Minneapolis’ Southeast Como neighborhood houses long-time residents, University of Minnesota students, small businesses, parks and six gardens. One of those six gardens is the Talmage Crossing Community Garden, a roadside home to wildflowers and bees during the spring and summer.
Across Talmage Avenue — the garden’s adjacent road and its namesake — sits about a 1,000-square-foot, triangular plot of abandoned asphalt.
Left empty for almost 50 years, Como neighbors have wanted to turn the empty plot into an extension of the community garden on the other side of Talmage Avenue and started the Talmage Triangle Rain Garden project to do so.
Luke Nichols, a 10-year Como resident and landscape architect, said he first got involved with the Talmage Triangle project because he saw the garden as a way to cultivate a neighborhood bond.
“I’ve seen this garden as this means to create community and also to transform a vacant piece of land that was used for railroad rubbish into this thriving native pollinator garden,” Nichols said.
Privately owned since the 1970s, transforming the empty lot proved more difficult than imagined.
Talmage Triangle project volunteers worked for the last 15 years to earn the support of the previous Southeast Como Neighborhood Association, the Minneapolis Public Works Department and a grant from the neighborhood’s watershed district.
They were ready to purchase the plot of land, Nichols said, until the plot’s current owner lost interest in selling.
“I’m aggravated about this because the neighborhood has spent a long time organizing and trying to work with this property owner. The property owner expressed interest,” Nichols said. “So we tried to consider their concerns, but they’re just not interested or motivated to do anything.”
Chris Vos, the son of the Talmage Triangle plot’s current owner and future landlord of the property, said he and his family supported turning the plot into part of the community garden, but they have concerns about potential city ownership and what erosion damage from removing the street curb would do to their neighboring property.
“The idea of the garden is phenomenal,” Vos said. “They keep saying that there is no modifying the space without city ownership, and that’s a significant part of what makes us nervous.”
Next to the empty lot, the Vos family owns a duplex which they rent out.
The asphalt will remain unless the Vos family decides to sell the triangular plot to the city, Nichols said.
“It’s a volunteer-based organization and the fact that all these things have come together, it’s no short of a miracle,” Nichols said. “And now we have a homeowner or a landlord that just doesn’t care.”
Lila Smith, a spearhead of the Talmage Triangle project who’s lived in Como for almost 50 years, said the project’s grant money expires in March of 2026, so drawn-out property negotiations are not in the potential garden’s favor.
The Talmage Triangle project started a petition advocating for the potential garden to garner the support of Minneapolis City Council members.
Avery Davis, a former Como resident and one of the more than 200 petition signatures, said they signed the petition because walking through the existing Talmage community garden helped their mental health while they lived in Como.
Davis, who works at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, said that they led a watercolor class at the existing garden in 2024 and would like to lead another in the new garden.
“Not only was the current existing space so wonderful for people in that immediate area, but also brought people to the Talmage space to learn about art and to be able to sit and really focus on specific native plants,” Davis said. “Having that space be bigger would just expand that impact.”
Rachel Forrest, a three-year Como resident, said she signed the petition because more nature spaces are immeasurably better for the neighborhood community than an empty plot.
Vos said he has not ruled out allowing a garden to be planted on the asphalt plot, but for now his concerns about the project are seemingly without a solution.
“Obviously, that improvement of that space is great, and we’d love it,” Vos said. “But at the same time, we’re not willing to give up the bit of control that we have over that little bit of space.”
Smith said the possibility of transforming the empty plot into a blooming garden motivates her through the frustration of the project’s missing final piece.
“Sometimes you can get down,” Smith said. “But then on the other hand, it’s a chance to take something that’s been an eyesore for many years and the neighborhood has been working on for many years and make something beautiful.”
