Red Bank Pawpaw Circle

The Red Bank Pawpaw Circle is a Fieldfaring project created by Susanne Cockrell and Ted Purves with the City of Cincinnati’s Civic Gardens Center. The project, located within a large traffic median at the intersection of Red Bank Road and Erie Avenue, sits at the entrance to Madisonville, and is managed by the CGC’s Neighborhood Gardens Program. It is one of seven off-site commissions, produced to coincide with the Contemporary Arts Center exhibition “Green Acres: Artists Farming Fields, Greenhouses and Abandoned Lots” and funded by an Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.

The Red Bank Pawpaw Circle consists of nineteen pawpaw trees, drawn from four distinct cultivars. It is planted within a circular berm, designed using permaculture principles in collaboration with the CGC’s School Garden Coordinator, Sam Dunlap. The Pawpaw, America’s largest native fruit, ripens in the fall, and has been eaten by different local cultures for many centuries. This public site will serve both as a space for the seasonal collection of food, as well as an ongoing monument to the histories of cultivation and gathering that span the layered histories of migration through the Ohio River valley.

For directions to the project and to get a larger view of its current context within the Madisonville Foraging Woodland Garden, follow this link.