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A Community Garden In Watts Provides Solace, Fresh Produce For Immigrants

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A Community Garden In Watts Provides Solace, Fresh Produce For Immigrants

Conrado Esquivel named his papaya tree "El Tigre" after the stem that grows at the base.

The pomegranates he grows are red or green, some are bitter, some are sweet.

One recent afternoon, the chiles were almost ready to be harvested, as were the oil or the watercress.

He named the Watts area "Rancho el lorocito" for the white flowers that bloomed profusely on the tree above as he sat in his chair, usually watching the four other gardeners harvest.

Where Esquivel grew up in Michoacán, Mexico, he didn't eat loroco, but here he learned how to grow it for Salvadorans, who added it to flower buds and other dishes.

Such is the nature of this community garden, made up of more than 200 plots planted by immigrants from all over Mexico and Central America. They grow the produce of their homeland—papal leaves and chipilin, the herb hjerba mora—and share it until one man's tradition becomes everyone's.

Many landscapers have worked on construction sites or factories for decades, but never realized the American dream of a home with a backyard.

They come to the 11-block lot lined with power pylons on 109th Street, west of Nickerson Gardens, to feel the soil between their toes, to see the plants grow, to admire the orange butterflies that remind them they have a home.

Esquivel, 59, has occupied his section of the garden for so long that he is seen as a leader offering warm hospitality to strangers.

"Come on, take one, boldly!" he said as he offered visitors guavas from a nearby tree.

He farmed onion fields with his family in Michoacán before moving to the United States as a teenager in the 1980s, working at an oil refinery.

In 15 years of farming here, he returned from his Maywood home nearly every day, but is now hampered by diabetes-induced headaches.

“Here you can relax,” he said. "You forget a lot. If I can't go home to sleep, I'll sleep here. I'll stay here, under what I've planted."

Some find it hard to find $30 a month to rent the site, including water bills and other fees. Now, because of the statewide drought, they're paying more: $40 a month is less than the $50 offered by the Los Angeles Community Garden Board, which manages the city's gardens.

The park, known as the Stanford Avalon Community Garden, was on 41st Street until Ralph Horowitz, the developer who owned the land, took it over in 2006.

The gardeners managed to raise $16 million to buy the land. Horowitz refused. Some gardeners split into other collectives, while others found support from local politicians who helped them find new land in Watts. The fight was documented in the Oscar-nominated film The Garden.

Most community gardens in Los Angeles are "hobby gardens" for the wealthy, says Pierreta Hondane-Sotelo, a USC researcher who has written books on California gardens. It is, he says, "a place of healing, a homeland and an economic generator" for various groups of immigrants: natives, mestizos, Central Americans.

In many areas, gardeners have set up awnings or "casitas" to admire the views and eat with the neighbors. Some are equipped with a toaster, electric stove and built-in wardrobe.

“These little houses, each one a little different,” Hondanier-Sotelo said. "You see people sitting in the back on simple little stools, talking, gossiping, checking up on each other."

Ana Bustamante and her husband Luis Bustamante purchased the property last summer. Making a new garden is difficult because during the dry season watering is limited to three days a week. What they expected was probably a crop of corn that only produced a few tiny shoots.

Her husband walked between the rows, spraying liquid manure.

"That's why we didn't get anything. Because of the water,” said Ana Bustamante. So nothing grows. For the water.

The plant, tough as a weed, thrived, nightshade.

Pastor Bustamante milks the cows and tends his land in El Salvador during his morning rounds, and the morning before school he pulls the vegetation for her.

“It grows naturally as long as you water it. It has good vitamins, it gives energy, he said, Father said: Take it, so you don't get tired.

His Compton home was surrounded by asphalt, and the sidewalk vegetation was too small for landscaping. In the garden, he can grow vegetables for his family and nine rabbits.

At 71, he was widowed twice. He was on sick leave after a piece of wood fell on him while working in a warehouse and injured his back.

"If someone is in trouble because of something that happened in the past, come here to relax," he said.

At the edge of the park, María González, 59, is collecting leaves from a tree and brushing the dust off with her hands. Gave it to a friend to help him with his high blood pressure. Make it with tea, he ordered.

González earns $80 a day maintaining the plot for the gardener who rarely comes. Sow the seeds, pull the weeds and watch the vegetation grow.

Sometimes she bikes to work at the nearest party supply store, even though she thinks the layoffs will start soon.

He lives here in the park, usually sitting outside to escape the constraints of the van that is his home.

He has lived in the United States since he was 14 years old, but he has never gotten used to the routine, especially now that inflation is eating away at his meager income. Their children are grown and have families of their own, mostly in the suburbs.

He remembers his childhood in Mexico, when he ran through green fields chasing and catching butterflies. He and other children - and now he is suffocating - put butterflies in books to admire the beautiful flowers.

The butterflies in the garden reminded her of home.

“I like being here, perhaps because I feel closer to Mexico,” he said. "I feel free."

On weekends, locals visit the park in search of herbs and plants not found in supermarkets.

Olivia Cruz Garcia says that a family friend told me about fresh organic produce that can be bought cheaply.

He told Esquivel that he was looking for nopales. He had nothing, but he sent him home with handfuls of papalo, a spicy herb that soothes the stomach; mint, medicinal herb mint; and flor de calabaça, the flower that sprouts from a pumpkin.

"They missed the epazote," he told them as the couple left, retreating to their garden to take with them an aromatic herb often used in Mexican cuisine, such as quesadillas or esquitas. After a while, he handed them the package.

"How many?" asked Cruz Garcia.

"That's good," he said, greeting them.

García's husband, Juan Espinosa Trujano, reveals a recipe from his hometown that he will prepare: a quesadilla with epazote, squash blossom, onion and chili peppers.

A husband and wife, both in their 60s, have had their work hours reduced at a garment factory, making it difficult to pay bills and rent. Products have increased in price. They are relieved to find the park.

Esquivel says that he always gives away some of his productions for free. He believed that karma would return in the green and splendor of the next harvest.

"If you want to buy, go to El Super," he said, referring to the supermarket chain. Friendship is better than money.

This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

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