Kayla Villegas lives in Wicker Park on Chicago's north side.

One time, she was taking a long walk and she noticed something.

In my afternoon jaunt around the city, passed a community garden and was very impressed, but also I noticed that there's a lot of produce grown there.

And she wondered, how do you start a community garden in Chicago?

Kayla asked this question because she wanted to try out gardening herself.

When she moved here, she rented an apartment with a backyard.

It was like a big reason why I really wanted to live in that apartment.

And then when I moved in, I looked out the back and realized that the landlord had paved it.

So it's all cement.

And I was like, no.

She knows how beneficial gardening can be.

When she saw the veggies in that community garden, she had other questions.

Who are these gardens for? Because I know that there are areas of the city that are underserved

when it comes to access to food in general, but also, you know, access to healthy food that

you could grow in a garden.

I'm Adriana Cardona McGigad. You may have noticed Curious City has been focusing on Pilsen in Chicago's Lower West Side for several episodes.

That's part of our series on Chicago neighborhoods. Most recently,

you heard about Aztec dancers in Harrison Park. So to answer Kayla's question, I went to El

Paceo Community Garden, a huge garden between Collerton and 21st streets in East Bilsen.

This green space wasn't always there. The area used to be an industrial site, and much of the land was contaminated.

But now the space has vegetable beds, a prairie with native plants, a permaculture site, even a beehive.

And the people involved in El Paceo

...