The Temple Garden was closed permanently on Wed., Nov. 30, 2011, at 5 p.m.

We thank the Scottish Rite Temple for their generosity in making the land available to community gardeners for 21 years, and wish them the best.

We had spectacular weather for our Open House today. Many thanks to all the Temple Gardeners who made it happen, and a warm welcome to all the friends, neighbors, and well-wishers who dropped by.

Here are some pics from the day (click to enlarge):

Here’s a PDF copy of the July 1 letter the Temple Garden sent to House of the Temple officials after our late-June meeting, in which we lay out our gratitude for the meeting and the use of the land, and offer some suggestions for the future.

The public is warmly invited to our Open House on Saturday, July 16. (Rain date: Sun., July 17) Come see what’s growing on!

We are a community garden made possible by the generosity of the Scottish Rite Masonic Temple. We welcome you to tour the garden, have a bite to eat, and say hello!

Oh, and bring the kids — we’ll have special stations set up around the garden where children can touch, smell, see, hear, and taste various plants.

RSVP, if you feel like it, at our Facebook page! And tell your friends!

Here are three pieces of recent correspondence between the House of the Temple and Temple Garden representatives:

• April 7, 2011, letter from Scottish Rite informing the Temple Garden of plans to renovate the temple and close the garden.
• May 5, 2011, letter from Temple Garden asking Scottish Rite for a meeting: “We reiterate our tremendous gratitude for your generosity in allowing the community to use your property for the Temple Garden for nearly 20 years and hope that we can find a way to continue to work together.
• May 17, 2011, letter from Scottish Rite agreeing to meet with the Temple Garden at a time to be determined.

Here’s a post for Temple Gardeners to leave comments about the garden, their experience, and what it means to them.

The Washington Post has published an article about the garden and its closing. The article went up on the Post’s web site on Monday, April 18.

Updated: The article appeared on the front page of the Metro section of the April 19 Post. Here are PDFs of the front and the jump pages.

Updated, again: More of the Post’s photographs of the garden, including some not in the paper, are in this online gallery.

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A couple of media outlets have taken note of the House of the Temple’s plans to close the Temple Garden after 21 years, our gratitude to the Masons for the use of their land, and our hopes that we can find a way to keep gardening.

Borderstan broke the story on April 8, then NBC Washington aired this piece on the evening of April 17:

We are deeply saddened to learn that the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, House of the Temple, has announced that it will close its community garden on 15th and S Streets NW at the end of 2011. The Temple Garden has been a community institution since 1990. An estimated 800 people have at one time or another tended plots in the Temple Garden, and we currently have more than 100 members tending more than 75 plots. The Temple Garden has always supported the activities and initiatives of the Scottish Rite, and we hope to continue to do so. The gardening community hopes to be able to work with the Scottish Rite to find a solution that enables the garden to continue to support the community.

The Temple Garden Steering Committee

The great news is we plan to offer plots to everyone who joined the list in 2007, 2008 and 2009! Thanks to our neighbors who have been patiently waiting for so many years!

But we’ve also seen a rush of requests in the past year, putting our wait list back up above 75 people. Given that we’re likely to offer just 10 to 20 plots this summer, it’s time to close the list again. We’ll post here on the site when we reopen the list.