Excelsior Action Group and PlantSF along with Out of Site Center for Arts Education created a swath of livable space at the busy intersection of Mission Street and Geneva Avenue this month by adding plant life and art.
A group of young volunteers spent the morning of March 6 planting flax, red hot poker and yarrow at the new Mission and Geneva garden. Additionally, several murals will be installed there on March 13. The complete installation will transform the streetscape from concrete jungle to urban oasis.
“This is so well put together,” volunteer and Excelsior resident Deborah LeDet said. “It’s a wonderful looking design, and this corner needs this calming effect.”
In fact, it was the traffic calming issue that truly inspired the Mission and Geneva gardening project. The garden is part of the same property occupied by the Chevron station at the northwest corner of Geneva and Mission. The owners of the station were attending some MTA meetings a few years ago because there were proposed changes along Geneva Avenue. The Mission-Geneva Transportation Study found that “skewed intersections, such as Mission and Geneva, create longer crossing distances and lead to unusual configurations.” Additionally, the “frequency of driveways creates confusion for drivers” (at the gas station) and “pedestrians curb ramps may be mistaken for driveways.” People drive up into the gas station, not at the driveway but at the pedestrian curb ramp by the pedestrian island near the station.
The garden should discourage that kind of behavior. Cars can no longer drive into the gas station at the curb ramp because they would have to drive over the garden to get to the pumps.
EAG and PlantSF Landscape Architect Jane Martin wanted to increase civic involvement with this project, and hopefully spur residents to action. EAG Greening Committee member Eric Brewer-Garcia said that the whole idea is to get people involved in a local project and then train them up to do more in-depth civic duty.
“Our plan is to develop a youth-based volunteer program,” Brewer-Garcia said. “Youth start by volunteering, then learn planning or maybe grant-writing and what benefit this has for the community.”
Martin’s design firm, PlantSF, converted Mayor Gavin Newsom, and convinced the DPW and the Planning Department to allow residents to plant small gardens along city sidewalks for a nominal fee. EAG have used this to their advantage. Now that the city has eased up on the permitting and fees, organizations like EAG can implement their volunteer projects more easily.
But this is not the first greening project in the area. Alemany had a boulevard installed several years ago and it was filled with similar plants as the Mission and Geneva garden. The same type of boulevard was recently installed on Divisadero Street, for example. This won’t be the last project of this type either. The mayor announced on Feb. 25 that a small “parklet” would be installed at the corner of Geneva and Naples near another gas station.
Details were scant at press time, but the inspiration for that project is the Market and 17th ‘Castro Commons’ Pavement to Parks project. Funding for the Mission and Geneva garden came from a Community Challenge Grant awarded to EAG last year. The garden will be maintained by the Chevron station per City regulations.
Aaron Williams contributed to this report.