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The first thing Mariel Gardner mentioned was the sound.

Cicadas and katydids buzzed while butterflies and bees drifted among bright yellow blooms in Louisville's Chickasaw Park.

Gardner smiled. "This is what I wanted to hear," she said.

A new aptly named Butterfly and Bee Pollinator Meadow honors Muhammad Ali, but Gardner hopes it also reminds Louisville of something else: what believing in yourself can grow. Everybody knows Muhammad Ali as the Champ, the GOAT. What they don't know is the Kentucky kid who believed in himself and understood his worth long before the world did.

The meadow is in full bloom for the first time this summer in Louisville's Historic Chickasaw Park, the only Olmsted-designed park created specifically for a Black community during segregation. This was Ali's park.

I met Mariel Gardner at the edge of the meadow. Thirty-seven native plant species were planted in all, but for its first big bloom, it bursted with shades of yellow as coreopsis blooms gave way to rudbeckia. Gardner is a collaborative steward for the West End Women's Collaborative and the person who suggested that the park honor Ali with a pollinator meadow.

Chickasaw Park offers the community the reminder that "He's one of us," Gardner said. "He's a person who knows Louisville like I know Louisville. He's the person who everyone has a story about."

It's those stories that inspired her when Olmsted Parks Conservancy surveyed the community for ideas. At church one day, Gardner listened as Rev. Woodrow McElvaney talked about his friendship with the young Cassius Clay. It is well-known that the boxing champ would train in Chickasaw Park as a young man. The reverend talked instead about how he used the park recreationally like everyone else. Ali was a Black man living in the segregated part of Louisville: the West End.

"This is where he was building community," Gardner said. After he won the 1960 Olympic Gold, he would go to Chickasaw Park, where a parking space was informally reserved for Muhammad Ali. No one parked there. "They reserved it for the Champ and his Cadillac," said Gardner.

So when Olmsted Parks Conservancy circulated a community survey seeking suggestions for Chickasaw Park improvements, Gardner thought, "Well, who better to honor with butterflies and bees than Muhammad Ali?"

Gardner comes from a long line of agriculturalists. Her great-grandparents were sharecroppers from western Kentucky. They moved to Louisville in the 1940s with her 3-year-old grandmother, and though they lived in the city, Gardner said, "They were people of the land." They had ducks and chickens and grew their food.

But Gardner? "The land got city-ed out of me," she said. She had no interest in spending long summer days working in a garden. She'd rather read a book in the comfort of air conditioning.

After earning a degree in Pan African Studies from the University of Louisville, Gardner spent 17 years working in health insurance. Then came 2020. As the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor shook this country and COVID-19 reshaped the world, Gardner felt something shifting within herself.

Watching insurance claims get denied, Gardner realized she had to make a choice. "Was I with my people, or was I with these people over here?" she said. Walking away meant leaving a well-paying job, but the uncertainty pushed her back to her roots. She bought a piece of land and started a garden with friends.

"We didn't know what we were doing," Gardner said.

With her mother living in Florida and her grandmother now in her 80s, Gardner was on her own. Her grandmother warned her it would be hard. Gardner approached it with one question: "How do I save myself?"

She left her insurance job in 2022 and joined the West End Women's Collaborative. Around that same time, she filled out the Chickasaw Park community survey that led to the creation of the Butterfly and Bee Pollinator Meadow honoring Muhammad Ali.

Ali was so much more than a boxing champ and Olympic Gold medalist. He was radical. He was the "Louisville Lip," audacious enough to think himself worthy and consider himself "The Greatest" when America wanted nothing more than to remind Black people of their second-class status.

Ali famously said: "I am America. I am the part you won't recognize. But get used to me. Black, confident, cocky; my name, not yours; my religion, not yours; my goals, my own; get used to me." Ali wasn't just talking about himself. He was giving others permission to believe they belonged, too.

Gardner knows that confidence came from being raised in Louisville, Kentucky. "That's Kentucky-born and bred grit right there," Gardner said. "And if all of us knew we got that in us, just because we're from here, imagine what we would do."

We ended our walk through the meadow by the sign featuring a picture of Muhammad Ali. "I would like the West End to be the butterfly and bee capital of Kentucky," Gardner said.

That may sound bold, but Muhammad Ali knew his worth long before the rest of the world did. Standing in that field of butterflies and bees, Gardner is betting Louisville's West End can do the same.

Do you know anyone who's doing cool things to make the world a better place? I want to know. Send me an email at Bonnie@WriterBonnie.com. Also, stay in the loop by signing up for her weekly newsletter at WriterBonnie.com. To find out more about Bonnie Jean Feldkamp and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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