Several months ago, I wrote a couple of paragraphs about my desire to see community gardening Downtown, and I asked readers who had any experience in this arena to give me some pointers on how to get started with my own community garden. Your response was phenomenal. I received about 20 emails the first day after it was published ranging from the encouraging to the informative to the condescending: I paraphrase: “What, you don’t know how to use Google?” The latter was from some dude in California, and for the record: yes, I do know how to use Google, and used it heavily researching gardens in other communities before I wrote the column in question. I posed the question to the community hoping that those who have had personal community experience would step forward and forewarn me of obstacles, procedures, and the woes of bureaucracy, and that’s what I got. Thank you all, even you, Condescending in California.
Community gardening can work and has worked in a variety of communities. Two great examples include The Garden of Eden in the Bronx and Red Hook Farm. A few years ago, Bonnie (whom I interviewed last month) told me about a magical place nestled in the south Brooklyn neighborhood of Red Hook. There, a thriving community garden flourished, through the hard work of its low-income residents, most of whom are high school students.
Red Hook info:
-- Village Voice article
-- Seasonalchef.com
-- Wikipedia description
-- bergencarroll.com
-- colorsmagazine.com
Community Gardening info:
-- Colors Magazine “Back to Earth”
-- Slow Food
After Red Hook lost its only grocery store, the non-profit group Added Value set up a farmers market to service the Red Hook neighborhood, and helped establish the farm. Red Hook Farm hosts job training programs, and teaches students about nutrition and their relationship with the land.
The best example I’ve seen of community gardening at work is Cuba. Though I absolutely do not condone totalitarianism of any sort, the Cuban model for community gardening is inspirational. The Cuban people have worked together to provide the most extensive grass-roots community gardening system in the world. Why? How? Out of necessity, of course. It’s amazing what people can and will do when they’re starving. Cuba’s food supply was highly subsidized by the USSR, and after the fall of the Soviet Union, state controlled farms shut down en masse as petroleum, synthetic fertilizers and pesticides became next to non-existent. This was complicated by the loss of food imports by the USSR, and sympathetic countries. The Cuban people adopted, adapted and improved, establishing a highly efficient and extensive community gardening program whose crops are completely organic. The government provides land and utilities, and modest upstart subsidies, and the community members do the rest. Orders are filled on demand (i.e. vegetables are harvested as they are being paid for, and then bagged), which ensures no waste. Read more about Cuba’s community farming program [link].
This is all well and good, but how feasible is community gardening in El Paso, and what is the best way to go about getting the community involved?
Shortly after the column in question was published, I was contacted by Steven Silver of Groundwork El Paso and Daphne Richards of Texas Cooperative Extension.
Groundwork is a national non-profit that converts brownfields and empty lots into parkland and community gardens, and adapts unused public lands into nature parks. Groundwork El Paso’s current projects include a brownfield redevelopment on Elm Street, the River Park Trail, landscaping for public housing which employs at-risk youth, and the Serenity Garden, a community garden in Chihuahuita.
Texas Cooperative Extension is a publicly funded statewide educational service in association with Texas A&M University and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. TCE has branches in every county in Texas and provides horticultural training and education through its Master Gardener program. TCE helps people, businesses, and neighborhood organizations establish gardens, teaches them technique, and places the responsibility of care of the facility is in the hands of the residents. Some of the work includes the Memorial Park Rose Garden, providing advice on landscaping private and public schools, private homes, and adult daycare centers. Twice a month TCE provides a lecture series (every second Saturday) at the El Paso Garden Center at 3105 Grant, and they provide vegetable gardening classes in cooperation with the Paso del Norte Health Foundation.
I spoke with both Steven and Daphne about feasibility, and while Steven was very positive about the Serenity Garden in Chihuahuita, which Groundwork is building with the cooperation of the Chihuahuita Neighborhood Association, and was enthusiastic about starting another such project with my involvement , Daphne was, well … let’s say more realistic.
