Plant
a seed, watch it grow
Staff
26 July 2007
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
Wonderland Gardens founder and
Executive Director Sheldon Fleming has won a 2007 TBS Pathfinders
award for his service to the community. Wonderland Gardens on
Rainbow Drive in Decatur seeks to connect people with nature through
walking trails, community gardens, an outdoor classroom, an
amphitheater and a pavilion. Fleming is host of the half-hour cable
show, "Can You Dig It," in its third season and airing Friday
mornings on TV One. Produced by Homerun Entertainment, the
six-episode series (three filmed in Los Angeles and three in metro
Atlanta) solves common garden problems faced by homeowners.
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Hidden Treasures
H.M. CAULEY, MAE GENTRY
10 May 2007
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Wonderland is a community
oasis.
Sheldon Fleming's love of nature
is on display at Wonderland Gardens, a 20-acre oasis he founded more
than a decade ago.
The gardens, on Rainbow Drive in
south DeKalb County, are open to the public from dawn to dusk.
The property is owned by the
county, but Fleming's nonprofit operates the site as a hands-on
community garden with walking trails and a pavilion for outdoor
education programs.
Fruit trees, vegetables and
flowers grow at Wonderland Gardens, which also has a recycling
center.
Fleming, the gardens' executive
director, teaches people of all ages about recycling and "the
healthy side of life."
ON THE WEB:
www.wonderlandgardens.org .
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Long-awaited arts center
could be open in late '07
ERNIE SUGGS
6 July 2006
The Atlanta Journal -
Constitution
Close to two decades in the
making, a performing arts center in South DeKalb is one step closer
to reality.
Last week, the County Commission
selected the Atlanta-based firm of Goode-Van Slyke Architecture to
design a $5 million facility.
Goode-Van Slyke beat out six
other firms to win the $1 million bid to design the center.
"This has been many years
coming," said DeKalb County CEO Vernon Jones. "This is something
that is critical to this administration."
Ann Kimbrough, Jones' chief of
staff, said the project has been "fast-tracked," and the county is
targeting the fourth quarter of 2007 to open the center.
"We are looking at a very
aggressive timetable," Kimbrough said.
"People in South DeKalb have
been working for at least 20 years to make this happen."
The new center would join the
Callanwolde Fine Arts Center, Spruill Gallery and ART Station as the
county's fourth regional arts center, Kimbrough said.
"These are facilities where
community residents are able to come and enjoy the arts," Kimbrough
said.
The multipurpose arts facility
will include an auditorium, theater, exhibit space and classrooms.
The facility will be on the old
Mathis Dairy property at the intersection of Columbia Drive and
Rainbow Drive.
The site is currently the home
of Wonderland Gardens, a nonprofit, public facility that offers
educational programs for children and adults.
Kimbrough said the $5 million
budget for the arts center project could grow, "based on some things
that might be tweaked."
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Gardens founder moves to
TV
15 June 2006
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
The founder and executive
director of south DeKalb County's Wonderland Gardens is the host of
"Can You Dig It," a cable television show that will begin airing in
July on TV One.
Sheldon Fleming will solve
common garden problems faced by homeowners in the one-hour show,
produced by Homerun Entertainment.
Wonderland Gardens, at 3145
Rainbow Drive on the property of the old Mathis Dairy, is a
nonprofit, public facility that offers educational programs for
children and adults. For more information, go to
www.wonderlandgardens.org .
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Weekend Gardener
Walter Reeves
19 August 2005
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Q: Can you suggest small
gardening charities that accept donations in memory of people? Some
state organizations aren't appropriate because donations have to
begin at such a large amount.
--- Nancy Adams, e-mail
A: I am positive that any small
garden organization would be happy to work with you on a memorial.
