Food before flowers

Green community: A volunteer with Crop Swap LA harvesting lettuce at the La Salle microfarm in the View Park neighbourhood. Front yards transformed to tiny crop farms in Los Angeles provide vegetables to dozens of families and use a fraction of the water needed by grass. — Photos: ©2024 The New York Times Company

ON a corner lot in Leimert Park in dusty South Los Angeles, not far from Obama and Crenshaw boulevards, sits a curiosity that’s wildly different from all the neighbouring grassy yards. Abundant and lush, it looks like a mash-up between a country idyll and something dreamed up by Dr Seuss.

Tangles of grapes and blackberries grow in clusters along a trellis. Leafy rows of basil, sweet potatoes and mesclun spring from raised garden troughs. Most striking are corridors of elevated planters stacked four high, like multilevel bunk beds, filled with kale, cabbage, arugula, various lettuces, eggplants, tatsoi and collard greens.

Run by a gardening wizard named Jamiah Hargins, this wee farm in the front yard of his bungalow provides fresh produce for 45 nearby families, all while using a tiny fraction of the water required by a lawn. At just 232.3 square metres, this farm forms the heart of Hargins’ non-profit, Crop Swap LA, which transforms yards and unused spaces into microfarms.

It runs three front yard farms that provide organic fruits and vegetables each week to 80 families, all living in a 1-mile (1.6km) radius, and often with food insecurity. Rooted in the empowering idea that people can grow their own food, Crop Swap LA has caught on, with a waitlist of 300 residents wanting to convert their yards into microfarms.

The project began inadvertently in 2018, when Hargins, who grew up on military bases and worked as an options trader and headhunter, decided to grow his own food. He didn’t have much experience, but he had a strong incentive. He wanted fresh produce for his baby daughter, and there weren’t great options around.

Hargins hammered together a garden bed out of old wood, filled it with soil, and began experimenting. He spent long hours outside, at daybreak and at night, watching how seedlings and plantings responded to growing in different parts of the yard. “He just took time to pay attention,” said his wife, Ginnia Hargins.

Their little garden grew, and eventually produced so much Swiss chard, broccoli, cauliflower and callaloo that Jamiah Hargins organised a produce exchange with other urban gardeners as well as with neighbours with bountiful fruit trees. He called the initiative Crop Swap LA.

The project has expanded to three front yard microfarms growing in adjoining neighbourhoods and transformed into a non-profit organisation.

The mini farms bring environmental benefits, thanks to irrigation and containment systems that capture and recycle rain. That allows the farms to produce thousands of pounds of food without using much water.

“Some people pay US$100 (RM438) a month on their water because they’re watering grass, but they don’t get to eat anything, no one gets any benefit from it,” Hargins said one recent early autumn evening outside his home and farm, stopping every now and then to wave at neighbours driving by.

Hargins estimated that his microfarm uses 98% less water than the lawn that once filled the space. The water bill for the family’s three-bedroom house and microfarm is just US$45 a month, he said.

Hargins installed solar panels on the roof to help power the house and the irrigation system, which includes 35 pumps. The produce is grown in a mixture of soil combined with compost, rock dust and other organic matter.

Microfarm transformations are not cheap. With US$4mil (RM17.5mil) from the state in 2021, Hargins spent US$150,000 to create his farm and expand the nonprofit, which he now runs full time with a staff of 13. Maintaining the three farms is also labour-intensive, but worth it, Hargins said.

“We’re housing nature,” he said, “and we’re feeding families.”

No empty space wasted: A few vegetable and herb plants grow in the park strip next to Crop Swap LA headquarters in Los Angeles.

Crop Swap LA operates much like farm shares, with subscribers paying for a bag of fresh fruit, herbs and vegetables each week.

Not every Angeleno can join. Hargins stipulates that recipients live within a 1-mile radius of the farms, to keep the food hyperlocal and reduce vehicle emissions associated with transportation. Priority is given to the elderly, disabled veterans, single parents, people fostering or adopting children, those living at or below the poverty level and recent immigrants. About 10% of members pay using food stamps, Hargins said. And though the produce grows in front yards, there hasn’t been any theft, not counting a few miscreant squirrels.

