Pico Rivera : Seniors to Get Priority in New Community Garden

Pico Rivera has unveiled a plot to return residents to an agricultural past--a garden plot, to be exact. Officials will formally dedicate the city’s new community garden on Arma Street this morning. For $30 a year, 29 families can till an approximately 20-by-20-foot patch of land to grow their own food and flowers.

In assigning the plots, the city will give priority to senior citizens, who pay only $15, and low-income families. “With this size plot you can feed a good-sized family a lot of good stuff,” said Cindy-Lu Gans, manager of city recreation and community services.

The garden area is secured by a fence and will eventually include a tool shed and volunteer advisers. Gans said her department’s first-year costs are expected to run about $21,000, and thereafter about $10,000 annually. The unused land, leased from a utility company, sits under power lines. City Council member Garth G. Gardner pushed the garden idea, Gans said.

“I saw an article about one in Long Beach and I pushed it a little here,” Gardner said. “Since my name is Gardner, I guess you’d say there is a common denominator.” Participants, he said, would get the “benefit of raising their own food and doing something on their own. Doing it yourself is kind of an American tradition.”

He estimated that about one-third or 20,000 Pico Rivera residents do not have space for a home garden. The city already has located another lot to open a second, larger community garden if needed.