Green Thumbs : Community gardens allow low-income Angelenos to grow their own food.

Vernell Tyler proudly showed a visitor her 10-foot-by-20-foot garden plot, filled with turnips, (varieties of both roots and greens), cabbage, lettuce, mustard greens, collards and beets.

“I love getting my hands into the dirt and eating good,” she said with a broad smile on her face. Hers is one of 30 such raised beds in the community garden at Nickerson Gardens in South-Central Los Angeles. Enclosed by a sturdy chain-link fence, the beds are surrounded by carefully tended grass pathways. Two peach trees and one apple tree line one of the fences.

Tyler is one of the thousands of low-income Los Angeles residents who are growing and harvesting their own vegetables, herbs and fruit through the efforts of the Common Ground Garden Program.

Gardening is the most popular outdoor activity in America, according to a recent Gallup Poll. But these community gardens provide more than a leisure activity for people whose local markets don’t stock much of a selection of fresh, good quality produce. Community gardens give low-income people the chance to grow fresh vegetables at a fraction of the cost of purchasing them and also transform vacant, trash-filled lots.

“Poor people can’t come to the gardens, so we bring the gardens to them,” said Brenda Funches, program manager for Common Ground. “Our focus is to eliminate hunger and poor nutrition while teaching them how to help themselves.”

Common Ground is part of the UC Cooperative Extension, founded in 1913 in an era when cooperative extensions were the means for land-grant universities to provide their research to farmers. Common Ground serves Los Angeles County, and it is the oldest and largest organization promoting community gardens here.

With a shift in population and focus, now the efforts in this region are tailored to an urban populace, unlike most other California counties where Cooperative Extension still serves agriculture.

The 17-year-old Los Angeles urban garden program is one of 23 nationwide and is funded through the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Common Ground has started more than 100 community gardens in low-income areas of Los Angeles, Lynwood, Inglewood and Long Beach. Common Ground operates 12 community gardens and provides support to another six. Four more are scheduled to be built with the L.A. Partnership for a Drug-Free Community. These will serve low-income families affected by substance abuse. Common Ground also provides technical assistance to other organizations (L.A. Food Bank and Metro Farms) and cities in L.A. County with community gardens. There are more than 100 such gardens in the county.

Through the efforts of 10 staff members and a corps of volunteers, more than 26,000 adults and children have harvested fresh produce, learned skills and enjoyed friendships.

Although critics of the program are few, some of the hardest to persuade can be the people whom Common Ground is trying to help.

Juanita Randall, a longtime resident of Nickerson Gardens, is quick to admit that she was one of the worst doubters five years ago when the community garden was installed.

“I thought it was a waste of time, that it wouldn’t work,” she said. “I was worried about the kids stealing the food.”

But she changed her mind when she saw the benefits of the garden, the surge of neighborhood cooperation. She now serves as the treasurer for the local garden club that administers the community garden.

At times, vandals have hit the Nickerson Garden plots, as they have at some of the other gardens, but the community gardeners are usually able to pinpoint the troublemakers and change their actions and attitudes.

“The kids stopped hassling us when they saw how good this is for the neighborhood,” Randall said. “We love to give our surplus away if people will just ask us.”

In fact, the community gardens produce enough to take care of the gardeners, their families, friends and even the neighborhood homeless.

Sherl Hopkins, a longtime Common Ground employee, did a study to determine how much a garden plot could produce. He harvested 585 pounds of vegetables, grown for three months and picked at their best edible size. After replanting the garden bed, he obtained similar results three months later. In all, he harvested one ton of produce in a year. Estimating a value of 50 cents a pound, he figured that $1,000 worth of fresh vegetables can be grown in a typical 10-foot-by-20-foot garden plot.

“But the average person doesn’t know how to garden as intensively, so a conservative estimate is that the harvest will be half that,” Hopkins said.

As he drives around Los Angeles, Hopkins eyes the many empty, weed-choked or debris-strewn lots. “I think there are enough vacant lots in Los Angeles that if all were in (crop) production, they could feed the city,” he said. “People don’t understand how much produce you can get out of 150 square feet of dirt and what minimal effort it takes to get it.”

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After the 1992 riots, Common Ground started a computer database of vacant lots in Los Angeles. To date, the community garden land bank contains 2,500 parcels in an area bordered by the Hollywood Freeway on the north to Imperial Highway on the south, west to La Cienega Boulevard and east to Long Beach Boulevard.

