March 28, 2005

Season of Change: Community Gardening in San Francisco

By Alison Fromme
Special to the Neighborhood Newswire

From the North Beach Michelangelo Community Garden, the bustle and noise of the city seems far away. Recessed below Greenwich Street between Jones and Leavenworth, the garden is a calm oasis tucked in next to the neighborhood playground. Wooden dividers parcel the patch into 20 parts; each an open canvas for a gardener to work his or her magic. Radiant Swiss chard and bunches of thyme hint that some are tended by self-made chefs, while rose bushes and cascades of colors suggest that others are cultivated by aesthetically-inclined gardeners.

Not content to just grow flowers in pots on the porch, residents throughout the city turn to community gardens for a small bit of earth to plow. San Francisco is peppered with more than 45 community gardens, some of which sport barely a fence and a path, while others feature tool sheds, greenhouses, and information kiosks.

Garden plots are coveted, with city residents waiting up to five years for a chance to practice their skills. At the Michelangelo Community Garden, 22 people are on the waiting list and only a couple plots open up every year. “It’s a long wait,” said Michelangelo Garden’s coordinator, Phyllis Hunt.

Other gardens have similarly high demand. A staggering 141 people are on the waiting list for one of the 121 plots in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area’s Fort Mason Garden.

The 800 garden plots on city property (which exclude the plots at the Fort Mason Garden) are not enough to satisfy the demand in certain neighborhoods, and, although 70 plots are currently vacant, 200 people remain on waiting lists throughout the city for a plot in their neighborhood. Almost half of the city’s residents “have a need for community gardens,” beating out tennis courts, playgrounds, and dog play areas, according to a 2004 survey conducted by the city’s Recreation and Park Department.

For many of the lucky residents who have a row to hoe, gardening is a type of meditation and a way to unite the neighborhood. Community gardens provide a meeting place for busy people who would not otherwise cross paths. According to many gardeners, the social aspect of gardening is valuable for everyone, including young families, seniors into their 90s, and everyone in between.

Community gardening is an old tradition. Towns and cities historically had allotments of land outside the city limits, according to Susan Conn, membership coordinator for the Fort Mason Garden, who learned the joy of gardening from her father. “It’s a really simple, low-tech, low-key thing to do—and a way for me to commune with my father.”

To get the benefits of community gardening, most members don’t mind paying the fee (anywhere from $20-$60) to rent a plot for a season and pitching in to help a few times a year with general chores, like painting a fence or helping with the compost.

Larger maintenance issues, such as replacing fences, for the 40 gardens on city property are the San Francisco’s Recreation and Park Department’s responsibility. In the past, the nonprofit San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners (SLUG) was under city contract to provide resources and education to community gardens and their participants.

For more than 20 years, SLUG was a vibrant and well-respected organization, according to Nan McGuire, former SLUG board member. The group developed gardening education programs on water conservation and composting, welfare-to-work programs, and encouraged school participation in gardening.

But after a series of problems in recent years, including the arrest of a former Executive Director on immigration charges, allegations of voting coercion of employees, and debt incurred from back payroll taxes, the city has prohibited SLUG from receiving contracts for the next two years.

Some of SLUG’s education programs are being continued by former members of its education department, which is now known as a separate entity, The Garden for the Environment. Funded in part by the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council and the San Francisco Department of the Environment, the organization maintains a garden on 7th Avenue and Lawton that demonstrates different ways to maximize city green space and minimize resources needed to do so. The organization also runs formal school and community educational programs on composting and resource efficient landscaping.

With SLUG at least temporary sidelined, the city has assumed a more direct management of the city’s gardens, according to Marvin Yee, Community Garden Program Director. One goal is to involve stakeholders in the creation of uniform policies that would establish protocols for efficient land use, equitable access to garden plots, and expectations of gardeners using city property.

“San Francisco is progressive in its community gardening probably because of SLUG,” he said. “And [the city’s Recreation and Park Department] is lucky to be inheriting that prestige.” The goal is to allow the city’s 700 active community gardeners to keep doing what they are best at—gardening through seasons of change.

For additional information about San Francisco’s Community Garden Program, see http://www.parks.sfgov.org/site/recpark_index.asp?id=27048 or contact Marvin Yee at (415)581-2541 or Marvin.Yee@sfgov.org.