VENTURA : Students Plan to Grow Food for Homeless

It was a school holiday for students at Buena High School in Ventura, but senior Beth Denger remained on campus, sweating lightly under a warm sky as she raked a freshly turned row of dirt.

Amid a backdrop of rusty scrap metal, overgrown brush, knee-high weeds and dilapidated sheds, Beth, 17, and three other Buena High students toiled, pulling weeds, hoeing dirt and mounding the soil into rows.

Before Friday was over, the students planned to turn this forgotten, gritty section of Buena’s campus into a community garden.

Their hope, Beth said, is to eventually grow enough vegetables on the quarter-acre of land to feed dozens of homeless families.

The group of energetic and idealistic students, many of them members of the school’s Associated Student Body, also hope to teach environmental awareness by using organic methods to grow foods and to set up a composting bin.

“We want to make this garden a part of the community and Buena High for years to come,” said Beth, who plans to pursue a degree in agriculture when she graduates this spring.

“We hope to really impact people’s lives and let them know it is possible to grow vegetables and to be environmentally aware.”

Beth got the idea to plant a garden tended by students as she walked by the run-down greenhouses and sheds last year. As part of the campus’s defunct agriculture department, the area had not been used for growing for at least a decade. Shop classes had claimed some sheds and outdoor areas for storing scrap metal, which is in haphazard piles.

“I thought it was really ugly,” she said. “I didn’t understand why it had to look so trashy. And the unused land really bothered me.”

So Beth, who has gardened in her back yard since childhood, made a plan. Beth and another senior, Robin Levy, created an eight-page proposal for Ventura’s school board, suggesting that the old ag department plots be transformed into a community garden.

After winning approval from the school board, the pair then sent out flyers asking students to sign up to tend to row crops. About 14 students have signed up, and each will be in charge of about two rows of crops.

The students plan to grow lettuce, tomatoes, corn, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, green onions and zucchini, among other things.

“We tried to think of things that would be easy to grow, so the students wouldn’t kill them,” Beth said. “And things that people like to eat because we will be giving all of our food to Project Understanding,” a Ventura charity that feeds the homeless.

The hard part, Beth admits, is making sure the garden continues to thrive once she and other organizers have graduated.

“We have young people like Reina (Centeno),” she said, gesturing to a 15-year-old sophomore busy planting tomatoes. “We want to keep them involved so they will keep this going.”