In East Los Angeles, a community garden is not a landscaping project. It is a small act of territorial reclamation. When I bless a garden bed behind Our Lady of Soledad, I am not blessing tomatoes. I am blessing the right of a grandmother to feed her grandchildren without asking permission from a landlord, a city planner, or a grocery chain that decided her zip code was not profitable enough. Food sovereignty is the name for that right. It sits alongside tenant rights, land-use policy, and restorative justice as one of the pillars of a parish that refuses to be a waiting room for displacement.
Food sovereignty is the ability of a community to control its own food system: what is grown, who grows it, who eats it, and on what terms. The term came out of the global peasant movement La Vía Campesina in the 1990s, but the practice is older than any policy paper. It is the victory garden of a wartime widow. It is the milpa of a Mixtec family in Boyle Heights. It is the raised bed behind a rent-controlled apartment building where a tenant who cannot afford a lawyer still knows how to save seeds. When we talk about community gardens in this parish, we are not talking about a hobby. We are talking about a defense against hunger that is also a defense against erasure.
I have buried parishioners who died waiting for a liver transplant and parishioners who died waiting for a rent check to clear. I have also watched a twelve-year-old girl cry because the cucumber she planted from seed was eaten by a squirrel before she could harvest it. Both griefs are real. The garden does not solve the first one. But it does something about the second one, and that something is not small. It teaches a child that she can participate in the production of her own nourishment. That is a theological statement. It is also a political one.
What a Garden Actually Produces
A community garden produces vegetables, yes. But it also produces something less visible: a reason for neighbors to stay on the same block. When a landlord files an Ellis Act eviction, the first thing that disappears is not the building. It is the network of people who knew each other’s names. The garden is one of the few places where that network can be rebuilt without a permit. It is a commons, and a commons is a threat to anyone who profits from isolation.
In our parish, the garden behind the sacristy is not owned by the parish. It is held in trust by a committee of tenants, seniors, and youth. The committee decides what to plant, how to distribute the harvest, and who gets a bed when someone moves away. That structure matters. If the garden were run by the pastor alone, it would be a charity project. Run by the people who eat from it, it becomes a small government. And small governments are how people learn to govern larger things, like a neighborhood council or a rent board.
The Difference Between a Food Bank and a Food System
A food bank gives a family a box of canned goods. A food system decides whether that family’s neighborhood has a grocery store, a farmers market, or a garden. East Los Angeles has more fast-food outlets per square mile than many wealthier parts of the city, and fewer full-service grocery stores. That is not an accident. It is a land-use decision made by people who do not live here. A community garden is a small correction to that decision. It does not replace a grocery store. But it changes the question from “What can we get?” to “What can we grow?”
When a parishioner named Marta started growing nopales in a raised bed, she was not trying to make a political statement. She was trying to feed her diabetic husband something that would not spike his blood sugar. But the nopales did make a political statement. They said: this plant belongs here. This food belongs here. This woman belongs here. And when the landlord tried to raise her rent by forty percent, the garden committee wrote a letter. It did not stop the rent increase. But it told the landlord that Marta was not alone. That is what food sovereignty looks like in a rent-controlled building. It looks like a letter signed by twelve people who have eaten her nopales.
Land Use Is a Food Issue
Every community garden in Los Angeles sits on land that could have been something else. A parking lot. A condominium. A vacant lot waiting for a developer to call it an opportunity zone. The fact that a garden exists at all is a land-use decision, and it is a decision that can be reversed. I have seen gardens bulldozed because a property owner found a better offer. I have seen gardens saved because a parish council refused to sell. The difference is not luck. It is organization.
In 2012, the city of Los Angeles adopted a Community Garden Policy to make it easier for vacant city-owned lots to be used for gardens. The policy was a victory for groups like the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, which has supported gardens across the county for decades. But a policy is only as strong as the people who enforce it. When a garden is threatened, the first question is not “What does the policy say?” The first question is “Who is willing to show up at a hearing?”
That is why the garden committee at Our Lady of Soledad keeps a list of every member’s phone number, and why we practice making phone calls before we need to make phone calls. It is why we invite the local council office to the harvest festival, not to ask for anything, but so that when we do ask, the staffer already knows our names. That is not cynical. That is how land-use policy works in a city where land is the most valuable thing a poor person does not own.
Restorative Justice in the Garden
Restorative justice is usually discussed in the context of crime: a circle where a victim and an offender meet, where harm is named, and where repair is attempted. But the garden is also a place of restorative justice. It restores a relationship that has been broken: the relationship between a person and the land that feeds them. For many of our parishioners, that relationship was broken by migration, by poverty, by the simple fact that they live in apartments with no dirt. The garden restores it, one season at a time.
I have seen a young man on probation spend an afternoon turning compost and leave with his shoulders lower than when he arrived. I have seen a woman who had not spoken to her sister in three years start speaking to her again over a shared row of chiles. The garden does not force reconciliation. It creates the conditions for it. That is what restorative justice means in practice: not a program, but a place where people can practice being in right relationship with each other and with the earth.
The Liturgical Calendar and the Growing Season
The Church has its own calendar, and the garden has its own. They do not always align, but when they do, the result is a kind of preaching that does not need words. During Lent, we plant. During Easter, we harvest the first greens. During Ordinary Time, we weed. During Advent, we let the soil rest. The garden becomes a catechesis of patience, which is the virtue most needed by anyone who has ever tried to organize tenants or change a zoning law.
