Recently my son and his best friend Sean took part in an Earth Day Celebration in South Central L.A., yes, South Central. They were part of a volunteer group to transform a family's front yard into a self-sustaining garden complete with fruit trees and vegetable gardens. This organization is headed by an incredible man, Ron Finlay. Here is the background below.
Above, Sean, Ron and Zach
We are an all-volunteer group based in South Los Angeles. We build gardens, with a focus on serving low-income residents and others with scarce access to fresh, affordable food. We also advocate for gardens, open space, and general wellness in S LA and beyond. We run wellness classes and hikes in the Kenneth Hahn Rec Area, which you can keep up with on our Facebook page here. And we also regularly attend community gatherings to table, talk, work, chat, keep up with other goings-on in the food justice/anti-hunger/anti-poverty, and environmental movements in the City… and just to meet new people to work with. We’re keen on creating more spaces for gardening in the City, and hope to connect with you soon!
If you’d like to shoot us a line about something in particular, we have people in charge of Operations/Volunteers, Donations, Social Media, and a few other things. We’ll post specific addresses in late April, but for the meanwhile, please drop any line to our main address, lagreengrounds@gmail.com, and we’ll be in touch ASAP.
If you would like to contact our amazing co-founder Ron Finley directly, you can do so at his website here.
There were 32 volunteers two weeks ago last Sunday from all walks of life. This was Sean's second time to volunteer. For the first two hours everyone did a lot of pre-maintenance like pick-axing the ground to prepare the soil and put in the sprinkler lines. Zach is in the far left corner in the white t-shirt digging trenches.
All the supplies were donated including food and water, mulch, plants, etc. for the volunteers. Ron does "TED" conventions where he talks about his organization and scraps together donations.
Zach got a chance to chat with co-founder Ron, and told him that he studied plant science and did his schooling at Cal Poly. So Ron immediately put him to work on laying out the pathway thru the garden area, then Zach helped to put down the hardscape.
I'm so proud of my son and Sean, and hope to join them next time round.
