(C) El Paso Matters.org
This story was originally published by El Paso Matters.org and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Can El Paso community gardens improve our health? [1]

['Priscilla Totiyapungprasert', 'More Priscilla Totiyapungprasert', 'El Paso Matters', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width']

Date: 2024-09-26

Jaxiry Hernandez explained her idea as she walked along a canal in El Paso’s Lower Valley, a gaggle of Yorkshire terriers and a red heeler scampering near her feet.

“People can come and grow what they want,” she said. “I have the land. I have water. Why not?”

On the other side of the canal, Hernandez started a garden called the Border Grove. It’s her “happy place,” a spot of green where her watermelon patch and apple saplings juxtapose the cars whizzing past on Loop 375 and the rust-colored beams forming the border wall.

After sharing her summer harvest with neighbors, she’s thinking of sharing her unused space with people to grow food.

There’s a handful of community gardens scattered throughout El Paso, places where a group of people can tend to a communal piece of land or their own individual plots beside each other. Some get their start on private property, such as Border Grove and Planty for the People, a nonprofit garden in Central El Paso.

Others operate on city or county property, such as the Welden Yerby Senior Community Garden in Northeast El Paso and the Ascarate Teaching and Demonstration Garden in Ascarate Park.

Sookhi Buchanan and John Martinez walk through rows of vegetables and ornamental plants at the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Research shows community gardens offer a variety of health benefits. They can encourage people to eat more plants and fill in nutritional gaps. They can also increase people’s physical activity and improve mental health, all while fostering social connections.

But when funding dries up, community gardens can fall into a state of disarray. That’s what happened to the Vista del Valle Community Garden in East El Paso, a project the city once touted as the prototype for gardens in city parks.

A lack of resources is one of the main challenges community gardens face that limit their potential to address food insecurity and reach a broader segment of El Paso’s population, said horticulturist Eddie Rascon, a county extension agent from Texas A&M AgriLife. The agency, along with volunteer group El Paso Master Gardeners, manages the Ascarate Teaching and Demonstration Garden.

“Very few community gardens we have here are big enough to sustain community needs,” Rascon admitted.

Border Grove plants seed for new community garden

When Hernandez purchased her ranch in 2022, she discovered the land was incredibly fertile – any seeds she planted took to the soil, growing into honeydew melons and squash and white corn.

Hundreds of fruits and vegetables sprung from this garden this past summer – so much that she had to give food away to neighbors and visitors. Her daughter Aixa, co-founder of El Paso Mushroom Co., started the Instagram account @bordergrove to help sell the rest.

Aixa Hernandez holds up a gourd, part of the harvest on Border Grove this fall, Sept. 6, 2024. Hernandez likes to make small containers from the gourds. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Border Grove Farm lies just across the highway from the international border in El Paso’s Lower Valley. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Jaxiry Hernandez, owner of Border Grove Farm, has coaxed dozens of beds of vegetables and fruit trees in the last two years from land that was bare, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Aixa Hernandez walks betweeen garden plots at Border Grove, a farm owned by her mother, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Jaxiry Hernandez, owner of Border Grove Farm, visits her pecan orchard with a pack of tiny escorts, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Jaxiry Hernandez, left, owner of Border Grove Farm, and her daughter Athziry speak with USDA urban conservationist Maggie Gannon, center, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Athziry Hernandez sits in her mother’s sunroom to try dishes made from flor de calabaza and mushrooms, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Aixa Hernandez walks betweeen garden plots at Border Grove, a farm owned by her mother, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Athziry Hernandez, left, sits with her mother, Jaxiry Hernandez, to try dishes made from flor de calabaza and mushrooms, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Melons and squash fill a basket in Jaxiry Hernandez’s sunroom. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Hernandez plans next year to turn Border Grove into a community garden. While she and her daughters are still working on the logistics, the general plan is to start with a few plots and a family assigned to each one. Hernandez saves her seeds and said she can offer these to budding gardeners.

Rascon said there are nutritional benefits to community gardens because people are often exposed to diverse plants and will likely eat the fruits of their hard labor. A 2023 study led by Michigan State University found that community gardeners increase their vegetable intake and seasonal eating.

“People need to know how to eat, how to plant, how to harvest,” Hernandez said. “A lot of people don’t have the opportunity because they don’t have a little space. This is all you need to start – a little piece of land.”

Hernandez owns both land and water rights, giving her some control over the garden’s future. Growers who rent their space are at the mercy of landlords who decide when their time is up.

Adriana Wilcox, who manages Planty for the People, experienced this uncertainty when First Christian Church sold its property at 901 Arizona Ave. last year and Wilcox could not afford the rent increase. She and her husband eventually had to close their adjacent restaurant, but are allowed to keep the garden there for now.

Adriana Wilcox, co-founder of Planty for the People, stands in the community garden at the property of the former First Christian Church on Arizona Avenue in June 2023. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Maggie Gannon, an urban conservationist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, visited Border Grove on a recent September afternoon to offer technical assistance.

