GARDENING : Growing Independence : Plot teaches mentally and emotionally disabled adults how to work together and share as well as how to grow food.
As every back-yard farmer knows, growing your own food is one of life’s more empowering endeavors, the height of old-fashioned self-reliance--not to mention that the pickings are incompa rably sweet.
For the past three years, this bit of homespun wisdom has been the basis for a remarkable garden in North Hollywood, one created and maintained by a group of mentally and emotionally disabled adults. Operating under the aegis of UC Cooperative Extension’s Common Ground Garden Program (which promotes community-based agriculture) and the nonprofit agency Specialized Health Services’ VISTAS Program (which helps disabled people achieve independence and find work), these 20 or so student gardeners have learned to plant, feed, water, harvest and cook what they produce. Four volunteer master gardeners trained by Common Ground contribute technical expertise, and VISTAS counselors help clients develop the interpersonal skills needed for such a shared undertaking.
Kaiser Permanente donated $5,000 in start-up money for the garden. UC Cooperative Extension pays the rent on the land, and all plant materials are gifts from nurseries and seed companies.
Located under crackling power lines on property owned by the Department of Water and Power, the colorful kitchen patch testifies to how far the clients have come since their spades first hit the dirt. Sixteen raised beds hold a variety of shaggy crops--from Brussels sprouts to radishes to pole-climbing beans. Splashy flowers mingle with the vegetables.
Common Ground’s adult education coordinator, Yvonne Freeman, who helped conceive and develop the project and has trained disabled clients, counselors and volunteers in gardening techniques, remembers the group’s early resistance to digging in. “The clients would come and sit down, not move, touch nothing,” she said. “They’ve really bloomed. This is their garden, and they know it.”
Gail Jeffries, 32, a three-year gardening veteran from Burbank who describes herself as autistic, confirmed Freeman’s observations. “I like this garden better than I thought I would,” she admitted. “At first, I didn’t want to get on my hands and knees and get dirty. I’m not an outdoor person. But I’ve learned all kinds of things here.”
In addition to horticultural know-how, what clients take away from their three weekly gardening sessions, Freeman said, are lessons in working together and sharing, as well as how to enjoy themselves outside.
For the past two years, participants have given away surplus vegetables to a homeless women’s shelter and to gorillas and other primates at the Los Angeles Zoo. Clients, of course, share in the bounty, in part, by learning to prepare meals from the fresh produce in a nearby VISTAS day-treatment center. They also honor their own efforts once a year with a Harvest Celebration, a day, Freeman said, “to step back, relax and be thankful for the abundance.”
Now that the vines are bristling with beans and ripe squashes litter the ground, abundance has clearly arrived, which delights client Rene Curton, 35, of Pasadena. On a recent morning in the garden, she paused in her weeding to watch a colleague collecting radishes. “This is the fun part,” Curton said. “Pulling them out.”
Where to Go
Donations: Anyone interested in donating tools or other items to support the Common Ground/Specialized Health Services Garden should contact Yvonne Freeman at the Common Ground Garden Program.
Call: (213) 744-4340.
