I have a piece in this week’s Reader — a special issue devoted to all things Hyde Park-Kenwood — on the ongoing hoo-ha surrounding the U. of C.’s plan to use the lot long-occupied by the 61st Street Community Garden as a staging area for construction of the new Chicago Theological Seminary at 60th and Dorchester.

The hardest thing about writing this story was not just relying on all the previous reporting on it; the saga’s been going on for a year now, and it’s been reported up, down, and sideways. I’d recommend anyone curious to get a more thorough picture of the garden community and (at least one side of) the current controversy check out Jamie Kalven’s Invisible Institute site, which has a pretty impressive collection of documentary information (interviews, photos, essays) on the garden and its gardeners. In fact, I pinched the photo above from there. I hope they don’t mind.