The Corner Nobody Wanted — Until Someone Made It Beautiful

What Michael Built

We walk there every day. My wife, our daughter, our golden retriever Marlow. Down Elysian Fields Road, past the zoo fence, along the sidewalk that runs the full length of the road toward Croft Middle School. It’s our afternoon routine — the kind of small, ordinary thing that makes living in a neighborhood feel like actually living somewhere.

At the end of that walk, right where the sidewalk meets the school, there’s a corner. The zoo’s chain-link fence jogs back about fifty feet, creating a small pocket of open space between the fence, the street, and the school entrance. Two large metal utility boxes — Metro infrastructure of some kind — sit against the fence. And filling the rest of that pocket, for the last six years, has been a garden.

COVID Park. Est. 2020.

A man named Michael built it. Not because anyone asked him to. Not because he had permission. Because during the worst stretch any of us can remember, he got tired of looking out his window at an ugly, overgrown ditch full of weeds on a corner nobody cared about, and one day he just went out there and started cleaning it up.

That was six years ago.

What started as pulling weeds turned into something real. Michael planted flowers, vegetables, ornamental grasses. He put in ground cover, laid mulch, planted trees. He set up a little red Adirondack chair. He made a hand-painted sign on white wooden slats — “Welcome to Covid Park, est. 2020” — with little vine illustrations curling around the letters.

He set up a small trickle fountain that fed a water bowl for dogs and kept the plants alive. The dogs in the neighborhood loved it — ours included. It was one of those small touches that made the garden feel like a real place, not just some plants on a corner.

We got to know Michael on our daily walks. He’s there almost every day, working on the garden, happy to talk to anyone who stops. He told us about people picking vegetables as they walked home from the bus stop, about kids from the school stopping to look at the flowers. It made him happy that people used it.

The thing is, Michael doesn’t even live in the neighborhood anymore. He moved further away. But he still drives back every single day to work on the garden. That’s not someone who’s using a piece of land because it’s convenient. That’s someone who cares about something.

What the City Did

Sometime in late March 2026, Michael showed up at the garden and found it destroyed. Someone had placed a padlock on the storage area where he kept his tools. His water setup — the fountain and bowl the dogs drank from every day — had been dismantled.

Michael left two handwritten signs on pieces of cardboard, laid on the ground.

“THIS IS THE WORK OF METRO EMPLOYEES.”

“SADLY METRO DOES NOT WANT THE GARDEN HERE. Please take any plants you can use for your home and yard or garden... before the weeds take over. THANK YOU FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS for your support through the years of the garden.”

That’s not the message of someone who got vandalized. That’s the message of someone who was told to stop — and is complying, with grace, even though it’s breaking his heart.

After my wife Savannah posted about the situation on Nextdoor, the story caught the attention of WKRN. A reporter reached out, interviewed Metro Councilmember Courtney Johnston from District 26, and published a piece framing the situation as possible vandalism and a mystery. Johnston said she’d called Metro Parks and the Nashville Zoo and nobody seemed to know what happened.

The article is well-meaning. But it tells a different story than the one we’re familiar with. Michael’s own cardboard signs say plainly who did this and why. There’s no mystery. Metro employees shut down the garden. The question isn’t whodunit — it’s why, and whether it was the right call.

Who Actually Owns That Corner

This is where it gets complicated.

The garden sits at the corner of Elysian Fields Road, right at the entrance to Croft Middle School. Croft’s own website states that the school has been “located on the property of the Nashville Zoo since 2003.” The Zoo property — a 195-acre parcel at 3777 Nolensville Pike, owned by Metro Government — runs along the west side of Nolensville Pike, north of Elysian Fields Road.

That means the corner where the garden sits is almost certainly part of the Zoo/Grassmere parcel, managed by Metro Parks. This particular corner is a dead zone that nobody from Metro Parks, the Zoo, or MNPS was actively using or maintaining before Michael showed up.

Adding another layer: Metro Water Services owns dozens of parcels along Elysian Fields Road, likely for flood mitigation or infrastructure expansion. Those two metal utility boxes in the garden are Metro Water infrastructure. At some point, someone from Metro decided the garden had to go — and the order came down to shut it all down. No one checked with the councilmember. No one talked to the neighborhood. No one considered that this garden had been a community resource for six years. A field-level decision became a policy outcome.

What This Corner Looked Like Before

Before 2020, this corner was nothing. It was an overgrown ditch with weeds. The kind of space you walk past without seeing — or worse, the kind of space that makes a neighborhood feel neglected. For however many years the Zoo has owned that parcel, nobody from Metro invested a dollar or an hour into making that corner anything other than an eyesore.

Michael did. For free. For six years.

He didn’t ask the city for money. He didn’t ask the school for water. He didn’t ask anyone for permission — which, yes, is technically the issue. But when the entity that owns a piece of land can’t even figure out that it owns it, and hasn’t maintained it in living memory, the argument that an unauthorized garden is a problem worth solving with padlocks and bolt cutters is a hard one to make with a straight face.

What the Neighborhood Lost

Our dog Marlow ran up to the water bowl today after playing at the school. She looked at me, panting, waiting for the water that’s always been there. Then she huffed and puffed the whole way home until I could get her to a bowl.

It’s a small thing. But that’s the point. The garden was made of small things.

It was the neighbor who stopped to pick a tomato. The kid from Croft who looked at the flowers on the way in. The dog walkers who let their pets drink from the bowl. The people who sat in the red Adirondack chair for a minute. My wife and daughter and I, stopping to talk to Michael about what he planted this week.

These are the things that make a neighborhood a neighborhood. Without them, it’s just houses and streets and a sidewalk that runs along a chain-link fence past some utility boxes and a ditch full of weeds.

What Should Happen Next

This doesn’t have to be a fight. It shouldn’t be a fight.

Someone needs to identify the actual property owner. Based on the evidence, this is most likely Metro Parks (as part of the Grassmere/Zoo parcel). Councilmember Johnston is already working this angle.

The property owner needs to talk to Michael. Not send a crew with padlocks. Sit down and have a conversation about a use agreement — something that formalizes what’s been happening informally for six years. Nashville has community garden programs. Metro Parks has done similar arrangements on other properties.

The water situation needs a real solution. If the garden is going to continue, it needs a legitimate water source. The neighborhood association has already offered to pay for water.

The neighborhood needs to be part of the conversation. The outpouring of support since this happened has been overwhelming. This wasn’t one person’s garden. It was a community space that dozens of families used every day.

Michael didn’t build the garden because he wanted attention. He did it because he saw an ugly corner and wanted it to be better. He kept doing it for six years because it made people happy. He still drives back every day even though he moved away. That’s the kind of person cities should be building partnerships with, not shutting down.

The cardboard signs are still on the ground. The ornamental grasses are still there, and the ground cover is still green. Michael planted trees in that corner. They’ve had six years to put down roots. It would be a shame to let the weeds take it all back.

David Flynn and Savannah Woods Flynn are residents of the Grassmere neighborhood in Nashville. Photos credited to Savannah Woods Flynn.