Before you make a donation, check to see if they are a 501(c)(3)
nonprofit so your gift is tax deductible. I worked in DeKalb County
for many years, so three educational organizations there come
immediately to mind, but there are many deserving groups. Try
Wonderland Gardens (
www.wonderlandgardens.org ), Oakhurst Community Garden (
www.oakhurstgarden.org ) and Dunwoody Nature Center (
www.dunwoodynature.org ).
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Can
you dig it? Cable TV show hopes to acquaint black viewers with top
leisure activity
MAE GENTRY
12 July 2005
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Lithonia resident Carolyn King
wanted to beautify the front of her 4-acre property, so she planted
silk flowers in her yard, changing them each season so they would
appear real.
"Our neighbors began to suspect
because they were there all year round," said her husband, attorney
Kamau King.
Was the ploy a bit of gardening
genius or a floral faux pas?
The answer was clear to Sheldon
Fleming, founder of Wonderland Gardens in south DeKalb County and
co-host of a television gardening show debuting this month.
"I said, 'Now, Carolyn, the
flowers got to go. That's the essence of the show,' " Fleming said.
Fleming replaced the fake flowers
with a tasteful array of flowering plants and shrubs. He features
the makeover on his new TV series, "Can You Dig It," which begins
airing at 7:30 p.m. July 30 on the Comcast cable channel TV One.
The network wanted to tap into
the nation's No. 1 leisure activity ---gardening --- with a show
aimed at an African-American audience.
"The show is geared toward the
new gardener," said Fleming, 46. "We're wanting to introduce persons
of color to gardening. Historically, botanical gardens are not in
the African-American community. We don't frequent them. The closest
we can remember to being in a garden is [being] on a farm."
On the show, Fleming teaches
viewers how to plant vegetable gardens, tend a lawn and create a
patio garden, among other things.
Producer Jennifer Gribbon said
Fleming is "phenomenal" on camera and passionate about tilling the
earth.
"He knows gardening," said
Gribbon, production executive with Homerun Entertainment, producer
of Fleming's show. "He knows the soil. He knows the plants. He knows
everything there is to know about gardening."
Fleming was born in Anchorage,
Alaska, but grew up in Columbus, Ohio. He moved to DeKalb County in
1976 and graduated from Columbia High School.
Though he earned an associate's
degree in landscape technology from Georgia Perimeter College, he
learned the most from visiting public gardens, talking to nursery
owners and attending con- ferences.
His father was operating
Fleming's Tropical Gardens Nursery in Lithonia when tragedy struck
the family. In 1986, Fleming's younger sister, Kelly, left home one
evening to buy ice cream and never returned.
She was killed during an apparent
robbery.
"It's unsolved to this day,"
Fleming said.
Fleming founded Wonderland
Gardens a decade ago and dedicated it to his sister's memory. The
20-acre oasis is on the site of the old Mathis Dairy on Rainbow
Drive.
The property belongs to DeKalb
County, but the nonprofit organization operates the site as a
hands-on community garden.
In addition to fruit trees,
vegetable gardens and flowering plants, it has walking trails, an
outdoor classroom, an amphitheater and a pavilion.
Fleming, the executive director,
uses Wonderland Gardens to teach youngsters about "the healthy side
of life."
"We have school groups [and] the
DeKalb County Parks and Recreation youth coming to us," Fleming
said. "And then we have Storyland, where we have pre-k [students] to
7-year-olds plant vegetables and flowers."
Visitors to Wonderland also learn
about recycling, Fleming said.
"All of our benches, decking,
picnic tables are made from recycled plastic," he said.
Wonderland's recycling program
embodies Fleming's philosophy. "If we take care of the earth," he
said, "the earth will take care of us."
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PRESS
RELEASE
The Arthur M. Blank Family
Foundation Awards $7.6 Million in New Grants for Parks,
Green Space
Foundation
Environmental Initiative supports preservation of an additional 500
acres within I-285 perimeter of Atlanta; 1100 acres in total
12 July 2004
ATLANTA, July 12 /PRNewswire/ --
To preserve green space and improve parks for urban residents, The
Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation has announced over $7.6 million in
new grants to governmental, civic and nonprofit partners for
projects that enhance the quality of life inside the Interstate 285
loop of metro Atlanta.
