COVER STORY : The Not-So-Secret : For a Growing Number of Westside Residents, Community Farms Offer a Slice of Pastoral Bliss While Providing Food for the Dinner Table

Standing on the northern rim of Hollywood’s Wattles Farm, Steve Ullman parted the branches of a citrus tree so a visitor could get a better look at the unripe fruit.

“Isn’t that amazing?” the 36-year-old film and theater producer said, as a breeze tickled the leaves. “They grafted three trees into one. There’s limes and lemons in front, and then some oranges around back.”

Farther down the hillside, a dozen weekend farmers tended neat plots of vegetables and herbs. Save for the occasional police siren, it was possible to forget for a moment that Wattles--the second-largest of a half-dozen or so community gardens on the Westside--is in the middle of a city.

Long a refuge for seniors with green thumbs, community gardens are becoming more popular among young professionals interested in growing their own produce just blocks from their homes.

“At one point, the majority of gardeners were seniors,” said Ramona Gandara, a Santa Monica official who runs two city-owned community gardens, a 60-plot facility on Main Street and a smaller facility on Broadway. “But now the interest is geared more toward middle-aged and younger couples.”

Many gardens have waiting lists of six months or longer; at least 70 people are waiting for one of 172 plots at Wattles, at Hollywood Boulevard and North Sierra Bonita Avenue.

For many, community gardens have become the closest thing to pastoral bliss Los Angeles can offer.

“This is just a wonderful, peaceful haven in this crazy city,” said Ullman, who lives in Laurel Canyon. He and his wife, Meg Abraham, have tended a plot for about four years, raising cucumbers, cabbages, broccoli and other vegetables. This year they plan to make wine from grapes grown in a communal vineyard.

“I don’t go to the store to buy produce,” he said. “There’s nothing like the flavor of a fresh tomato ripened on the vine, or corn picked when the water’s boiling.”

Community gardens are largely an offshoot of World War II-era “victory gardens,” which were intended to supplement farm-grown produce in a time of food rationing. The environmental movement that emerged in the early 1970s renewed interest in the idea.

Wattles Farm and the 500-plot Ocean View Farms in Mar Vista (the largest of the Westside’s community gardens), both were created in the 1970s. The two gardens are run by the nonprofit Metropolitan Neighborhood Gardens and Farms Inc., but have separate memberships and officers.

Ocean View Farms sits on a terraced hillside on Centinela Avenue at Rose Avenue. The 7 1/2-acre property originally belonged to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which licensed it to the city Department of Recreation and Parks in the mid-1960s. Mayor Tom Bradley approved the project as part of a citywide community gardening effort in 1974.

Wattles, meanwhile, was a weedy, neglected tract two decades ago. Just south of the historic Wattles Mansion in Hollywood, the 4.2-acre property included an orchard of more than 140 avocado trees in need of pruning. With city approval and funding from a now-defunct federal program, volunteers in 1975 began tilling the soil and building a watering system.

In recent years, the trend toward organic gardening has sparked interest in urban farming among younger people.

“We don’t use any nasty things in this garden like pesticides,” said Mary Ann Sereth, a Beverlywood resident who is growing carrots, spinach and lettuce in plots at Ocean View Farms. “It’s all natural.”

The easy availability and low cost of gardening space also lure residents.

“Most people on the Westside who live in apartments have no access to soil other than what might be in their window box,” said Sy Joseph, educational chairman of Ocean View Farms.

Community gardens charge nominal fees, usually around $20 a year, to residents who want to grow fruit, vegetables or flowers for their own use and enjoyment. Sale of the produce is prohibited. The gardens typically provide shovels, water, compost and plot assignments; participants provide seeds, small tools such as trowels and, of course, labor. Each garden elects officers, establishes its own set of rules and requires members to weed communal beds, among other volunteer chores.

Some would-be gardeners bristle at such regulations, said Herschel Gilbert, a charter member of Wattles and the current head garden master.

“I remember we had one guy who said, ‘What do you mean (by) community work? That’s communist!’ ” Gilbert said. Every year, he added, a few members quit or are ejected because of the volunteer requirement.

Beyond that, however, gardeners are mostly left to their own devices. Gilbert said that members can grow anything except poisonous or illegal plants (for instance, marijuana) or trees and shrubs that might block sunlight from other plots.

Sometimes the choice of crop can be surprising. In mid-April, gardeners at Ocean View Farms were treated to a relatively unusual sight: amber waves of grain.

Venice poet and artist Jennifer Reif planted a crop of wheat and barley as a tribute to Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture and fertility. Reif said that as part of a project for a pagan church she belongs to, she and several friends closely followed the harvest cycle, which runs from late fall through the spring, in accordance with Greek mythology.

“Southern California is about the same latitude as Greece and has a similar climate and seasons,” she said. “That’s why we chose these crops.”

Reif’s group cleared a 250-square-foot field last August and, after a ritual blessing, planted the grains in November. The crop survived a wet spring, she said, and was harvested near the end of last month.

“The soil (at Ocean View Farms) is a little sandy, but it’s been worked for years on that hill,” Reif said. “Our results with the wheat are really good . . . (but) we got some mold on the barley.” The wheat will be stripped, dried, winnowed and eventually made into bread, Reif said.

Mold is just one of the hazards gardeners face. Theft is perhaps the outside world’s most noticeable intrusion on community gardens. Ray Baker, a garden master at Wattles, said thieves sometimes scale the chain-link fence at night and steal avocados and oranges. Baker said the members considered and rejected several protective measures, including use of a guard dog. Last month they decided to erect a razor-wire fence, which will be installed soon.

Non-human pests abound as well. Because chemicals are forbidden, invasions by ants, snails, cutworms and black aphids are not uncommon. Crabgrass and other weeds are another perpetual threat.

“This is nut grass,” Ullman said, digging the weed out of the earth with a trowel. “The Indians used to eat this. It can choke your plants, though.”

To control insects, gardeners treat the ground and plants with stale beer or a soap compound. Weeds are pulled out by hand.

As it happens, though, even the weeds have a useful place in the ecological cycle of a community garden. Members discard dried scraps of weeds into the compost, which Gilbert said is the second most-important element in the garden, after the members themselves.

Tomas McCabe, an assistant film editor who lives in Hollywood and joined Wattles this year, said the gardeners are building compost bins with alternating layers of brown and green weeds. The brown weeds are rich in carbon, the green are rich in nitrogen. Both elements are vital garden nutrients.

McCabe, who learned the science of composting during a Peace Corps stint in Central America, plunged his hands into one of the compost bins and pointed at the steam that sent wood lice scurrying. The temperature in the center of the bins can reach 180 degrees, he said, as molds, microorganisms and insects break down the plant material.

After a week or so in the bin, the compost--now decomposed into a dark, moss-like substance rich in nutrients--is ready to be put into the soil. “Anything your garden needs, you’ll get from this,” McCabe said. “Nitrogen, phosphates . . . compost is what the garden eats.”

By noon, Steve Ullman was picking a few raspberries from his own plot. “Mmmm, they’re not ripe yet, but they’re going to be delicious,” he said, squinting in the sun.

Ullman said he’d like to do more gardening at home, but his lot just doesn’t have the right soil. Even so, he sometimes transplants some of the surplus from Wattles. It’s a way of bringing a slice of paradise to his back yard.

“I took a couple of cuttings from one of my fig trees back home.” He sighed. “If one of them takes, I’ll be happy.”