Illustration by Tabi Walters
Students at U-M Law School’s Civil-Criminal Litigation Clinic are campaigning on behalf of Saline resident Changming Fan, who has been ordered to scale back his community garden.
Seventy-five-year-old Fan has lived at Mill Pond Manor (MPM), a subsidized housing community for seniors, since 2013. During that time, he has cultivated flower beds and planter boxes that now extend nearly sixty yards.
“The garden was formerly just scrub brush and poison ivy,” says David Santacroce, the director of the clinic and Fan’s attorney.
Last year, however, the garden became a point of tension—culminating in MPM filing a lawsuit. The case was dismissed by way of a consent order. Fan may continue tending a defined area of the garden, but must remove, by April 15, any plants in an adjacent strip of cultivated beds. Should Fan violate the court order’s terms, MPM may seek to evict him.
“All but a tiny patch of the garden has to be cleared,” says Santacroce.
He and his students have appealed to the local community, setting up a Change.org petition—which had just passed 1,000 signatures at press time—and drafting an open letter to Retirement Housing Foundation (RHF), the California-based nonprofit that manages MPM.
“We’re trying to raise awareness,” Santacroce says. “This matter seems like one that could be resolved in a much more community-friendly and environmentally friendly way.”
“RHF’s website has a whole section on its mission and values where it claims to believe in fostering an inclusive environment that enhances residents’ quality of life, physically, mentally, and spiritually,” says Katherine Perez-Oviedo, one of the students advocating for Fan. “Gardening is explicitly listed as one of the activities offered at Mill Pond.”
For an organization with self-declared “faith-based roots,” RHF has shown little inclination to find anything Edenic in Fan’s garden—viewing it instead as a matter of compliance.
“In an attempt to respect and protect the rights of all RHF’s residents, we have established house rules that every resident signs upon moving into one of our communities,” writes a representative of RHF. “All residents are required to abide by those rules while living in their community.”
On March 16, Fan’s team offered to send a group of experienced volunteer gardeners to assist with the upkeep of the garden in exchange for leaving it intact.
Fan maintains that the residents appreciate the garden. “The environment is very important to me and the other residents, as well as the living creatures: birds, frogs, and beautiful butterflies,” he says. “And those are our friends. They have the right to have a good life.”