By supporting the acquisition of
property threatened by development and restoring existing parks, the
Foundation's Environmental Initiative has helped to preserve more
than 1100 acres of land within I-285.
The Environmental Initiative -
which has sought to increase public-private partnerships for
stewardship of local green space and parks - is in its third and
final year, with grants totaling $19.2 million. The Foundation will
continue environmental grant making going forward through its
"Inspiring Spaces" initiative. The Foundation's strategy for the
next three to five years of its environmental work will be announced
in late 2004.
Of the 29 new grants, eight are
for land acquisitions and 21 are for park improvements and planning
for future green space protection and enhancements. Grant partners
in 2004 include the City of Atlanta Department of Parks, Recreation
& Cultural Affairs; DeKalb County; the PATH Foundation; and the
Trust for Public Land.
Wonderland Gardens will receive a
2004 Blank Family Foundation green space grant In the amount of
$42,857 to support construction costs for a new learning center and
workspace at Wonderland Gardens in DeKalb County.
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Makeover spotlight on Wonderland Discovery Channel project to be
unveiled this afternoon
BEN SMITH
17 July 2003
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
It's for real, Alice: Wonderland
Gardens is getting a makeover and it's going to be on TV.
There won't be any Mad Hatters or
invisible cats, but this afternoon the Discovery Channel is
scheduled to pull back the veil on a two-day improvement project at
Wonderland to be aired later on the network's "Garden Makeover"
program.
"This means everything. Who could
ask for anything better?" said Sheldon Fleming, executive director
of Wonderland Gardens, a 20-acre garden and exhibition center near
the Gallery at South DeKalb.
The "Garden Makeover" is similar
to the Learning Channel's "While You Were Out," the program that
features surprise remodeling jobs for homeowners.
Gardeners from "Garden Makeover"
were to begin landscaping Wonderland's front entrance at 3145
Rainbow Drive Wednesday.
They're scheduled to finish late
this afternoon, when they present their work to Fleming, who was
kept away from the site during the work.
Fleming estimates the cost of the
project at $5,000 to $7,000, but the publicity it could generate is
much more valuable.
The facility's board is in the
early stages of a campaign to raise at least $3.5 million to build
an environmental center named after George Washington Carver on the
property, which was once a dairy farm.
"The timing is just impeccable
[for the Discovery Channel program]," Fleming said. "We need to
start our strategic marketing plan in the next six years. For us to
be looking to build the George Washington Carver Center, we need to
go national for funding."
The prospects weren't so
promising seven years ago when a fire gutted the abandoned dairy
that once hosted hundreds of schoolchildren daily for lessons on
farm life. The county bought the 20-acre tract to keep it from
developers, but plans to build an arts center on the site fizzled.
Meanwhile, the gardens, which
were supposed to share the property with the arts center,
flourished. Fleming, a former landscaper with the city of Atlanta,
conceived of the gardens as a memorial to his slain sister, who was
killed in 1986 when she went out one night to buy ice cream. Her
killer has never been caught.
Today, the gardens are filled
with sunflowers, calla lilies and other flora. An environmentally
friendly trail of shredded recycled rubber winds through the
gardens, past an amphitheater built on platforms of recycled plastic
planks.
There's also a small bird
sanctuary and a garden filled with cucumbers, okra, tomatoes,
peanuts and beans.
The organic vegetables are
donated to the Atlanta Food Bank and other charities, but Fleming
plans to open a small market at the site this fall.
Summer camps and school classes
come to the gardens regularly to volunteer in their upkeep and gain
the experience of digging in the dirt. Fleming hopes the children
who work there will not only gain an appreciation for nature but
also have a positive first work experience.
The rest Fleming leaves to a
higher power.
"I'm pretty good, but I'm not
that good," Fleming said. "God's got his hands all over this one."