Gannon leads a voluntary program that helps people in El Paso’s agricultural community manage their resources, such as advising ways to conserve water and prevent soil erosion. Eligible participants can also receive financial assistance – a critical requirement to not only starting an operation, but maintaining it for the long run.

“I know enough to help people find grants and can guide people as much as I can,” Gannon said. “If we can’t help, we try to find an organization that can.”

Welden Yerby garden gives seniors exercise, cultural foods, friendships

Gardens on city property fall under the El Paso Parks and Recreation Department, but the city takes an overall hands-off approach, letting volunteers manage the gardens, volunteer coordinators told El Paso Matters.

This approach has worked for the Welden Yerby Senior Community Garden at 9175 Stahala Drive. The garden was founded in 1972, making it one of the oldest continuous community gardens in the city.

The garden has about 50 active members and last year the board lowered the garden’s age requirement from 55 to 50 to expand membership. The pandemic changed the garden, coordinator Joyce Ealey said. Some volunteers died from COVID-19. Others never returned after stay-at-home orders were lifted.

Joyce Ealey, left, coordinator of the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, explains how the membership-based community garden space functions, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Welden Yerby has its own volunteer governing board, which collects membership dues and oversees the garden. The dues go toward buying equipment, such as shovels and wheelbarrows, and paying people to help clean the garden.

The board contacts the parks department for more serious repairs, such as a waterline break. But otherwise, they rarely hear from or get visits from the parks department, Ealey said.

“Forty dollars gets you a garden slot. We do not say plot because people think you’re going to be buried there,” Ealey joked.

On a recent morning, volunteers Vickie Dye, John Martinez and Sookhi Buchanan led a tour of the garden and inspected the end of summer crops. Ealey’s husband, Jimmy, pulled weeds from around his red ripper peas, a drought-resistant legume he likes to cook Southern style, boiled with ham hocks. Like many Northeast residents, he and his wife moved to El Paso for the military and brought their regional tastes with them.

Buchanan points out the bitter melons that look like spiky cucumbers on vines, purple sweet potato and daikon roots recognizable from their edible leaves, and the last of the Korean melons, known for their soft and juicy pulp. She’s lived in El Paso longer than she’s lived in Korea at this point in her life, but these fruits and vegetables let her prepare dishes she grew up eating.

Cultural foodways have health benefits. In one 2023 study, researchers found eating culturally appropriate foods appeared to help immigrants with mental health issues and their overall well-being.

Sookhi Buchanan checks a vegetable plot at the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Buchanan said she keeps a garden at home, but likes to come to the community garden for the friendships and social aspect. Gardening is also hard work and gives them a chance to exercise, Dye added. The idea for the senior garden even came out of discussions at a recreation center about seniors not getting enough physical activity, she said.

Experts agree both social and physical activity can help older adults experience less cognitive decline and dementia-related disease.

Part of the senior garden’s success comes down to the time volunteers put in, Dye said. Volunteers are older, many of them retired, and may have more time to maintain the garden than full-time workers raising children.

What happened to Vista del Valle, El Paso’s prototype garden?

Time, labor and funds are probably the three biggest challenges in keeping a community garden going, Rascon listed.

The Ascarate Teaching and Demonstration Garden differs from other gardens because it’s attached to Texas A&M Agrilife, which has a consistent source of funds cycling through, a governing body for accountability and paid employees such as himself. It’s also attached to the El Paso Master Gardeners group, which has its own governing body and a pool of volunteers.

Other gardens rely on more loosely organized volunteers. Volunteers give hours of their time and effort without getting paid, Rascon said. A community garden may start with an initial grant, but that funding needs to be cyclical, he said.

Jimmy Ealey opens a pod of beans from his plot at Welden Yerby Senior Gardens, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Sookhi Buchanan and John Martinez walk through rows of vegetables and ornamental plants at the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Okra plants bloom in the Welden Yerby Senior Garden in northeast El Paso, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Vickie Dye points out a patch of carrots, one of the vegetables that can be grown in the winter in El Paso, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Peppers in a plot at Welden Yerby Senior Garden show burns from intense sun and heat, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Each member of Welden Yerby Senior Garden has a plot where they can choose what to plant while having access to soil and water, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Sookhi Buchanan checks a vegetable plot at the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Vickie Dye breaks open a passionfruit, a quickgrowing vine that she grows to support butterflies but that also produces a sweet fruit, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

A row of flowers brightens the Welden Yerby Senior Garden in northeast El Paso, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Clockwise from top, Sookhi Buchanan, Anglish Burnett, John Martinez, Joyce Ealey and Vickie Dye, members of the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, share stories about the garden, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Joyce Ealey, left, coordinator of the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, explains how the membership-based community garden space functions, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Vickie Dye, a member of the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, likes to garden at the city-owned space for exercise and socialization, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

“What happens when I need to redo the raised beds because the weather eroded them?” Rascon said. “What if I need a new irrigation system? The purpose of a community garden is not to make money, but it has maintenance costs.”

This is the dilemma volunteers at Vista del Valle Community Garden are facing.

