SEATTLE (NewsNation) — Seattle’s community garden that sprang up during the Black Lives Matter protests of 2020 has been removed by the city.

According to The Seattle Times, the city cited drug use and vandalism at the memorial garden in Cal Anderson Park. The city has reportedly vowed to build a new garden elsewhere.

Seattle, like many U.S. cities, became the site of frequent protests following the killing of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin in May 2020.

Floyd, a Black man, died after Chauvin pressed his knee on his neck for several minutes, not lifting it even after Floyd pleaded for air and stopped moving.

Garden closure, community response

The city cited unsafe conditions in and around the garden, according to the Times. Construction vehicles were used to level the space, which grew plants and food including corn and strawberries.

Seattle Parks and Recreation said the garden had to be removed to facilitate other uses of the park, the Times reported.

“The temporary garden is being removed due to public health and public safety issues and the need for maintenance, including reseeding the area and turf restoration,” the department said in a statement.

The city’s statement included written remarks from local Black leaders who supported the decision.

However, Black Star Farmers, the group that tended the garden, accused the city of using “violent tactics” in trying to “implement this false solution to systemic issues.”

“Removing the garden is a theatrical and reactionary response to systemic issues designed to placate business and property owners in opposition to poor people & workers,” the group said in a statement.

Before the garden was removed, more than 5,000 people signed an online petition seeking to preserve it, saying it memorialized Black and indigenous people killed by police.

Future of the memorial

Seattle Parks said in its statement that it had been in contact with community activists about relocating the garden but that its “good faith conversations have not produced an alternative location acceptable to the organizers of the temporary garden.”

The city said it would “conceptualize a new commemorative garden” at Cal Anderson Park in partnership with the local Black farming community and Black community leaders.

However, a farmer with the Black Farmers Collective told the Seattle Times that the group opposed the garden’s removal and has “no plan to work with the city on a replacement.”

George Floyd’s killing, protests

Protests in Seattle following Floyd’s murder were particularly chaotic.

The Seattle Police Department faced criticism for its repeated use of tear gas and flash-bangs to disperse mostly peaceful crowds.

A Black Lives Matter group sued the Seattle Police Department shortly after to halt the violent tactics it has used to break up the protests.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, Korematsu Center at Seattle University School of Law and the law firm Perkins Coie filed the complaint in U.S. District Court on behalf of Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County.

Garden’s creation

Located in Cal Anderson Park’s “Sun Bowl” area, the garden was planted in summer 2020 during the protests against Floyd’s killing. Cal Anderson was part of the Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone where protesters gathered, the Seattle Times reported.

According to Black Star Farmers, the garden was built to be a “nexus point for rest, reflection, and the commemoration and liberation of the poor, working-class, Black, queer lives that continue to be murdered by the state here in Seattle and all over the world.”

It grew produce and herbal medicine, the group said, and over the past three and a half years became an “active community hub for mutual aid networks, food distribution, and political education.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.