Fom the Ground Up: Watts Community Garden Springs to Life
By Aisha Mori Coleman, Assistant Editor
L.A. Watts Times - Vol. XXX, No. 765
June 6, 2002
WATTS – Residents of Watts are literally getting back to their roots at the new community garden at the Watts Labor Community Action Committee.
Last November, Great Leap Inc., a multidisciplinary performing arts organization, teamed up with the WLCAC for an arts residency, “To All Relations: From the Ground Up.” Nobuko Miyamoto, artistic director and founder of Great Leap Inc., collaborated with Janine Watkins of the WLCAC to encourage change and growth in the community.
The residency offered Tuesday afternoon workshops for youth to learn the art of storytelling, as well as Saturday morning gardening sessions. About 28 children, mostly Latino and African American, participated as youth gardeners and budding poets. In the garden, the youth would plant seeds and sprouts, water the soil, and design and arrange garden objects.
“From what I understand about Watts is that most of this area started off as either dairyland or land where people were growing things in family gardens and things like that,” said Gene Cooke, the project director. “So it’s basically completing the cycle.”
Cooke believes that feeling connected to the garden gives the kids something they don’t get elsewhere.
“What I’ve noticed about the buildings and the other things that people erect in the space where children are is that the children don’t feel any kind of connection or responsibility to it so marking it up is one of the only ways they own it,” said Cooke. “Whereas when something is living, you don’t have to mark it. The ownership of it is being able to come back and seeing it respond to what you give it. Seeing that it’s taller or more beautiful the next time you see it. What I’ve noticed is that it gave the youth a way to direct their own energies.”
About 50 to 60 area residents and others visited the garden on June 1 for its dedication ceremony.
“It’s important for our young people to understand and to have the experience of watching things grow and to be a part of the growing of things,” said Krishna Kaur, founder of the Black Yoga Teachers Assn. and co-director of Great Leap’s Upward Bound “Arts and Yoga for Youth” program. “The seeds that they plant here are not that different from the seeds they’re going to plant in the rest of their lives. They plant seeds of knowledge, seeds of understanding, seeds of compassion, seeds of wisdom. Those seeds, like these seeds, need to be nourished, nurtured, watered, given healthy fertilizer, given sunlight, given love…If we nourish them and give them good love and support, they’re going to flourish and grow as big and healthy as those Swiss Chard over there.”
Kaur said the garden also symbolizes the unity within the community because it is made up of so many diverse plants growing together.
“We’re all in the same garden drawing from the same sustenance from the same soil,” said Kaur. “Nature is designed to have things intertwined to nurture each other. Coming together as a community, we’re nurturing each other.”
Much like the garden, there were visitors of all kinds – mostly black, with some Latinos, Whites, and Asians. All came together to dine on free fare from Compton’s Healthy Vegetarian Harvest, listen to upbeat music and poetry from the youth, and get a taste of the Great Leap show, “A Slice of Rice, Frijoles and Greens.” Adonijah Miyamura El, a practitioner or Food Forestry, also spoke at length about the creation of sustainable environments, including community gardens.
Miyamoto, who founded Great Leap Inc. in 1978, belted out a jazzy rendition of “Rice, Frijoles and Greens,” a song about the food that connects and distinguished various cultures, particularly the Asian, Latino and African American communities. Bassist Nedra Wheeler and drummer/keyboardist Danny Yamamoto of the jazz-fusion group Hiroshima provided the musical accompaniment. Miyamoto also performed her song, “To All Relations,” to draw the audience into a feeling of unity.
Actress Baadja-Lyne of Compton stopped by because she is getting her own food garden started.
“It gets you away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life,” said Baadja-Lyne. “Once it manifests you can say, ‘Hey, I did that.’ Plus you can eat it and it’s healthy and you’re changing your lifestyle.”
The garden is stocked with corn, tomatoes, squash, pumpkins, zucchini, a banana plant from Argentina, aloe vera, eggplant and Swiss chard.
Etha Robinson of Los Angeles grew up in the South with a backyard full of bountiful produce, so she was ready to haul off an armful of vegetables to cook for herself.
“Eating is such a spiritual relationship,” said Robinson, a teacher at Dorsey High School. “There’s nothing more intimate than your food.”
Raymond Shields, a member of the board of directors of the WLCAC, said all the indigenous cultures come from the earth and that they grew their own food.
“What this garden represents to me is a place of belonging,” said Shields, as he prepared to pour out water on the dirt to bless the garden. “These young people have created something very special…This is a very important thing for our community. It is a place of life. It’s the affirmation o life…I want for all of you to understand the connection – this is our past, this is our present, this is our future.”
