Kaeli Waggener
The role of the landscape within the society it sustains creates cultural geography; when a site and a culture have interacted with each other to the extent that they are deeply embedded within each other. The development of land and culture over time influences these histories and the way sites are experienced through historical knowledge. Champion Community Garden aims to rediscover the cultural memory of the former Champion Sparkplug manufacturing site and encourage a relationship with the landscape that has diminished in urban Ohio in the last 30-40 years.
The former Champion Sparkplug site and Wildwood Metropark, also located in Toledo, Ohio, are vastly disparate visual landscapes, yet carry a similar cultural heritage. The Stranaleigh mansion built for the Stranahan family on the site of the future Wildwood Metropark provided a domestic sphere for not only the brothers, but the community at large, designating it a cultural landmark. The shelter created by the space that protected visitors from the physical and financial stressors of society during the Great Depression is referenced in the Old English suffix -Leigh, referring to a clearing or meadow within a forest. The landscape, even in language, is directly involved in the culture of early-1900’s Toledo, designating it as communal, sacred, and safe.
The elaborate gardens at this site are the culmination of a literal clearing in the forest, in communication with the culture that created them. The former Champion Sparkplug site once functioned similarly to the Stranaleigh; a communal space of economic nourishment, safe from financial hardship. As
the Toledo economy suffers and residents become separated from land, this project aims to rediscover this relationship with landscape as productive, nurturing, and communal.