Wonderland Gardens, which can be
reached at 404-286-6163, is open from sunrise to dusk seven days a
week. General admission is free, although group programs are charged
a fee. Sheldon Fleming, executive director of Wonderland Gardens,
was kept from the site during the makeover. Sheldon Fleming,
executive director of Wonderland Gardens, waters vegetables. He
expects publicity from the televised makeover to boost Wonderland's
fund-raising for an environmental center.
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Gardens win community
service award
Crossroads News
January 1, 2003
South DeKalb's Wonderland
Gardens picked up a Community Service Award last month from the county.
Sheldon Fleming, the garden's founder, was one of 10 individuals and
organizations recognized for their community service. Wonderland
Gardens, which is located on the old Mathis Dairy property on
Rainbow Drive, teaches adults and
children about gardening and native vegetation. It has outdoor
classrooms and a range of gardens dedicated to different plantings.
Schoolchildren learn organic gardening and appreciation for the
environment there.
Wonderland Gardens was recently designated a Global Learning and
Observation to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) site. Children
participating in the GLOBE project gather scientific data for
project scientists and learn how to interpret that data while
working with other students around the world.
Wonderland
Gardens plans to honor George Washington Carver on the site. Carver was an
African-American scientist, artist and agriculturist, horticulturist
and chemist. The gardens used a $10,000
South DeKalb arts grant to
buy a 7-foot iron sculpture depicting Carver's agriculture pursuits.
Fleming said the sculpture will be installed in a permanent location
in the spring.
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Join Wonderland Gardens for
its fourth annual Christmas Tree Lighting
Crossroads News
December 2001
The teaching gardens, located on
the old Mathis Dairy property at 3145 Rainbow Drive, will be
decorated for the holidays. The two-hour event starts at
5 p.m. There will be
performances by choirs from Rainbow
Park Primary School,
Atherton Elementary, and Columbia Middle and High schools. The
Greenforest Baptist Church Bell Ringers will help set the holiday
mood.
For a $5 donation, participants
can win prizes donated by area business and organizations, including
a computer class at Georgia
Perimeter College, Rich's
South DeKalb Mall gift certificates, dinner for two at Justin's
Restaurant, the Southern Feast, and a salon facial from Panacea Spa.
Proceeds benefit Wonderland
Gardens.
Refreshments will be served at the
free event. The public is invited. For more information, call
404-286-6163.
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Arts and
Entertainment Festivals are sure sign Auburn is blossoming
Kimberly H. Byrd
29 April 1999
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Charles Johnson is convinced that
the Auburn Avenue of old is coming back. With festivals converging
on the historic street nearly every weekend this spring and summer,
growing numbers of people taking up residence there and a unified
effort under way to breathe new life into the community, Johnson
believes revival is near.
This weekend's Sweet Auburn
Spring Fest and Garden Show will serve up a little bit of
everything, according to Johnson, president of the Sweet Auburn
Business & Improvement Association. The three-day affair will offer
live concerts, a technology expo, health fair, fun zone for
children, an antiques and collectibles market, gourmet cooking
demonstrations and five stages of entertainment.
For the first time this year, a
gardening element has been added. There will be an extensive display
of floral designs, plus workshops featuring gardening and farming
tips. Additionally, many of the merchants along Auburn have agreed
to decorate their storefronts.
Wonderland Gardens Inc. of DeKalb
County will be the featured gardening expert. It is an organization
that involves at-risk youth in landscaping and gardening activities
that teach work ethic. The group also provides community gardening
projects for seniors and youth and develops recycling and
preservation activities.
Sheldon Fleming, founder and
executive director of Wonderland Gardens, said a highlight of his
presentation will be an award-winning exhibit that shows the
transformation of the Mathis dairy property from agriculture to
dairy to an urban garden. The exhibit won awards from the Southeast
Flower show in February and in 1998 for including young people in
creating the exhibit and for design content.
