VAN NUYS : Putting Down New Roots After Quake

When the Northridge earthquake struck six months ago, it was not the wrecked apartment that 9-year-old Alex Magana regretted leaving the most. It was the garden his family tended in the front yard of his old Van Nuys apartment complex.

“We had planted orange trees, lemon trees, carrots and apples,” Alex said Friday. “They all died.”

While his family has relocated to a house since the temblor, it is only recently that the boy could eagerly grab a water pail and tend to plants again--this time as part of an event marking the six-month anniversary of the quake.

The gardening project in which Alex participated began in April and is designed to help students deal with the stress of living on shaky soil. It is staffed by VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) volunteers and funded in part by $2.8 million authorized by President Clinton through the Corp. for National Service.

“While it may shake you up, I’ve always wanted to show that there are a lot of good things the ground can do too,” said Chris White, one of the volunteers who organized Friday’s garden project at Bassett Elementary School in Van Nuys.

To prove his point, White, 29, and fellow VISTA volunteer Tim Ittner have been working with the students since April to create the garden--a sanctuary of seedlings and stalks on an asphalt schoolyard.

To help, Alex and fellow fourth- and fifth-graders have built garden beds and a compost bin made from earthquake rubble, including concrete blocks and wooden planks. The handful of students volunteer in the garden about an hour or more during school three days a week.

Friday’s activities included fun kid stuff--planting chilies, tomatoes and purple-hued flowers in a box labeled “annuals”--then dumping in 2,000 squishy worms.

To 10-year-old Blenda Lee, whose family fled to Acapulco for a few days after the Jan. 17 temblor, it is easier to appreciate the earth with a handful of worms.

“I am going to put them in the soil . . . and it’s going to be good fertilizer,” said Blenda, who lives in Van Nuys.

For Alex, whose family has not bought the seeds to replant the trees and vegetables at his new house, it was like going home again.

“I like plants and watering,” said the boy, his eyes sparkling as he doused water on a black-eyed Susan. “It’s fun.”