‘Literally raised in a garden,’ community gardener Amber Beeson dies at age 40
She was a builder of gardens, where not only plants could grow, but people, too.
As a landscape designer and founder of the nonprofit Giving Tree Project, Amber Beeson transformed vacant lots in Bakersfield into community gardens where adults could grow organic vegetables and children could learn about healthy living, healthy eating, and just plain old hard work.
Beeson, a former program director at Kern Green, chairwoman of the Community Gardens Committee for Keep Bakersfield Beautiful, and a onetime board member with the Arts Council of Kern, died Thursday after a grueling and very public battle with cancer. She was 40.
“I held her as she passed,” said her mother, Thetis Sammons, who along with Beeson’s husband, Giuliano Cacho, was with her daughter at Ventura County Medical Center in her final hours.
The end came after a year of struggle, a year that seemed to bring one emergency after another, multiple surgeries, then surgeries to repair procedures that didn’t go right.
At age 39 and in the prime of her life, Beeson was confronted with a cancerous tumor that was growing in her body at an alarming rate, and conventional medicine, including chemotherapy, wasn’t working.
Desperate to survive, and determined to remain with her husband and four children, she went public, launching an online journal that meant sharing her highs and lows, her struggle with the American health care system, and her decision to launch a fundraiser to help pay for conventional as well as possible alternative treatments.
“I’m running out of time and options,” Beeson told The Californian last spring.
“I really need a miracle,” she said. Despite her openness about the illness, despite waves of love and support from people in Ventura and Kern counties, no one could stop the cancer — and no one could really know how much Beeson suffered over the past year, said her mother.
“Her case was extreme,” Sammons said. “In my mind, she is such a hero.
“But we could not save her.” Beeson was born in Bakersfield, but her family moved around a lot during her childhood.
“When she was little, we had a small place in east Bakersfield on one-third of an acre,” Sammons remembered.
They grew organic vegetables and raised goats and chickens.
“She was literally raised in a garden,” Sammons said.
In 2005 as a 20-something, she moved back to her birthplace.
“She thought she could heal Bakersfield,” said her younger sister, Cambria Beeson.
Bakersfield was and is a city with some of the highest rates of poverty, obesity and diabetes in the state.
“She originally thought to improve our hometown for her children and family,” Cambria Beeson said.
Amber Beeson spearheaded the development of a school garden at William Penn Elementary in the Oleander area, where her twin sons attended. She wanted to help people lead healthier lifestyles and gain a deeper awareness and connection to nature.
Beeson was always about planting seeds, literally and figuratively, and she didn’t mind working in some of Bakersfield’s roughest neighborhoods.
“She had a view of the world that was beautiful,” her mom said. And her efforts bore fruit.
Her organization helped train teachers, parents and other volunteers at dozens of area schools on how to create their own gardens.
Beeson left Bakersfield a few years ago due to her asthmatic son’s reaction to the valley’s air quality, but one of her projects, the Seeds of Inspiration garden at Fourth and Eye streets, a coordinated effort between the city and volunteers, remained active.
“Amber poured her heart and soul into Bakersfield. Blood, sweat, tears and good intentions went into the soil in her community gardens and our city is a better place because of her efforts,” said longtime friend Miranda Whitworth, who met Beeson in 2008 when the two were struggling single mothers.
“She was an amazing mother and human being who had hopes and dreams — and no one deserved to reach their goals more than she did.
“She left Bakersfield for the coast seeking new opportunities, fulfilling work, a spouse, and a chance to add little girls to her family,” Whitworth said.
She was able to achieve all those things, but cancer robbed her of her future.
Her surviving sister and mother want to be sure that no one will try to make Amber Beeson out to be some sort of saint or model of perfection.
“She was beautiful in all her flaws,” Amber’s sister said. “She was stubborn and strong-willed, and we didn’t always see eye-to-eye.”
She was not a perfect person, she said. The real Amber Beeson was human, talented, imperfect, loved.
“I pray we can all remember Amber for the beautiful human that she was. Full of flaws and raw talent, ingenuity and good music. Sometimes she wore questionable pants that gave you a headache, all because she liked the way it made you cringe.
“She was a powerhouse of ideas and inspiration,” Cambria said. “She never did stop trying to work, even in the end. She was a provider, a mother, a wife, a sister and a friend. She was so strong. And she was so deserving of more time with her family.
“Her body gave out,” she said, “before her will.”