A Garden At Mountain Way

A Community Greenspace Comes To Life

In the sprawling urban environment of Metro Atlanta, greenspace offers an oasis of tranquility and numerous benefits to enrich the lives of residents. As the area grows and expands, maintaining and enhancing greenspace becomes crucial for fostering a healthy, sustainable, and vibrant community. Mountain Way Common (MWC) is one of these parks and is a prime example of urban greenspace revitalization.

As a longtime advocate for community resiliency, Livable Buckhead is no stranger to transforming challenges into opportunities for growth. With a 0.56-acre parcel at the corner of N. Ivy Rd. and Mountain Dr. adjacent to MWC at 684 Mountain Way, another vision for a pocket of nature came to life. While the property was zoned for residential, no structures were able to be built on the site due to it’s location within a floodplain, and it was being used for a construction staging site. Dan Weede, the former executive director of Friends of Mountain Way Common, approached Robert Green, one of the three property owners, hoping to get the land donated to expand MWC. Unfortunately, the owners declined several times, still wanting to develop residential buildings on the property.

Staying committed to the use of the land as greenspace, Livable Buckhead completed a vision plan and secured funding from the City of Atlanta’s Department of Parks and Recreation to purchase the land. Armed with multiple valuations and a letter from the City of Atlanta proving the land was unable to be developed into buildings, Denise Starling, Livable Buckhead’s executive director, was determined to acquire the parcel. Livable Buckhead made a fair market offer for the property, but convinced the land was buildable, the owners rejected the proposal.

A year later, Green was interested in revisiting the deal, but unfortunately the funding Livable Buckhead had secured for acquisition of the site had expired. Then, to everyone’s excitement, Green and the other members of Mid Broadwell Partnership — the estate of Jack Bradford and Gordon Mosley — decided to donate the land instead, and Livable Buckhead facilitated the process in the closing months of 2017. The land did not come without its obstacles. Building support for green initiatives and advocating for policy change, Livable Buckhead was finally given tax exemption status by Fulton County to use the land for greenspace. Our vision was becoming a reality, and this unusable plot of land was finally becoming a community asset, and we had a name for this little jewel: Garden 684.

In March of 2020, with Andrew Kohr, PLA, ASLA, senior project manager for Pond, an industry leader in engineering, planning, architecture, and construction services, at the helm of design, Livable Buckhead got moving on our first project: a fruit orchard at Garden 684. At our first social distancing team effort we planted eleven fruit trees.

With any project there are detours along the way and Garden 684 is no exception. Our journey with bees has been a community exploration in maintaining ecological balance. With funding and volunteer labor through Buckhead Rotary and a partnership with Docs Healing Hives, we built a berm and had a party to celebrate the arrival of our bee queens. Even after an accidental run-in with the yard maintenance weed pesticide and two hive relocations, Livable Buckhead was presented with a small, tasty honey harvest in 2022. Today, Docs Healing Hives founder, Tim Doherty, teaches beekeeping therapy on-site to local veterans suffering from PTSD.

Out of a continual need to stay active and keep moving forward, a fancy way of saying she may have been bored during COVID stay-at-home orders, Starling decided to build a picnic table, which then turned into six tables. Partnering with Pebble Tossers, the tables were adorned with artwork done by Wallace Kelly with residents of the neighborhood volunteering to paint. They are for your sitting pleasure at Garden 684. An inviting sense of community relies on an ambiance of comfort, Starling got the idea to install solar string lights, and luckily, or unluckily, for him, Marvin Pastel was strolling the grounds. She enlisted his help, and the space was transformed. We have had local Eagle Scouts help improve the park with several community service projects ranging from removing invasive weeds by the waterway, installing a Little Free Library, and building pads for the tables to sit on, helping ensure their longevity and improve visitor comfort.

In late November 2022, before hosting Mayor Andre Dickens for a PATH400 groundbreaking, Garden 684 received a lot of love and attention, with the volunteers and Buckhead Rotary members bestowing new plants on the garden. And coming up in 2024, we have even bigger plans. Oldcastle APG is donating the installation of an amazing gateway to the site, tying a crosswalk over the entrance with PATH400. And we will continue to fight the invasive weed war and create an ecosystem for bees.

MWC and other community greenspaces are essential components of a healthy, sustainable, thriving environment. By valuing and investing in greenspace, Metro Atlanta can enhance the quality of life for its residents, promote environmental stewardship, and create a more resilient and cohesive community.