“There’s a lot of vacant land in Los Angeles, this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Funches, who is supervising an effort to contact these property owners to ask that they make their land available for community gardens.

According to Hopkins, the easiest part of establishing community gardens is planting the vegetables. The challenge is obtaining the land, bringing in water, getting the lumber needed to build the raised beds and, in some cases, chain link for fencing.

“We started in 1977 with an annual budget of $250,000 and a staff of 40,” Funches said. “Now our base allocation is $112,000 and we have a staff of 10.”

As a result, Common Ground relies heavily on donations and volunteers. Last year, the Burpee Seed Co. donated 1 million packets of seeds and promises more when needed. Kellogg’s donated 9,000 bags of soil amendment and Miracle-Gro donated 1,000 cases of fertilizer and $1,000.

Since Common Ground began specialized training programs 17 years ago, more than 1,000 people have volunteered as master gardeners, master food preservers, gardening angels (who teach children) and master composters. In exchange for training, they commit to 40 hours of volunteer service teaching adults or children the skills of gardening and food preserving.

Common Ground also holds free or low-cost workshops on vegetable gardening, food preservation, composting and community problem-solving.

The volunteers are a mix of ages and ethnic cultures. Roman Valdez of Wilmington became a master gardener two years ago at the suggestion of his father, who had completed the training. Valdez works for an aircraft company and does part-time gardening work.

“Being a master gardener is fulfilling and also a constant education because the (Common Ground) staff is so knowledgeable,” he said. “I’m always learning from them.”

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Valdez volunteers at the 22nd Street Garden, where he helps with soil preparation, weeding, watering and general maintenance.

“The volunteers are the lifeblood of these programs; we’d be dead in the water without them,” Funches commented.

Common Ground has set up guidelines to ensure the success and longevity of its gardens. A garden club, formed by the site’s users, is recommended. Each participant pays a yearly fee of $25 for water. While master gardeners are on hand to help with the common areas, each participant is responsible for the maintenance of his or her plot and is expected to help keep up the common pathways.

“We found that by empowering the people involved and making them responsible for their gardens, they’ll continue once we’ve gotten them started,” Funches said. In early efforts, after Common Ground staff moved on to other gardens, often the community gardens failed from lack of participation by local residents.

Although Common Ground estimates more than $4 million worth of vegetables and fruit have been grown to date, the agency wants to expand its efforts.

“We’d like to see low-cost housing built that includes community gardens into the plans,” Funches said. “We can help developers and architects with the layout, if they’ll contact us.”

One ambitious project already designed and ready to be built when funds are available is Uhuru (Swahili for freedom). Common Ground, the Watts Health Foundation and L.A. Harvest, a clearinghouse for nonprofit agencies, formed a coalition to develop a 2.5-acre site as a large community garden and vocational training area to serve South-Central L.A.

The $2.7-million, 2.5-acre site will consist of a 60-plot community garden, orchard, greenhouse, municipal park, community center and market garden for the community.

Children from nearby schools, including 102 Street Elementary School and Jordan High School, will be encouraged to participate in the garden, and the plan is for teens to receive vocational training enabling them to find jobs in the green industry.

“We want to break ground when we’ve obtained $1 million in cash, and we hope that will be early next year,” Funches said. “We’ve already received pledges in plants and materials from green industry companies who are supportive of this project.”

Starting Community Garden

Common Ground offers these guidelines for starting a community garden:

1--Speak with your neighbors to find out who wants to participate in a community garden.

2--Find a vacant lot in your neighborhood. It must have at least six hours of sunlight daily, not possible if tall buildings or trees shade the property. The soil should also be considered. If the parcel was used as a parking lot, the soil can be so compacted that it will be difficult to work and could also contain toxic material. Common Ground will advise you how to contact the owner for permission to use the property.

3--Water must be readily available. In cases where structures stood, water meters or pipes are usually in place. In some cases, meters have to be installed and the cost can be several thousand dollars.

4--A staff member or volunteer from Common Ground will meet with you and your neighbors to explain how to design and maintain a garden.

5--Common Ground will also provide seeds, and lists of recommended plants, growing, irrigation and pest-control techniques.

What You Can Do to Help

Common Ground needs the following:

Lumber for raised beds; garden tools such as rakes and shovels; garden hand tools; garden hoses; wheelbarrows; soil amendment. Cash donations are needed to pay for water for the community gardens. More volunteers are also wanted. For information about volunteering or donating to Common Ground, call (213) 744-4341.