Something wonderful happened at the Worsley’s lot on Main Street in Butler last weekend: a community garden sprung up through the hard work of Butler Township resident Kelly Mikita and more than 100 volunteers.

It’s a transformation we’d like to see much more frequently in Butler: a vacant lot revitalized and put to good use. And the good news is that it can happen again — but only if city residents and officials step up and do something to make it a reality.

Community gardens can be tools of revitalization and community pride. How many times have you heard someone complain about Butler’s housing stock and the need to improve home values, property owner responsibility and civic pride? More gardens aren’t going to magically reverse housing decay in the city, but they can be a positive influence and have substantive effects.

Researchers in New York studied 636 community gardens in New York City and found that they improved sale prices of homes within a 1,000-foot radius.

Can this effect be replicated in Butler? The only way to know is to try.

What about health concerns in our community — things like obesity, diabetes and elder care? Research done in 2013 by scientists at the University of Utah found that community gardens can help significantly reduce the risk of being overweight or obese. And one of the beauties of gardening is that it’s an activity nearly anyone — from the very young to the old and infirm — can enjoy and participate in.

Such efforts won’t be simple. Creating and sustaining even a moderately-sized community garden in a city or neighborhood takes time, commitment and know-how. It will also likely require buy-in from city officials, who can help identify places gardens could be created and work with property owners to secure permission for groups to go in and begin their own projects.

That’s no small task. And even once participants manage to get a handle things like soil preparation, irrigation and other gardening basics, they will undoubtedly face issues like theft, vandalism and the squabbles that go hand-in-hand with any project that brings together a multitude of participants.

That said, simply because it is challenging doesn’t mean the idea is not worth pursuing. Anyone who has tended their own backyard garden patch through the summer or shepherded potted tomato plants to ripeness knows that it is uniquely satisfying to harvest and eat homegrown food.

It’s also satisfying to see a vacant or blighted lot transformed into a space people look forward to visiting; something visitors look at and think “I wish we had that in my community.”

That can happen. But it’s up to the city to embrace the example set by Mikita and the volunteers who went to work transforming the Worsley’s lot, and see if there’s momentum here that can be built upon.