If you’ve lived in Chicago a little while, chances are you’re already familiar with NeighborSpace. The nonprofit land trust supports community gardens across the city “through property ownership, insurance, water, [and] stewardship…so that community groups can focus on gardening and on their community-building vision.”

In 2022, NeighborSpace produced a visual framework to capture the important but often overlooked social infrastructure at play in community gardens. They published their findings in a short booklet, Caring In Public: Revealing Community Gardens as Social Infrastructure. Below, in addition to a few spreads from the booklet, are isolated illustrations of four real NeighborSpace community gardens across Chicago.