Open gardens: Volunteers show off efforts in S.F.
San Francisco’s chard never looked crisper or tastier.
Same with its artichokes, lettuce, sweet peas and leeks. Even the butterflies seemed more vibrant Saturday for the city’s first community garden open house.
The Recreation and Park Department threw open the gates at 21 of its 38 community gardens to show off the handiwork of its volunteer gardeners and encourage newcomers to enroll.
Visitors could tour the gardens throughout the city, take classes on pollination and other topics, and even bring home a bag of free mulch.
“We want to make sure the public knows about these wonderful gardeners and sees the hard work of these folks,” said Hannah Shulman, the city’s urban agriculture program coordinator. “We also want people to know that at some gardens they can sign up right away.”
San Francisco has no shortage of gardening enthusiasts. More than 1,600 residents maintain plots in community gardens, from Bayview to Pacific Heights to the Outer Sunset and all points in between.
Some gardens have waiting lists of years, although some, such as Brooks Park in Merced Heights, have openings.
Gina Faiola, 39, a chef who lives near Duboce Triangle, had been waiting for a plot in her local garden for seven years before she won a spot last November in the Golden Gate garden in Golden Gate Park.
Learning to garden
Now she takes a bus across town three times a week, sometimes with two kids in tow, to water, weed and harvest.
“I love it here. I’m so grateful,” she said Saturday while tending to her kale and chervil. “I’d never gardened before and always wanted to do it. I still don’t know what I’m doing, but I’ve learned a lot.”
She gets tips from other gardeners at Golden Gate, who regularly share advice, encouragement and, of course, produce. For some San Franciscans, hanging around the community garden has been an optimal way to meet neighbors and make friends, Shulman said.
At the Golden Gate garden, just about everyone knows Greg Gaar, 66. He’s the self-appointed maven of native plants, who’s been growing, propagating and giving away samples of San Francisco’s native foliage for years.
On Saturday, he was tending to expanses of yerba buena, coast buckwheat, purple needlegrass and other natives.
“I grew up in San Francisco, and I feel a connection to this place and its living organisms,” he said. “For me, it’s spiritually renewing to help repair some of the damage we’ve done to the earth. … When you see birds, or butterflies, using the land you’ve restored, you feel you’re connecting with God or Allah or the Great Spirit.”
All of the department’s gardens are on public land. Some have been community gardens for decades, and some are recently reclaimed. The city also has informal community gardens just about everywhere. Gaar helped convert a traffic island on Frederick Street to a bastion of purple Phacelia and Douglas iris.
Connie So, 29, and Lawrence Festin, 32, plan to start a garden at Downtown High School, where So teaches. The pair were visiting Golden Gate garden Sunday to learn about composting and get some gardening ideas.
Teaching tool
Their hope is to use the garden as a way to teach science, math, English and social justice.
“It’s a way for students to learn how everything is connected,” So said. “A lot of our students live in (areas without markets), so this is a way for them to get access to healthy food and learn how to grow it themselves.”
Festin, a health outreach worker, said food has vastly different meanings in different cultures, and, for some, is linked to oppression and poverty. Those are valuable lessons for students, he said.
“I grew up in the Philippines, and food was a way to separate people,” he said. “But it can also be a cultural bridge. I tell students, growing your own food is like printing your own money. It’s independence. … Plus it tastes good.”