"It's a reminder of what
agriculture was about," Fleming said. "I'm talking about a time when
folks were very much into gardening and growing their own
vegetables."
In fact, the theme for the flower
show is "What a wonderful world it could be," if people were to grow
their own vegetables.
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Community garden's harvest
helps feed needy
Jonathan Harris
28 November 1996
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Sheldon Fleming's dream of
bringing young people into contact with nature and their elders
began last summer with the first planting of Wonderland Gardens in
south DeKalb County.
The past two weekends, high
school students have come to the garden for another worthy goal, to
harvest the cabbage and broccoli and donate them to needy residents
over the Thanksgiving holiday.
"I want the youth to walk away
with a better understanding of community gardening," Fleming said.
Fleming started the garden this
year in tribute to his sister who was murdered in 1986.
The garden will, by next spring,
have a large community gardening area where senior citizens will be
paired with young people in communal plots of land. Much of the
produce from the garden will be donated.
Today, Wonderland Gardens'
produce will help feed people at the Methodist Children's Home and
the Rev. Hosea Williams Feed the Hungry Program.
Fleming also planned to turn the
harvest into a learning opportunity for the youth. After the hard
work, they planned to "have a panel discussion on the social
advantages of community gardening," he said.
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Garden is grounds for hope
Sparked by an act of violence, project grows to help others
Jonathan Harris STAFF WRITER
28 November 1996
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Sheldon Fleming's dream of
bringing young people into contact with nature and their elders
began last summer with the first planting of Wonderland Gardens in
south DeKalb County. The last two weekends, high school students
have come to the garden for another worthy goal, to harvest the
cabbage and broccoli and donate them to needy residents over the
Thanksgiving holiday.
"I want the youth to walk away
with a better understanding of community gardening," Fleming said.
Fleming started the garden this year in tribute to his sister, who
was murdered in 1986. The garden will, by next spring, have a large
community gardening area where senior citizens will be paired with
young people to work plots of land. Much of the produce from the
garden will be donated.
This Thanksgiving, Wonderland
Garden's produce will go to feed people at the Methodist Children's
Home and the Rev. Hosea Williams' Feed the Hungry Program. Fleming
also planned to turn the harvest into a learning opportunity for the
youth. After the hard work, they plan to "have a panel discussion on
the social advantages of community gardening," he said.
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Seeds of healing Community
garden turns grief into growth
Jonathan Harris STAFF WRITER
19 September 1996
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Sheldon Fleming helped his father
build a tropical paradise around a serene pond in south DeKalb
county after his sister was murdered in 1986.
Kelly Fleming never came back
from a Thursday night trip to get ice cream. For Sheldon Fleming,
planting banana trees and terracing the hillside at his father's
house was one of the few things that gave him a sense of peace.
"As I look back, it was the
environment that helped me deal with my loss," he said.
Ten years later Kelly's case is
still unsolved, and Fleming has expanded his work in the outdoors to
creating in her memory the largest urban garden in metro Atlanta.
Dressed in overalls and a
baseball cap, Fleming worked with a group of volunteers recently on
a 10-acre expanse of former cow pasture at the old Mathis Dairy near
South DeKalb Mall. Some were children who had never picked a tomato.
The others included a county commissioner, a master gardener and
numerous professionals.
Fleming talked about his dream at
length: to fill the land with vegetables, flowers, berry bushes and
gardeners of all ages tending the crops. "We do gardening, but this
is about healing the community and teaching a work ethic to our
youth," he said.
Wonderland Gardens is quickly
becoming a reality. This summer, 60 children from a camp at
Soapstone Center for the Arts planted cabbage, tomatoes, ornamental
gourds, peppers and flowers in a demonstration garden near the
burned-out dairy on Rainbow Drive. "The kids at the camp planted
everything you see," he said, gesturing toward swelling cabbage and
tomato plants. "I've got cabbages the size of big steering wheels."
