The urban gardener of Engine Company 13

By Daniel Patton | Managing Editor

David Sudler’s flower garden in front of Engine Company 13 at 259 N. Columbus Dr. represents more than a local resident’s green thumb: it is an achievement of determination, innovation and resourcefulness by a well-read extrovert who will not let any loose seed, discarded bulb or untended patch of earth go to waste.

“If there’s land,” says the retired shipbuilder, boilermaker, filmmaker, pharmaceutical executive and member of the prominent Chicago real estate family, “I want to plant something.”

Sudler has lived in the New Eastside with his wife for over two decades. Although he cannot recall exactly when he began cultivating untended patches of the neighborhood, he can fondly list many past projects.

“I was growing potatoes twenty years ago behind Columbus Plaza and I had melons behind the Swissôtel,” he says. “When they were redoing Michigan Ave, they threw away hundreds of hyacinths. I collected them and stored them behind some bushes nearby and used them when I needed them.”

His devotion to botanical rejuvenation is matched by a commitment to organic recycling. The Russian sage bushes, tiny flax blossoms and colorful mums in front of the fire station thrive in a bed that was little more than “mulch and clay and plastic” before Sudler first plowed into it years ago.

“I had to dig up the garden because it was all salt,” he explains. “I got some dirt from when they were excavating the Wanda lot. They were loading it into the back of a truck and I said, ‘Hey, give me a load.’”

When he began sowing, a woman who lives in the area donated the Russian Sage bushes. Then came the flax seeds, which were leftovers from his wife’s good intention to enhance both of their diets. “She can’t stand them and I can’t stand them,” Sudler says. “So I threw a few of them in the dirt and they all sprouted little itty bitty flowers.”

Additionally, he has formed relationships with many of the companies that frequently revise building landscapes throughout the year and, according to Sudler, “junk” the old flowers and shrubs.

“I go and beg from them: you guys got a bucket of dirt? You got some mulch?” he explains. “They’ll always set something aside.”

The pumpkins that decorate the garden are salvaged from a patch that he planted, tended and nearly lost over the summer.

Located in an empty lot behind Fifth Third Bank at 400 E. South Water St., the harvest dwindled from a promising bumper crop in midsummer to little more than an empty rectangle of earth by fall. The majority of his yield — as well as the gardening tools he stashed nearby — literally disappeared into the night.

Undeterred, the resourceful New Eastsider rescued the ones that remained and made them part of the garden outside Engine Company 13.