Opinion: Green Light

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Saving Laguna’s Only Community Garden Park

The fate of our city’s only community garden park will likely be decided at the City Council meeting on June 15. An agenda item calls for retaining or discontinuing our City’s earlier pledge to contribute $500,000 toward the purchase of the Community Garden Park located at the south end of town.

My wife, Ginger, and I were among the original dozens of gardeners who, back in 2009, cleared the patch of waist-high weeds growing out of soil on much of the vacant lot. A new owner of the property then generously let us use it free.  We gardeners came together, under the sponsoring banner of the South Laguna Civic Association, to pony up the money for the lumber to build raised garden boxes. A garden shed was donated. We built steps and handrails, crafted a wooden stage for educational and entertainment programs, and constructed retaining walls consisting of donated rocks.  In short, a lot of careful planning and sweat equity went into the birthing of Laguna’s Community Garden Park. The months of gestation, however, were nothing compared to the joyous outcome.

Then growth happened. Fast and famously. The garden grew organic vegetables, some of which have been donated to the homeless and hungry, and flowers. It grew recognition and awards. It grew friends and supporters from throughout Laguna and across the country and the world. Most importantly, as former City Councilmember and Mayor Steve Dicterow discerned, it grew a sense of community.  Gardeners came to know each other and exchange tips on growing tomatoes, squash, strawberries, and more.  A few years ago, the Laguna Beach Police Department held a taco get-together event at the garden. Until recently, Laguna firefighters had a garden box next to our family’s. Many times our councilmembers and other city officials have attended festivals, potlucks, and other events at the Community Garden Park. A Union College women’s volleyball team from New York visited for a team-building service project.  Buddhist monks from Tibet chanted at the garden and blessed it. When our family’s friends from Houston and New Hampshire and our in-laws from France and Sacramento have come to visit us we take them to the Community Garden Park to experience its solace, seasonal colors, and rejuvenating vibes.

A happening that stamps our coastal city’s identity and meaning on this plot of greenery occurred recently during the COVID-19 pandemic. Ginger and I donated a copy of gardeners Tom and Gayle Joliet’s children’s book, Alani and the Giant Kelp Elf (published by Laguna Wilderness Press), to the teacher of our granddaughter Evie’s second-grade class in the Bay Area city of Albany. When Evie’s class finished reading the wonderful story set at the Community Garden Park and the beach below, our granddaughter showed everyone a photo of the Giant Kelp Elf at the garden. “The Kelp Elf” is real, they exulted! Their imaginations had been ignited, and in the process they learned from the story about ocean ecology and how our City Council, with Alani’s help, had boldly and wisely saved the kelp, the greenbelt, and the town itself.

The Community Garden Park is now a landmark that helps define Laguna’s values and vision. I visit it almost daily to recharge my energy and at other times to quiet my mind or simply to remind myself of where healthy food originates and my role in that process. What better place to educate ourselves and our children about the beauty and bounties of nature by getting our hands in the soil. 

If the City Council’s earmarked garden funding goes away, 12 years of what I’ve just described will recede into a memory of a time when art and nature unreservedly defined our city and its people. Contact Council now at [email protected] and take a stand for Laguna’s only Community Garden Park. Let’s do this.

Tom is an environmental historian and journalist: [email protected]

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