SALE COULD MEAN END OF COMMUNITY GARDEN

Normal Heights residents bemoan loss of land that hosted plots for food, flowers for 30 years

“(She) wanted to get her piggy bank and bring all her pennies to save the garden.” Forest Featherston On her daughter’s reaction to hearing the garden would be sold

For nearly three decades, residents in Normal Heights and surrounding neighborhoods have planted and toiled in a once vacant lot, turning it into a thriving community garden bounteous in fruit, flowers, vegetables and community kinship.

All that could end soon. Earlier this month, gardeners at the Vera House Community Garden were surprised to see a for-sale sign on the land. They didn’t know the property owner had planned to sell it, said longtime Normal Heights resident Phyllis HouseCepeda.

“We were clueless,” HouseCepeda said. “We did not know it was coming.”

The gardeners were formally notified of the sale with a letter dated June 11, which states those who use the space have until July 10 to remove their property from it.

Residents and garden supporters have spent weeks looking for ways to stop the sale or to find someone to buy the property who would keep it as garden space.

They created an online petition on Change.org, which had more than 950 signatures Friday, asking the city of San Diego to intervene in some way.

A handful of gardeners gathered at the lot Wednesday afternoon.

Normal Heights resident Forest Featherston and her 5-year-old daughter, Amara, picked apricots from a tree. Featherston, a single mom, volunteers to help maintain a plot that belongs to an 89-yearold resident.

She said volunteering in the garden has helped her daughter learn new skills and how to interact with adults and other children in the neighborhood. Featherston said she felt like crying at the thought of the garden closing, because her daughter won’t have that community resource anymore.

“The day we told her about the garden she got upset and wanted to get her piggy bank and bring all her pennies to save the garden,” Featherston said.

The Vera House Community Garden opened in 1992. There used to be house on the property, but after it was demolished the lot became an eyesore in the neighborhood, until it was transformed into a garden with the permission of the

SAM HODGSON U-T Five-year-old Amara Featherston and her mother, Forest Featherston, check apricots they picked off her family’s tree at the Vera House Community Garden in Normal Heights recently. The plot of land that houses the garden has been sold.