The garden plot thickens

COSTA MESA — Wearing a pair of yellow Wellington boots and wielding a spade that’s longer than he is tall, 8-year-old Christian Redman is turning dirt in his garden.

“We don’t have a big yard. It’s pretty much all concrete,” he said.

That’s why his parents, Judy and Lynn Redman, decided three years ago to get a plot at Costa Mesa’s then-new community garden on Hamilton and Charle streets.

Christian has grown corn, pumpkins, squash, herbs, tomatoes, beans — and the list continues.

The garden was opened in May 2004, and today all of its 42 parcels are in use at the cost of $30 a year for city residents and twice that amount for those who don’t live here.

It’s a parcel the city has never quite known what to do with, and its future as a garden was thrown into doubt last week when City Councilman Eric Bever suggested the land be sold to a developer who is planning an adjacent project.

Red Mountain Retail Group wants to replace an abandoned medical building with a Walgreens and add parking and 14 town homes on land just south of the garden, between Harbor Boulevard and Charle Street.

The council agreed last week to rezone the property for the project, but it’s not clear whether the developer wants the garden or if the council would vote to sell it.

Costa Mesa signed an agreement in 1974 to buy the garden plot for $43,000 in state park bond money. The owner at the time lived on the property and was allowed to stay during her lifetime, City Manager Allan Roeder said.

When she died in the late 1980s or early 1990s, city officials considered making it a pocket park, but they chose not to because of traffic on Hamilton. They the plan was for a skate park, but it was decided the parcel was too small with no room for on-site parking.

“Frankly that’s why it ended up as a community garden, because that’s about as benign an open space use as there is,” Roeder said.

Since it opened to gardeners in 2004, people like Ethan Kolasinski have poured their hearts into it. He grew plants on his parents’ Costa Mesa property until they moved away a few years ago, and — like the Redmans — he has only a concrete backyard.

Boasting vegetables, flowers and a large mutated cactus, Kolasinski’s plot is a veritable tour of different plants and habitats all on its own.

There’s a succulent and cactus area, and the grape arbor he built out of driftwood he found on the beach in Newport.

“I wanted to have a little bit of fun with it and have some dimension,” he said.

He grows what he needs to make fresh salsa — onions, tomatoes, peppers and cilantro — and he likes the smells of certain flowers, tuberose and freesia in particular. But dahlias are his passion, and he won 15 ribbons for them last year at the Orange County Fair.

Kolasinski said if the garden is sold, he’ll probably find somewhere else to take his plants, but he’s not sure why the council would close it after such a short time.

“Are they really going to sell out after four years? If so, why did they start it to begin with?” he said.

Bever said last week he had another spot in mind for a new garden if the Hamilton parcel is sold, but he didn’t elaborate. The property’s current value is unknown.

Lynn Redman said he’s not sure how a Walgreens in the neighborhood would do, but he doesn’t want to lose the $700-plus investment he’s made in his Hamilton plot.

“Everybody that started from the beginning has had to put a lot of money into the soil to be able to raise good crops,” he said.