Guidebook of SF community gardens

San Francisco Chronicle

GARDENS IN UNLIKELY PLACES MEAN HOPE, FREEDOM...Ron Sullivan,Joe Eaton...10-12-08

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/12/10/HOVP14GTN1.DTL&type=homeandga [1]

When we follow the operations of school and community gardens, we find ourselves speculating about the existence of a gardening instinct in our species.

When we happen upon "guerrilla" gardens like Alemany Farms or the Tenderloin National Forest, a converted alley off Ellis Street, we're tempted to make a most unscientific pronouncement confirming it.
It's dangerous to call anything in humans instinctive - not because we're such an exceptional case among mammals but because deciding what a human instinct is would be like that old koan about trying to bite your teeth. Never mind; it seems that growing things is so common to us and so persistent within us that it's almost a tropism.

We have local examples. The gardens on Alcatraz are so unlikely that half of us living here don't know they exist. To start them, early outposts on the island had to import soil because the place is natively a rock with a lot of bird droppings on it. Lichens, maybe mosses, grew there, and maybe there were a few tenacious succulents wedging themselves into cracks. The birds that have nested there for centuries probably brought seeds with them, on their bodies or in the nesting material some of them use.

Troops and prisoners on Alcatraz considered gardening a privilege, and their work and that of other residents remains and is being restored under the protection of the Garden Conservancy.

Some Bay Area residents found themselves gardening under adverse circumstances indeed when they were "interned" during World War II. Japanese Americans planted Victory gardens in Manzanar (Inyo County), pruned sagebrush in bonsai style in Idaho's Minidoka and greened Utah's Topaz to keep the dust tamed.

Prisoners of war in the Philippines and Germany and European Jews imprisoned in ghettos planted gardens. Soldiers in World War I planted celery in trenches, grew corn and even made parterres in camps. Nelson Mandela tended a garden in the Robben Island prison. "A garden was one of the few things in prison that one could control," he later wrote. "The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a small taste of freedom."

In the Guantanamo camp our nation is operating, nine prisoners who were cleared of charges against them and are nevertheless still imprisoned created a garden with no tools but plastic spoons and a couple of mop handles, and no resources but seeds they gleaned from meals. They grew melons, garlic, peppers and a lemon tree.

People here grow school gardens and community gardens of flowers and food, reclaiming wasted land and nourishing body and soul. They grow foods brought from their native Guatemala or Laos or Texas, and California poppies for their pollinators. In time, we might grow a civilization as fine as that of Mexico City as it was first glimpsed by Europeans, with gardens everywhere and walls cooled and beautified with vines.

In time, we might grow a civilization.

As it happens, there's a new book available to guide those of us who want to see what tenacious community gardeners have created in San Francisco. Aptly titled "Cracks in the Asphalt: Community Gardens of San Francisco" and written by Alex Hatch, it's a handsome little handbook with maps by Kim Beeman and photographs by Stacey J. Miller. The foreword is by our own Pam Peirce.

I have very minor quibbles: I had to turn the book upside down to read some of the maps, and most of the pages aren't numbered, but it's odd how little those, especially the latter, matter. The introductory page of each garden does have its number, and the rest of the information, organized by locale, flows logically from there.

The photographs are a nice mix of tease and revelation. The text includes short histories of each garden, its highlights and outstanding features, how accessible it is to the public (some are fenced and locked, but when gardeners are there it's possible to ask for entry) and directions in terms of public transit. Much to our liking, Hatch includes where to browse and nosh before or after your visit to each garden, and rounds up some of them into walking tours. Some have playgrounds or picnic tables.

A short resource section suggests that an apparently wasted space needn't stay that way, and tells San Franciscans where to start to get those spaces transformed, protected and flourishing.

Why tour community gardens? To see what folks are up to, to see what's possible to grow here, to marvel at what can be done with a few square feet of ground. Mostly, for inspiration from our neighbors, our own defiant gardeners.