“The community shows up for each other, first to get work done and second so that gardeners and volunteers feel safe and welcome,” says Louise Leonard, Chair of the East Hollywood Community Garden Leadership Team.  “We started making all our materials in English and Spanish.  If someone comes in, speaking another language and wants to help, we find them someone that can speak with them.  We have a number of Bangladeshi families that help each other.  The other day, an older Korean woman came in and we paired her up with someone that could work with her.”  Her smile says it all.  “The essence of community gardening is feeling joyous about ‘doing the best we can do.’  I see the garden as a vehicle for engagement and as place for evolving systems.”

When Louise steps out to handle some things for work, Esther Tseng steps in.  “Right now, it’s my turn to be volunteer coordinator,” she says.   She notices a volunteer weeding plants in the pollinator garden and kindly asks her to follow up on more urgent tasks the community plot.  Next to them both is a sign made by another gardener listing out the priority tasks to be done next. 

Sean Gustafson joined the garden a year after it opened. “There was a lot to still be figured out, especially when it comes to communal planting and volunteer hours and those types of things.”  This is the third community garden he has been a part of.  The first was in Philadelphia and the second was in Newark.  He has almost completed a master gardener training program and spent the past year helping the gardeners learn along with him.  “It’s like a co-op.  You can’t just give your $15 for water and maintenance. It’s sweat equity. We’re all in this together.  It’s also just pretty amazing to have this land and take care of it.”  

Barry Lank is chopping scraps at the compost system. He’s in charge of collecting those $15 dues.  “I used to hang with Louise and the old master gardener before Sean stepped in.  At some point the old treasurer couldn’t process payments through Venmo, and it turns out to be the way that most people pay these days.  I had a Venmo account.  I didn’t know much about it.  They needed someone to step in.  It ended up being me.  I’ve been handling the money ever since.  I’m just the interim treasurer though.  We’ll see who wins the job during the next leadership team election.”

“Things get done through lots of on-the-ground decision-making,” says Matt Gildner kneeling next to the eighty foot planter bed he designed and built with volunteers.  He loved working with Sean, learning about nutrients and amending the soil, but he says that the real education is in how to be in community.  “If you are present, you will have a voice in what’s planted.  There is a powerful feeling for a community to own a common area together,” he says.  “Knowing that someone else is there to share the load.  We can depend on each other to keep it going, knowing that there are enough people that care.”

Alejandro Pesquera rests with his daughter Luna at their family plot and offers an example of how the community comes together to solve collective problems. “We decided to put a kiddie pool right over there during the pandemic. It’s for all the kids of the garden to have a space to play, since many of us don’t have backyards of our own.” Luna runs out past the kiddie pool into the playground next door, Alejandro calls back. “Everyone is learning from each other as we go. We are making mistakes together, and learning from them together. That is community.”