This fall, Fleming plans to add a
community garden where teams of youths and senior citizens will work
together, caring for 10-by 10-foot garden plots. On the other side
of the site, an international garden will be used for community
celebrations.
"In south DeKalb right now, there
just isn't a place to meet," said Mike Davis, Wonderland Gardens'
vice president of operations. "We'll have a walking and jogging
trail where people can come relax."
Davis, a computer consultant,
believes the gardens will teach kids lessons about the world that
they normally don't learn in an urban setting. "You have children
come out here that have only gotten food from Kroger before; that's
where they think food comes from," Davis said. "Then you watch that
child pull a carrot out of the ground."
Soapstone Center hopes to
renovate the old Mathis Dairy buildings and move next to Wonderland
Gardens. Fleming says mutually beneficial programs are in the works.
"We're going to grow ornamental gourds. We'll prepare them, cut them
in half, then they'll paint them and we'll sell them in our gift
shop," he said.
Wonderland Gardens will also
produce luffa sponges, a plant used for bathing, and sell a small
portion of the vegetables for fund-raising.
The first phase of the garden is
going ahead despite a projected cost of around $40,000 and very
little ready money.
In spite of a tight budget,
Fleming plans to give away most of the vegetables produced on the
land. "We'll donate our vegetables to homeless shelters and the
needy," he said.
Fleming wants residents of urban
areas to reap the benefits of gardening wisdom by working in the
gardens. "You rebuild. You replant. Sometimes you have bad seeds in
society just like you do in a packet of seeds," he said. "We want
you to get your hands in the soil."
GARDEN OF DREAMS For more
information about Wonderland Gardens, call 404-288-0142.
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The wonder of growing Man's dream blooms from tragedy
David Joyner STAFF WRITER
3 August 1995
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
Plagued by the painful memory of
his sister's murder, Sheldon Fleming turned to gardening. During
every spare minute - after work and on the weekends - he landscaped
his father's yard into a small slice of paradise.
A plum tree was planted in the
family's fruit garden in his sister's honor.
This year, as Fleming brings to
the community the tool that helped him survive, the memorial arbor
is bearing its fruit for the first time. And now Fleming is hoping
to share with the community the tool that helped him survive.
"Wonderland Gardens" could be planted on 20 acres that were once the
Mathis Dairy - on Rainbow Drive near South DeKalb Mall - as early as
this fall. Fleming's brainchild, the community garden will bring
youth together with senior citizens to grow vegetables and
wildflowers.
"I knew it would eventually
come," said his wife, Deborah Fleming. "He has always talked of his
visions and his ideas of how people are when they're outside."
The program will help to guard
schoolchildren and urban youth from the ills that plague their
generation, YMCA administrative assistant Libby West said.
West, who grew up on a farm, is
involved in the group effort to create Wonderland Gardens.
"You just can't be violent - you
just can't hold a gun and plant a seed and watch it grow," she said.
"The two are just in conflict with each other."
On Feb. 26, 1987, Sheldon
Fleming's sister, Kelly, was raped, robbed and murdered in a case
that still has not been solved.
Sheldon and Kelly were close.
They worked together at Fleming's Tropical Gardens, a nursery owned
by their retired father, Samuel Fleming.
A basketball star, Kelly was the
best shooter in a family with three athletic boys, Sheldon said.
She hit 89 percent from the
free-throw line for the DeKalb College- South Campus team; she also
played as a Lady Eagle at Columbia High School.
At 6:30 on the evening she died,
Kelly went to get some ice cream. When she didn't return
immediately, Sheldon thought she might be out with friends.
"The evening just passed by so
quickly," he remembered.
At 1 a.m., the police knocked on
the Flemings' door. Kelly had gotten the ice cream but never made it
back home.
Kelly was found dead, tied up in
her father's van.
The NAACP and governor's office
both contributed to a reward fund, Sheldon said, but the killer was
never found.
"Kelly was the type," Sheldon
remembers, "she didn't care whether you had a quarter or a million
dollars."
