Come to the Garden (Organic, that is)

Long Beach Organic is opening the gates of its flagship enterprise, the Wilde Oats Community Garden to celebrate the Summer Solstice. Tomorrow, June 19, from 11 am to 4 pm, people are invited to tour the 70 individual plot that demonstrate how much a little sweat and compost can do. There will be music, food, and vendors, and proceeds go to help finance LBO. The garden is located on the former Pacific Electiric Right-of-Way north of 10th Street between Loma and Grand

It Takes a Village to Raise a -- Garden??

As I mentioned in the last blog, I’ve been surfing around looking for online support for my newfound gardening mania. Long Beach Organic has a juicy little site that I hope will sprout more pages. They offer classes in spring and fall and have three community gardens—1st and Elm, 6th and Pacific and a 16 city block area on Signal Hill. A new garden funded by Wild Oats is under development on the old Pacific Electric property between Loma and Grand. The group also has a blog here at Blogspot for their flagship garden at 1st and Elm. There’s also a PDF about starting a community garden too. Hmm, now who’s got a sunny sideyard to contribute to the cause?

Digging a little deeper into the gardening scene, I found SoCal Guerrilla Gardening—an interesting group that plants native and drought resistant plants in medians and other neglected parts of the city. The lovely succulent garden in the median strip on Loynes is a SoCal Guerrilla Gardening project. Who knew? From the website, it appears that guerrilla gardening season has ended this year, but I’ll definitely have to check back next winter once the rainy season starts again. There’s another similar group Los AngelesGuerrilla Gardening, but that group seems to concentrate more on the Hollywood area.