Where Every Day Is Veteran’s Day
It’s Angela’s third birthday. Everyone has come in from the heat for a piece of cake, wiping their soil-caked hands as they enter the room: a smallish office with a beat-up filing cabinet, industrial-size coffeepot and, hanging from the ceiling, rows of black-eyed Susans.
“I just want to say it’s good to be back in garden heaven,” says Angela. “I’m back, clean and sober. This is my home.”
“Home” is a bucolic 15-acre patch of land nestled between the San Diego Freeway and the Veterans Administration West Los Angeles Healthcare Center. The Vets’ Garden, as it’s known, is staffed by 30 to 35 VA Hospital clients, many of them struggling with alcoholism, drug addiction, manic-depression and paranoid schizophrenia.
“I did my psych residency here,” says garden founder Ida Cousino of the VA compound. “And I remembered this land. There used to be a Vietnam vet with his dog gardening, all by himself.”
An occupational therapist who taught horticulture at Santa Monica College, Cousino, 60, fought her own battles to relaunch the lapsed garden 13 years ago as a horticultural therapy program. Along the way, she encountered red tape, bureaucracy and even a brief push by the VA to move part of its cemetery to the spot. “It seemed so ridiculous to have dead people here,” she says, pushing a strand of brown hair back into her straw hat.
Cousino excuses herself to help supervise as vets load a truck with basil, peppers and flower arrangements bound for Woodside in Brentwood and Ciudad downtown. The garden supplies organic produce to half a dozen L.A. restaurants, providing them with two tons of squash last year alone. The income generated, combined with what the garden earns from folks stopping by to purchase veggies and plants (it’s open weekdays), enables the Vets’ Garden to be financially self-sufficient and pay clients a salary for their work.
“This is where I started my healing,” says Gary--no last names here--as he strolls past generous carpets of geraniums and squash. “I almost died downtown--30 years of drinking. Being a vet, I got enrolled in this program. Here, I found a caring, loving family atmosphere. And I thank the Lord that I had a second chance at life.” He passes the pepper patch, red jewels dangling from well-tended bushes: jalapeno, sweet pepperocini, lipstick and Godfather.
Noel Ampel, owner of Woodside, calls Cousino “an angel in human form.” When Cousino, now busy concocting a flower arrangement for the Brentwood restaurant, hears about the compliment, she shakes her head, smiling. “No angels here,” she says.
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Vets’ Garden, (310) 268-4062.
