‘Angels’ Help Children in Garden

Common Ground also administers a gardening program for children with the help of volunteers called “Gardening Angels.”

The program was started in 1989 by Rachel Mabie, youth gardening coordinator for Common Ground. Before joining the agency in 1988, Mabie had been a Peace Corps volunteer in Central America where she trained the local people in how to start vegetable gardens. She decided to find out if any schools in Los Angeles would be interested in gardens for their students. The response was immediate and gratifying.

She installed gardens at Dixie Avenue School in Sherman Oaks and 118th School in Los Angeles. Then she realized she needed help. An appeal went out for adults who could volunteer two hours a week with children, and the first Gardening Angels were trained and put into action in 1990.

Now, there are 50 schools from Sylmar to San Pedro and West Los Angeles to San Gabriel with children’s gardens, and another 25 on a waiting list to be included in the program as soon as volunteers are available. More than 5,000 children have participated in the program.

“The success of this program is that it’s more than just a gardening experience for the kids, although that’s important, too,” Mabie said. “Teachers include the gardens in the learning process and use them as hands-on means for teaching math, word skills, science, even history.”

The success of the program also depends on dedicated teachers willing to assume overall responsibility for the gardens, which can be raised beds or containers, depending on the school layout and available area.

The Gardening Angels provide support, but the children are expected to do the actual planting and maintenance. Common Ground also provides written materials to help the teachers prepare classroom lessons.

More than vegetables are growing in these gardens, Mabie feels, because the children learn about team effort, patience, responsibility and self-esteem.

“The process teaches the kids patience, a trait especially needed in a society of immediate gratification,” she said. “They also learn about nurturing and caring for living things.”

Cheryl Harris agrees. She’s one of the original Gardening Angels and a strong supporter of the program, so much so that she’s inspired her 17-year-old daughter to join.

Harris became involved while tending a plot at the Mar Vista Gardens in Culver City. She applied to Common Ground to become a master gardener, but switched when she learned of the newly forming program and after training was assigned to Stoner Avenue Elementary School in Culver City where she assists the fifth- and sixth-graders.

She loves gardening, but she also enjoys working with the children and seeing their progress.

“Some of the boys hang back at first--they think gardening isn’t macho. But they change their minds when they see the other kids having fun,” she said. “Girls who don’t want to get their hands dirty or break nails also grab shovels, hoes and rakes after watching the others.”

The children also learn some hard lessons.

Some months after the garden was installed and the crops growing, vandals tore out the plants and damaged the raised beds. The children were upset at their wasted efforts, but Harris assured them the garden could be replanted. But the vandals struck again, this time destroying the beds themselves.

Harris was sterner with the youngsters. “I warned them the vandalism had to stop or Common Ground would pull out. I figured some of them knew who was doing the vandalism.”

The school repaired the damage, Harris helped the children replant, and that was the last of the damage.

Twice yearly the garden beds are harvested. The children share their produce with their family, schoolmates, and sometimes with local food banks.

Carol Levy, a Gardening Angel at the San Pasqual Elementary School in Highland Park, remembered a particularly plentiful harvest of cabbage. “We made enough coleslaw to serve the whole school of 350 students,” she said.