On the Verge of Eviction, a Community Rallies to Save Local Garden

Hortencia Hernandez comes a few times a week to Proyecto Jardín, a community garden, tucked away among houses and directly behind White Memorial Medical Center in a Boyle Heights neighborhood.

She picked tomatoes her husband grew and herbs she said, grow in abundance. She pointed to a large group of cactus, “I eat one of these everyday now. It has helped with my high blood pressure.”

Hernandez has been coming to the garden for three months now with her husband and son who has a plot that is elevated off the ground because a stroke has left his movement impaired on one side of his body.

For Hernandez and her son, growing and eating organic food is a healing process, but coming to the garden has also made them a part of a community, one that is at risk of being displaced because of an eviction Proyecto Jardín continues to fight in court.  

On July 1, more than 200 people marched through Boyle Heights with members of Proyecto Jardín to voice their requests to hospital officials at White Memorial Medical Center, the property’s landlord. The march marked 7 months since they were asked to vacate the property.

They demanded transparency and asked the hospital either sell the land to a community land trust, sign a long-term lease with Proyecto Jardín or provide Proyecto Jardín with funds to relocate and rebuild.

“They have to be transparent and accountable for their actions in the community. They have to invite the community to their decision-making process,” said Fanny Ortiz, a community organizer and gardener with Proyecto Jardín.

Alicia Gonzalez, a media consultant with White Memorial, said in an email that “no deal can be brokered at this point” and that the hospital is not willing to offer Proyecto Jardín a long-term lease or sale of the property.

Following a tour of the garden in June, hospital officials determined Proyecto Jardín wasn’t maintaining the garden because of the waist high weeds they found.

It was during the garden’s off season when weeds are expected to grow, said Irene Peña, the garden’s executive director. “If you are not an organic farmer, you are going to see a weed as a lack of productivity, but a lot of our weeds are out to good use. We compost the weeds and we make medicine with them.”

In August, Proyecto Jardín was notified by White Memorial that their lease under the group’s sponsor, Community Partners, would not be renewed on the basis that the garden had low attendance and low productivity. White Memorial also mentioned that they planned on bringing in nonprofit partners that they thought could maintain the garden in proper care year-round.

During peak season they have up to 40 farmers and during the off-season that number drops to about 12 people that maintain the garden and prepare the garden for the next season.

White Memorial offered a 6 month lease extension that requested control of the garden to be transferred to the hospital, limit Proyecto Jardín to a third of the space and require Proyecto Jardín to comply with Adventist Sabbath policy.

Proyecto Jardín turned it down citing that the lease terms would have crippled the organization and put a strain on the organization’s self-determination. Proyecto Jardín’s counter offer was denied and they were given notice to surrender the premises within 30 days.

Gonzalez said White Memorial plans to continue the community garden in partnership with the nonprofit, Roybal Foundation, and will keep the garden open to those who are currently working in the garden. However, Crystal Torres, executive director with the Roybal Foundation said they do not plan on going into the garden until all issues are resolved between Proyecto Jardin and White Memorial. There is no immediate date as to when White Memorial will take control of the garden. 

“We have built this place ourselves and we have been functioning with little to no financial help from White Memorial and now they want to take it over,” said Ortiz.

In April, security with White Memorial tried to remove two members of Proyecto Jardín, said Peña. This move lead Proyecto Jardín to start an ongoing “plant-on”–or 24 hour occupation–of the garden, similar to the occupation of the South Central Farm in 2006, where farmers and activists occupied one of the largest urban gardens in the U.S. for 23 days against a developer. 

Proyecto Jardín is now fighting an eviction that was filed by White Memorial in May. Proyecto Jardín claims they are being wrongfully evicted, citing religious discrimination and the fact that they didn’t sign White Memorial’s lease offer as some of the reasons.

“We are asking them to drop the eviction. If we had agreed to become Seventh Day Adventists and adopted their sabbath policy [...] then they wouldn’t have filed an eviction,” said Peña.

As potential home-buyers look to the neighborhoods east of downtown for cheaper real estate, many in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights are concerned by the threat of gentrification and displacement. This has been felt by many at Proyecto Jardín, said Ortiz. “Our land is being appropriated and we are being displaced.”

The garden was founded 17 years ago by a physician at White Memorial, with the help of local organizations, to turn the empty lot into a space that fostered healthy eating, the use of medicinal herbs and physical exercise.    

Proyecto Jardín grows epazote, an herb used in Mexican dishes and leaves to make tamales which they provide to neighbors for a donation. 

“These aren’t found outside of small Mexican mercados which are about an hour walk in Downtown,” said Ortiz.

After a morning spent in the garden, Monica Okita, tries to get her young grandson, Cosmos, to put away some toys and get ready to leave. She grew up next to the blighted space and her mother was one of the first to farm at the garden.

“Cosmos would be the fifth generation of our family here in the garden, but he’s too young to learn how to garden now. He will, eventually,” said Okita.

Within that time, Proyecto Jardín has hosted cooking and nutrition classes in the small outdoor kitchen, and fitness classes on an exercise mat in the back of the garden. Students of Bridge Street Elementary School across the street visit the garden regularly, they did yoga at the garden earlier that week.

They have also developed a farm internship program in conjunction with USC where interns learn to grow organic food and deliver it through a mobile farm stand to the Ramona Gardens public housing project. The program and the $50,000 grant funding has been put on hold until the lease is settled.

“We delivered our requests to White Memorial at the rally and the last and final option is that if we must absolutely leave, we hope not to be dragged out by the sheriff, but we do have a considerable group of people who are ready to stay here regardless of what the court might rule and face whatever may come,” said Peña.

It’s hot and Ortiz’s daughter swings in a hammock in the shade nearby as Hernandez’s husband comes through the tiled walkway into the garden to greet her.

“Proyecto Jardín wants to continue as an organization. All this is the work of the community for 17 years. There’s a saying in Spanish that says “La cultura cura”–culture heals–we are fighting to keep our identity,” said Ortiz.