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In West Philadelphia’s Powelton Village, tucked between rowhouses and tall university buildings, a nearly 1-acre oasis of green bursts to life each year — with fruit trees, bees, vegetables and flowers.

“It’s not just tomatoes and zucchini,” said Alex Charnov, a gardener at the Summer Winter Community Garden. “It’s all kinds of crazy stuff.”

Neighbors have tended the land as a community garden for nearly five decades. Gardeners now have more security that the garden’s legacy will continue long into the future.

City Council approved legislation Thursday to authorize the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority to transfer the lots that make up the Summer Winter Community Garden to Neighborhood Gardens Trust, a nonprofit land trust that plans to protect the lots from development for the foreseeable future.

Due in part to its proximity to Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania, the area where the garden is located is facing development pressure, said Jenny Greenberg, executive director of Neighborhood Gardens Trust.

“We are very excited to be moving forward with the permanent preservation of the land,” Greenberg said.

“There is an urgency to get these properties secured and protected so that the gardens remain a part of the community, even as there’s new development taking place,” she added.

Many of Philadelphia’s community gardens are at risk of development because they’re not owned by the people who tend the land. A city plan in 2023 found that one in three active gardens and farms are located in areas with the “highest intensity of new construction” — including the area of West Philly where the Summer Winter Community Garden is located.

The West Philadelphia garden is a space where students work alongside elders — some of whom helped found the garden in the 1970s, Charnov said. The garden also donates food through the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s City Harvest Program to a community organization in Mantua, and the gates are open whenever a gardener is working inside, he said.

“It’s essentially a public resource to Philadelphians,” Charnov said.

For nearly two decades, Neighborhood Gardens Trust has leased the land from the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, Greenberg said. But while the land was owned by the Philadelphia Redevelopment Authority, Charnov worried it could be sold to a developer.

“If it’s owned by the Redevelopment Authority, there’s nothing that says that tomorrow the Redevelopment Authority can’t just transfer that land to anybody under the sun,” he said. “It’s kind of an uncertain state.”

Now, with the future of the land more certain, gardeners may feel more confident making improvements, such as building raised beds, Charnov said.

“We always have a list of projects that we could do, so I think we’ll revisit that list with new light — now that we know that any work we do will actually be worthwhile,” he said. “We’ll be there for a while.”

Councilmember Jamie Gauthier, District 3, introduced the resolution approving the transfer. She said the move will ensure the Summer Winter Community Garden remains for generations to come.

“Community gardens make our neighborhoods cleaner, more beautiful, healthier, and safer,” she wrote in a statement. “For decades, neighbors have been doing this lifesaving work even as the City disregarded the importance of community gardens. I am glad that this generation of City Council is correcting course.”

“This is just the start,” she added. “I look forward to protecting other community gardens from speculative development as well.”