Gardening in the Spaces Inbetween

This month I had the pleasure of spending some time in Oakland and San Fran, CA. I can't quite wrap my head around San Francisco. I feel as if I am floating everytime I am there. It definitely has something to do with those tall roads that go straight into the sky.

But Oakland definitely has its feet firmly on the ground. While there I visited People's Grocery's urban agriculture sites. First of all you must know I think PG is just about the coolest organization out there. I love their philosophy, strategy, look, creativity, strident adherence to empowerment. It is an inspiration to all of us at youth organizing types.




They, along with City Slickers on the other side of West Oakland, have taken over a number of small to medium sized plots and begun gardening and farming. Using a small staff and lots of volunteers and youth, they are harvesting upwards of 1500 pounds of produce from sites as small as 2000 square feet. They take this produce and sell it at affordable prices to families in the food desert of the urban inner city. That's the basics of their program, with layers wrapped around it like and onion that address food security, poverty, health issues, economic opportunity, and youth empowerment.




I wasn't able to work it out to be there when to help out with the work, but I did drive around a bit and snapped some pictures of the sites. Very Cool! Thanks People's Grocery and City Slickers for all you do and all those you inspire everywhere.

Check out the slideshow to the right.

My first experience of gardening after leaving home was in Minneapolis where I got myself a plot in a community garden. I was living in a basement apartment on the edge of Uptown (a mostly white middle class neighborhood) and the Phillips (a mostly black poor neighborhood). The garden was also poised at the edge of the two and used by people living in both neighborhoods. An urban bridge builder. It was a large and well established garden near the train tracks in what would have been an other wise abandoned piece of land. We had a shared toolshed, well organized compost piles, and organic regulations. I rode my bike there two or three times a week to plant, weed and harvest my 10x10 plot. I inherited a raspberry bush from the previous renter and enjoyed that luxury. I was vegetarian at the time so the garden provided pretty much all I needed for the summer. I remember being there for hours in between my summer classes and job. Enjoying the calm and peacefulness of the place in the middle of a loud urban environment. I would occassionally be there when other gardeners arrived to tend their own plots and we would trade accolades and tips on the specific varities of vegetables we were growing. That summer remains one of the strongest in my memories. I can still smell the tomato leaves and resulting lasagne.

Seattle where I have also spent a lot of time has an incredible network of community gardens. Immigrant farmers from various parts of Asia take over steep hillsides in between roads and houses and farm like they would were they at home in the steep jungle. Youth groups set up by rivers and in parks. Regular folks take over otherwise abandoned spaces. They call them P-Patches.

For the three years I was in the Peace Corps in Panama the women in the village of Cano Quebrado and I worked together to help each other grow kitchen gardens. We literally dug up the land and planted right next to their outdoor kitchens. We grew herbs, peppers, some vegetables. Whatever delicacies that didn't do well in the "monte" - cultivated plots in the jungle. They like to broadcast tomato seeds in areas that retained water all year round and let them grow like weeds or like the vines they really are. And grow they did. We had no shortage of water there, our struggle was fungus from being too wet. Many of those backyard gardens are still there today and the women still rotate from home to home helping with the work and trading varieties of vegetables and herbs.

Thankfully, Santa Fe now has a burdgeoning community and school garden movement. Although I no longer have a need as my own 2 acres keep me busier than I can handle, I am grateful that others are utlizing this incredible resource. The City has pilot gardens in three parks and will be adding a fourth this summer. Youth Allies have a plot in each garden and merrily grow what they need for their free Food Not Bombs meals served fresh and hot twice a months in City Parks.

Everywhere around the world there is evidence of people gardening in the spaces in between. Inbetween full-time work and home life, inbetween two houses, inbetween rich and poor, black and white, one country and another, jungle and kitchen, desert and rainforest, inbetween languages, cultural barriers, wet and dry, long-term and just starting...but we keep on gardening.