Crop Swap LA began to spread beyond Hargins’ garden in 2020. His wife, now a school principal, was chatting with a teacher, Mychal Creer, who had a grassy front yard but wanted to conserve water and grow something more useful than a lawn.

Ginnia Hargins introduced him to her husband, who was in the process of securing a US$50,000 grant from the nonprofit LA2050 to expand Crop Swap LA. Using US$35,000, he and Creer ripped out the Creers’ front lawn, and installed underground rainwater catchments and a solar-powered irrigation system.

They set out long rows of fabric tubes that functioned as garden beds, sowing them with around 2,000 plants. The sloped and triangular yard sits prominently at an intersection and was named Asante, Swahili for thank you. It draws curious passersby along with pollinating insects and hummingbirds.

“It’s been an eco-friendly place for the animals and for the humans,” said Creer, who has since left his teaching job to become Crop Swap LA’s head farmer. “I would love to see all these lawns here to eventually be growing food.”

On a recent Sunday, volunteers gathered at the Asante farm for the weekly harvest included Morgan Boone, 27, a production assistant for movies and television who said she donated her time to “help make bigger things happen,” and a sixth grader named Logan Villamor who lived nearby. Logan, 11, said he began volunteering several years ago after stumbling upon the farm on a walk with his mom.

“The fruits and vegetables are pretty yummy,” Logan said.

Not long after the Asante farm was built, Beverly Lofton, a retiree who lived nearby, sought advice from Jamiah Hargins on replacing plants and shrubs in her back garden with a small food garden. Hargins asked her if she’d be interested in installing a microfarm in her front yard.

“I just thought, wow, this is amazing, this is wonderful,” Lofton said. “This is something that would really help the environment, help the community and help with using less water.”

Lofton covered the $35,000 conversion, and collected $4,500 in rebates for removing her lawn. Her solar-powered irrigation system recycles water.

She named her microfarm LaSalle, after her husband, a chef and caterer, who died in 2016. The farm provides produce for 15 families, and is managed and harvested by staffers and volunteers. Lofton, who lives alone, said she appreciates their presence. “It’s like having a security team,” she said. One volunteer began visiting her monthly to cook recipes using produce from her yard.

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Securing steady funding for Crop Swap LA has proved a near-constant challenge, Hargins said. The nonprofit relies on fees from garden installations and workshops, grants and donations, as well as produce subscriptions, which he forecasts will bring in around $900,000 this year. Hargins also sells a coloring book, titled Captain Plant It.

Hargins said the nonprofit does not have the resources to cover the staff time, workers’ compensation, insurance and payroll taxes required to rapidly expand. “It takes leadership beyond us to guide and show the way,” he said.

There have been other challenges. In 2021, right after the Harginses’ second daughter was born, their landlord announced plans to demolish their rental home, so the family had to move and leave the garden beds behind.

They found the corner-lot bungalow in Leimert Park, which they bought early in the pandemic. They built a crash barrier after a car barreled into the front yard and built what is now Crop Swap LA’s largest and most complex farm.

Leimert Park is a historic neighborhood designed by the Olmsted Brothers, the landscape architecture firm created in 1898 by John Charles and Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. As the new vertical farm was being built, neighbors had concerns about aesthetics, and what exactly would be grown, said Katherine Wong, an early supporter and Crop Swap LA subscriber who lives nearby.

But they softened as they came to understand what Hargins was doing, said Wong, who was amazed by the variety and freshness of the produce, harvested hours before delivery.

Okra, which Wong said was not part of her Chinese culture, spurred her to make gumbo. “I truly feel like it helps give our neighbors an understanding of each other’s cultures,” she said, adding that she also was introduced to mamey, a fruit eaten in many Latin American countries, and guava, the tropical fruit.

“I can’t think of a more generous gift to give to the community than to grow delicious, naturally organic food for the direct community,” Wong continued. “This is one of the noblest things anyone is doing today.” — ©2024 The New York Times Company

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.