On the feast of St. Isidore the Farmer, we bless the tools. On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, we plant roses, because roses are the sign she gave to Juan Diego, and because roses grow well in this climate. These are not decorations. They are reminders that the land is sacred, and that the people who work it are doing sacred work, even when the work is just pulling weeds.
What Food Sovereignty Requires
Food sovereignty requires more than a garden. It requires a community that can defend the garden. It requires tenants who know their rights, and who know that a garden is not a substitute for rent control. It requires a parish that is willing to use its land for the benefit of the neighborhood, not just for the benefit of the parish budget. It requires a city that treats vacant lots as public resources, not as private opportunities. And it requires a church that remembers that the first question God asks in the Garden of Eden is not “What did you do?” but “Where are you?”
We are here. We are in East Los Angeles. We are growing food on land that was once a parking lot, and we are not asking permission to be hungry. That is the beginning of food sovereignty. The vegetables are just the evidence.
Practical Steps for a Parish Garden
If your parish or neighborhood wants to start a garden, do not start with seeds. Start with a meeting. Ask who is hungry, who has time, who has knowledge, and who has land. The answers will tell you whether you are starting a garden or a fight. Sometimes it is both.
1. Find the Land and the Landlord
Every garden needs a site, and every site has an owner. The owner may be the city, the county, a private landlord, or the parish itself. Find out who owns the land before you put a shovel in it. In Los Angeles, the County Assessor’s office has a parcel map that can tell you who owns any piece of land. If the land is owned by the city, the Community Garden Policy may apply. If it is owned by a private landlord, you will need a lease, and you will need to read it carefully. A garden lease should be long enough to justify the work: at least five years, preferably ten.
2. Test the Soil
Urban soil can be contaminated with lead, arsenic, and other heavy metals, especially in neighborhoods with old housing stock and heavy traffic. Before you plant anything edible, test the soil. The University of California Cooperative Extension offers soil testing services, and many community garden organizations can help you interpret the results. If the soil is contaminated, do not despair. Raised beds with clean soil are a common solution, and they are also easier on the knees of older gardeners.
3. Build a Committee, Not a Club
A garden club is a group of people who like to garden. A garden committee is a group of people who are accountable to each other and to the neighborhood. The committee should have a written agreement that covers who gets a bed, how long they can keep it, what happens if they abandon it, and how disputes are resolved. This is not bureaucracy. It is the difference between a garden that lasts ten years and a garden that lasts one summer.
4. Grow What People Eat
Do not grow kale because it is trendy. Grow what the people in your neighborhood actually eat. In East Los Angeles, that means chiles, tomatoes, nopales, cilantro, squash, and corn. Ask the elders what they grew in their home countries. Ask the children what they will actually put in their mouths. A garden full of food nobody wants is a garden that will be abandoned by August.
5. Plan for the Harvest
A garden produces more than any one family can eat, and it produces it all at once. Decide early how the harvest will be distributed. Some gardens give each gardener a share and donate the rest to a food pantry. Some gardens sell the surplus at a farm stand and use the money for water and tools. Some gardens do both. The important thing is that the decision is made by the committee, not by the pastor or the funder.
The Garden as a Parish Ministry
A parish garden is not a social service program. It is a ministry, which means it is a place where people encounter God and each other. The encounter may happen while planting seeds, while arguing about the water bill, or while sitting on a bench watching the tomatoes ripen. It is not always peaceful. Ministry is not always peaceful. But it is always real.
When I stand in the garden on a Saturday morning, I see the parish the way it should be: old and young, Spanish-speaking and English-speaking, homeowners and tenants, all doing the same work. The garden does not erase the differences. It just gives the differences something to do together. That is more than most programs can claim.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is food sovereignty, and how is it different from food security?
Food security means having enough food to eat. Food sovereignty means having control over the food system that feeds you. A family can be food secure while eating only what a food bank gives them. That same family is not food sovereign unless they have a say in what is grown, where it is grown, and who profits from it. Community gardens are one small step toward food sovereignty because they put the means of production in the hands of the people who eat the food.
Do community gardens actually help with tenant rights?
They can, but not automatically. A garden gives tenants a reason to organize and a place to meet. It builds relationships that can be activated when a landlord threatens eviction or a rent increase. But a garden is not a substitute for knowing your rights under the Los Angeles Rent Stabilization Ordinance or for joining a tenants union. The garden is a tool, not a solution. It works best when it is connected to a broader organizing effort.
What if our parish does not have land for a garden?
Look for land that is not being used: a vacant lot, a schoolyard, a parkway strip, a rooftop. Talk to the owner. Talk to your city council office. Talk to the Los Angeles Community Garden Council, which has helped start gardens on all kinds of land. If there is truly no land, start with containers on a sidewalk or a balcony. The point is not the size of the garden. The point is the practice of growing food together and the relationships that practice creates.
Is a community garden a form of restorative justice?
It can be. Restorative justice is about repairing harm and restoring relationships. A garden restores the relationship between people and the land, between neighbors who have been isolated, and between a community and its own history. It is not a replacement for a formal restorative justice process, but it can be a place where the values of restorative justice are practiced in daily life.
What Comes Next
This article is the first in a series on food sovereignty and land use in East Los Angeles. The next article will look at the history of community gardens in Boyle Heights, from the victory gardens of the 1940s to the displacement fights of the present. If you have a story about a garden in your neighborhood, or if your parish is thinking about starting one, write to me. The garden is not a metaphor. It is a place. And places need people who will defend them.