During our two-hour conversation, Daphne, who is a transplant to El Paso, and has lived here for seven years, was emphatically dismayed by what we Paseños lightheartedly refer to as the “Mañana Attitude.” My tape recorder needed some repairs, so I wasn’t able to tape the conversation, which, I really wish I had been able to do, so you’ll excuse me if I paraphrase while deferring to my notes and our email exchanges.
The West Texas Urban Forestry Council, of which Daphne is a board member, assisted in the design of the Chihuahuita project, and it was initially intended to be a vegetable garden: “When I hear community garden, I think of a vegetable garden, that’s what a community garden is in my mind.” The neighborhood association was interested in something that was low maintenance, and as we all know, vegetable gardens are NOT low maintenance, hence the creation of the Serenity Garden, which will house native species of flowering plants, cacti and trees. There really is no such thing as a ‘low-maintenance’ garden, Daphne said.
Though her work with TCE is primarily education based, she’s had her fill of community gardeners who have expected “low-maintenance” gardens. “We (TCE) have helped install a few public gardens when the group uses their own volunteers to do the labor- students at the school, community members, probationers, etc. -- with a promise from the group that they will maintain the space. But even with their own volunteers, usually just a few months later when we return, the gardens are in shambles: dead plants, weeds, etc.,” she said. When I asked whether Daphne felt that there was an expectation that TCE maintain the gardens they’ve assisted in planting, she said “I don't ‘feel’ these expectations, they are conveyed to me explicitly. Lots of people contact me and ask for me to install and maintain a garden at their school, in their neighborhood, etc. But as soon as I tell them that my agency's mission is education and offer my support and guidance, but only my support and guidance, they hem and haw and say they'll get back to me. I usually don't hear back.” Furthermore … “People just don’t want to put in the effort.” I asked her if this was specific to any one socio-economic demographic and she replied that it’s not.
I don’t want to generalize, but I understand the place where many of the Chihuahuita residents are coming from, because I’m right there in that tax bracket with them. If you are working multiple jobs, trying to take care of ends meet while taking care of kids and struggling to keep family life in order, then I completely understand the reticence to commit too much time to something like a garden, which, under these circumstances, becomes a luxury. In situations such as this, where people are unable to pitch in time, it seems like it would be more practical to sell shares of an urban farm (comparable to a weekly grocery bill), and include the price of labor and produce in the cost per individual. Red Hook’s model of paying youth in the neighborhood and providing job training seems like it would be another option. Daphne suggested that I start small, go in on a project with the other residents of my building and see how it works out. If it does well, than maybe we can expand and include willing community members in a share system or both sweat equity and a share system. If it doesn’t then, what does it say about us?
“There are a lot of people with great ideas, and they’re idea people, but I’m an action person. I can’t be one of those idea people -- I need to get something done,” Daphne said.
I intend to speak with the residents of my building, A rooftop garden would be ideal but we haven’t had roof access for years (it’s a long story involving a disgruntled resident who obviously no longer lives here, an empty case of beer, and the cops), we’ll need to speak with some property owners in the neighborhood and see who would like some good press for doing something positive (ahem … hint, hint). There are a lot of paved lots that look like opportunities to me, and several community gardens have employed a method of soiling over pavement and using a drip irrigation system for watering the rows. Planning always seems to be the hardest part, and I’d be ashamed if this became another good idea, which faded into memory.
I look at Cuba’s example, a result of crisis, and wonder if that’s what it takes to get people engaged. In a precarious age, as people lose their homes to foreclosure or gentrification, their jobs to outsourcing, their ability to pay for basics because of inflation, and their health to obesity and diabetes, there is a way that we can ensure healthy food as a right, but involves something that Americans in general have lost touch with, which is real community involvement and the ability to make commitments.
But hey, speaking of drip irrigation, I happened to notice something amusing the other morning. As I was walking back from the parking garage after dropping the boy off at school, I couldn’t help but notice that the drip irrigation system watering the plants in Pioneer Plaza was off kilter and spraying water all over the cobblestone. In that moment, I had a hilarious thought of a Water Utilities employee ticketing Parks and Rec. In my dreams, right?