The pain, Sheldon said, spun like
a spider's web, affecting everyone who knew his sister.
"This just didn't touch my life,"
Sheldon said. "It did touch a lot of people's lives." The tragedy
took its toll on Sheldon's mother.
After the murder, Deborah Fleming
would drop by to visit and talk with her mother-in-law for hours.
"That was what she needed,"
Deborah said. "But you could see that who she needed was not there."
Sheldon's mother died in her
sleep three years after Kelly's death.
In 1988, the year after Kelly's
death, Samuel Fleming bought a small, spring-fed lake on 10 acres of
land near the South River.
He built a home there, in the
middle of a neighborhood where houses range from the old, run-down
and forgotten to the new, lavish and luxurious.
It's a generational community,
Sheldon explains, where grandmothers and cousins live next door to
sons and aunts. Sheldon, a landscape architect and garden
enthusiast, helped to shape the land into a resort for his father.
Concrete and stone steps lead to
finely manicured grass. Beside the lake, grapevines wrap around a
trellis.
Blueberries grow in a fruit
garden, along with the plum tree planted in honor of Kelly.
Painted white, blue and gray,
wood benches and chairs stretch under a shelter on the side of the
lake opposite the house. Sometimes the Flemings throw parties,
Sheldon says, with live jazz and lots of friends.
Three small boats bob on the
green water by a small, wooden dock. Catfish the size of small
children race under them.
The lot, Sheldon explains, is a
metaphor for the changes that went on within him.
After finding Buddhism, he
realized a connection with nature. Digging, planting, watering and
hammering, Sheldon rebuilt himself.
The inspiration for Wonderland
Gardens came, Sheldon says, when he was working in his father's
yard.
He met with his childhood friend,
Michael Davis, who worked with youth at a nonprofit agency in
Connecticut.
Sheldon's experience with
community gardens grew from his work at the Cooperative Extension
Service's Urban Gardening program and Atlanta's parks bureau.
One Sunday last September, Davis,
Sheldon and Bettye Ludd - a special-events planner - gathered at the
lake.
Brainstorming for most of the
day, the three envisioned a project to team youth with senior
citizens in a community garden.
The result was Wonderland
Gardens. Conceptualized in a 22-page document, the project is slated
to begin as early as this fall on land that once was the Mathis
Dairy.
Libby West put Sheldon in contact
with Ariel Williams, director of the Soapstone Center for the Arts
in south DeKalb.
Planning a cultural center for
the old Mathis land, Soapstone is looking for groups to share the
spotlight.
Wonderland Gardens, Williams
said, fits right in.
Bringing together a fruit garden
in honor of Kelly, community- planted patches, a demonstration area
and a place for storytelling, the gardens will also emphasize
cultural diversity, Sheldon said.
The group has planned festivals
celebrating the fauna of different regions of the world,
complemented by demonstrations inside the center.
Memberships, admission fees and
charges for taking flowers and fruits out of the garden will help to
raise money, according to the overview draft.
Private contributors, Ludd said,
have helped as well.
Those who have seen Sheldon's
work at his father's home attest to his ability.
Davis saw Samuel's land in its
infancy, before it was developed. Back then, it was just another
lot.
But, near its completion, Davis
said his reaction to the landscape was intense. It's a response,
Sheldon says, shared by many visitors.
"There's a lot of love there,"
Davis said. "Kelly's spirit is certainly there. . . . There is
really something in nature above what's pedestrian in life."
For more information, call
288-0142.
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In Your Neighborhood Community
Topics The City
August 1995
Atlanta Journal and
Constitution
KELLY'S GARDEN: Gardening helped
Sheldon Fleming of South DeKalb County overcome the pain of the 1987
rape, robbery and murder of his sister, Kelly. Now Fleming is
working to build Wonderland Gardens in her memory on 20 acres near
South DeKalb Mall at the old Mathis Dairy site. He hopes a community
garden will bring young and old together to grow vegetables and
wildflowers.
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