The garden itself is safe from sheriff’s sale, but Smith and advocates worry the surrounding grassy plots of tax-delinquent land, tended to by neighbors, could be auctioned off or sit vacant - a fate they hope to prevent with a new initiative to urge the city to repurchase $10 million in liens on the properties community members have maintained. Now, at 86, she visits at least three times a week and sees the site as an example of how lots cared for by the surrounding community can flourish. Smith remembers hauling trash and rubble with her neighbors from the abandoned lot to create the Viola Street Garden a half century ago. The garden wasn’t always so loved - or a garden at all. “You don’t come over here and just snatch them up. Perched in the late spring sun between her hearty collard greens, budding broccoli, and just-flowering tomatoes, she dangled a plastic bag of fresh-picked vermillion strawberries. Peeking out between the rowhomes on Viola Street in East Parkside sits the verdant oasis Naomi Smith has called her therapy of 50 years.
