Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Handout
Alice Bonvicini used to visit the community garden at the south corner of Aventura’s Founders Park “virtually every day.”
The 12-acre park, which is nestled on the Dumfoundling Bay waterfront in suburban north Miami, boasts a walking trail, a playground, an athletic field, and several tennis courts. A main draw for many residents, however, was the Aventura Community Green Garden, which sat in the center of a circular walkway and whose rented planter bed sections were at one point home to 36 different plants.
“It kept me sane,” Bonvicini, who leased a garden bed from February 2021 to May 2023, told The Daily Beast. “I had at one point a monoculture of chicory. I was born and raised in Rome, and the one veggie I could never get my hands on in the past 20 years in the U.S. was chicory. I basically turned my garden bed into a gigantic madeleine de Proust.”