the garden plots are going to be plowed under for good this spring, and the community is going to lose a major asset for a wide variety of its citizens, as well as an item of diversity in the sports-dominated Naperville landscape.

Gardeners interested in participating should contact us at save_gardens@yahoo.com

Albert S. Cain

Naperville