Maintaining the Land

Maintenance is the key to a successful land stabilization program. All the work of stabilization—cleaning, grading, and amending the soil; planting trees and grass; building the post and rail fence—is done by landscape contractors who are also required to maintain the site for the next growing season. After that obligation is met, the sites are assigned to a land maintenance system managed by Philadelphia Green as part of the contract with the City of Philadelphia. Currently, more than 5 million square feet of land are in this system.

During the summer of 2008, six of the 15 contractors selected were community organizations. They are also providers of lot maintenance through the Community-Based Vacant Land Maintenance Program, another NTI contracted program that manages the regular cleaning of 3,000 unimproved lots in 16 neighborhoods.