Urban Growers Decry Eviction

Angry gardeners crowded into Los Angeles City Hall on Wednesday, outraged that the City Council is allowing them to be evicted from a 14-acre community garden in South Los Angeles.

City officials say that after years of litigation they have no choice but to sell the land back to its original owner, forcing the gardeners to dig up their tomatoes, cabbage and flowers on what is one of the country’s largest urban gardens.

But the gardeners, most with annual household incomes between $12,000 and $20,000, blame city officials for destroying their community and livelihood, and say the council should have fought harder to save their garden. Some also said they will not leave, even if ordered to do so.

“We have a family that depends on the garden,” said Pedro Barrera, who described for council members the joy of eating a fresh cabbage that he and his family had grown.

Another gardener, Elias Ortiz, 73, credited the soothing sun and peace of the garden with helping to heal his back.

More than 300 families have grown food and flowers on the land at 41st and Alameda streets since 1992.

The city acquired the land through eminent domain in the mid 1980s, and had planned to build a trash incinerator on the site. But the community protested vehemently, and after the 1992 riots officials scrapped plans for trash-burning and allowed the land to be used as a community garden.

The city in 1994 sold the land to its Harbor Department for use in the Alameda Corridor development.

But not all the land was needed for the corridor, and the gardeners continued to till the soil.

Over the years the spot has become a green oasis amid the urban industrial sprawl of South Los Angeles, full of fruits and vegetables uncommon in U.S. markets, such as chilacayote, a large squash, and leafy quelite, an amaranth that’s eaten like spinach.

But even as the garden grew, the land’s original owner, Ralph Horowitz, sued the city, saying that he should have been able to buy the land back once officials decided not to use it for industrial purposes.

In August, the council agreed to sell the land back to Horowitz as part of a lawsuit settlement.

Gardeners, told to expect eviction notices this month, have been protesting ever since, marching through the streets and massing at City Hall.

City officials, meanwhile, say there is nothing they can do to save the garden, but stressed that they have worked hard to find other plots of soil to replace it.

Councilwoman Jan Perry, whose district includes the garden, said she has written to county officials and the mayors of half a dozen surrounding cities and pleaded for extra space.

On Wednesday, council members voted to ask the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Caltrans if those agencies have any extra land in Los Angeles that gardeners could use. Perry also proposed letting the farmers have a one-acre plot at 58th and Wall streets. She also cited a long, skinny strip of MTA land in South Los Angeles as a possible site.

Nevertheless, several council members expressed regret that the city had failed to save the garden when it had the chance.

“I feel a great deal of frustration that it had to come to this,” Councilman Antonio Villaraigosa said.

“That the city wasn’t more aggressive early on in negotiations to see what we could do to keep the garden.”

Some gardeners said Wednesday they were heartened by the council’s commitment to find them replacement space.

But others found little consolation in that.

“We are not going to leave,” said Tezozomoc, a gardener and community activist.

“We are bringing all the poor people together on this issue.”