Our September Neighbor of the Month is Beargrass Thunder, a grassroots organization working to improve Louisville’s urban ecosystems and neighborhoods through advocacy and action.
TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOURSELF!
Beargrass Thunder is an urban plant nursery run by Mariah Corso and Jody Dahmer. We specialize in what we like to call “yardens” as well as alley landscaping and research. We work with neighborhood associations and residents to grow either food and flowers instead of mandatory mowed grass. This saves money and time , especially during the heat of summer.
What neighborhood do you live in?
We live in the Smoketown neighborhood, north of Shelby Park, west of Paristown Pointe and Original Highlands.
What do you love about your neighborhood?
Smoketown has an incredible history both as the oldest historically Black neighborhood in the state of Kentucky and in its architectural legacy of the dense shotgun homes and alleys and to share that history with others is incredibly important.
How and why did you get involved in your community?
When we started our business we realized many residents of Smoketown and Shelby Park were being fined by the city for growing food and flowers when the same plants were legal in the suburbs and the Highlands.
We discovered there was a code from the 1930s that needed to be changed in the county-wide “Weeds Ordinance” and led a 3-year campaign to change the codes to protect the gardeners. It passed unanimously in March 2022 and now hundreds of thousands of shotgun homes can grow food and flowers legally for the first time in 90 years.
What have you been working on recently in your neighborhood?
As tourism has increased with “bourbonism”, many cars are being hit by out of state drivers confused by the road network in our city. The state highways of Shelby , Goss/Logan, Breckinridge, Oak, and Preston all change to one-way immediately in Shelby Park and Smoketown.
With limited transit amenities, this causes higher insurance rates in our neighborhood and places residents at an extreme disadvantage if they lose their access to jobs because of property damage.
We are working with the state and city planners to change many of the one way streets in shotgun neighborhoods and working with the city to add “mobility hubs” for transit services and for “safe bourbonism”. This will reduce speeding, add crosswalks , and make sure that residents without cars can have an increased quality of life.
What are your hopes for the future of your neighborhood?
The future of Smoketown is the future of Louisville. We need to preserve the names of our neighborhoods and protect the historically Black neighborhoods from becoming rebranded or residents lost in a wave of evictions. By showing what is possible, other neighborhoods can follow Smoketown’s lead.