The city announced the garden’s opening in May 2012 at 9031 Viscount Blvd. with a robust level of involvement. It was the first community garden in a city park, according to a news release from that time.

The garden began with 27 plots and donations from Home Depot and Mountain State Wholesale Nursery. The El Paso Community College Aquaponics Club donated an aquaponics system that pumped ammonia-rich water from a fish tank to irrigate the plots.

Other groups got involved with the garden’s beginnings, including special needs participants from the adjacent recreation center, the Cielo Vista Neighborhood Association and the Rio Grande Girl Scouts. Over the years, the garden has hosted seed exchanges, workshops and invited schools to visit.

But the garden, initially funded by a grant from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation, has fallen into a dismal state and changed leadership multiple times.

When funds ran out, members left, said Jennifer Segura, the former volunteer coordinator for the garden. There are about 17 active members now. Segura said she did not collect membership dues because it didn’t seem fair considering the major upgrades the garden needs.

Jennifer Segura, former volunteer manager of the Vista del Valle Community Garden in El Paso, sent the city this photo in April 2024 to show the garden needed repairs to its irrigation system. (Courtesy of Jennifer Segura)

El Paso spokesperson Rick Isaias wrote in an email that a garden group must fill out an application and sign an agreement to enter a partnership with the city. The group, such as a neighborhood association, is in charge of maintaining the garden while the city provides land and water.

The city can also help with infrastructure repairs, but does not use general funds on community garden operations. Groups can apply for grants and fundraise donations for the garden, Isaias wrote.

Most recently, Segura passed the Vista del Valle garden’s leadership to Patrick Brandon, a physical therapist and volunteer who lives in the neighborhood. Seguara said she received a copy of the garden’s old contract, but was unable to enter a new agreement before she left.

Brandon said the garden has not changed much in the two years he’s volunteered and the garden is in dire need of repairs. Many of the planters have deteriorated and the storage shed is falling apart. Much of the water system doesn’t work, causing some plots to overflow with water and others to not receive enough water.

Members maintain their individual plots at their own expense and a couple have helped with repairing the pavilion. Brandon said he’s in contact with the city and still trying to figure out who is responsible for which repairs.

“To be honest with you, I’m kinda embarrassed,” Brandon said. “We would love to have the community garden prosper. But because there are all these beds in disarray and disrepair, I don’t want to assign a plot to someone and the water doesn’t work or the bed leaks.”

El Paso Matters obtained a copy of the 2018 contract Segura received, which states the city is responsible for water costs and electricity costs “within reason.” It also states the city should process service requests for irrigation and infrastructure issues, such as pergolas, tool sheds, fencing and garden bed structures. The contract does not specify an expiration date or who was in charge then of the Vista del Valle garden.

Limitations to community gardens

The Ascarate garden at 301 Manny Martinez Senior Drive began in 2011 with a federal grant to address food insecurity, Rascon said. Its main purpose is to provide education and workshops to the people about what grows well in the desert, improving access to food and nutrition.

Vickie Dye points out a patch of carrots, one of the vegetables that can be grown in the winter in El Paso, Sept. 18, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

Hernandez estimated about half of her groceries in the summer came from the Border Grove. Buchanan said almost all her vegetables in the summer came from the senior garden. The Ascarate garden produces enough food sometimes to donate extra produce to the El Pasoans Fighting Hunger Food Bank.

People who participate in community gardens are more likely to eat more fruits and vegetables than those who don’t. But studies show community gardens are limited in how well they address food insecurity.

A paper published in August in the Sustainability Science journal examined 18 urban community gardens in the Central Coast of California. Researchers found that while community gardens can supply significant amounts of fresh fruit and vegetables, gardeners with the most food needs are not producing the most food.

Gardeners with higher income levels and those who have the ability to spend more time in the gardens reported greater food production than people who had more food insecurity, typically people with lower income levels and larger family sizes.

Rascon said community gardens in El Paso could improve accessibility if someone, perhaps in city or county government, oversaw the network of gardens and checked in on them. He suggested the liaison also meet up with a committee made up of a representative from each garden, including private nonprofit gardens.

It’s worth looking into a more city or county-wide, organized effort so the gardens aren’t so disjointed from each other, he said.

Jaxiry Hernandez, left, owner of Border Grove Farm, and her daughter Athziry speak with USDA urban conservationist Maggie Gannon, center, Sept. 6, 2024. (Corrie Boudreaux/El Paso Matters)

There are people who might be interested in gardening, but don’t even know what’s available in their own neighborhood, Rascon said. People won’t drive to a community garden on the other side of town just to grow peppers, he said.

Isaias provided a list of three: the Welden Yerby Senior Garden, the Mountain View Park garden in Northeast El Paso, and the Pollinator Garden at Montoya Heights Park in Northwest El Paso.

Vista del Valle Community Garden and Chamizal Community Garden, established a decade ago, are no longer on the active list, but the city is working with groups to reactivate previously functioning gardens, Isaias wrote.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://elpasomatters.org/2024/09/26/el-paso-community-gardens-health-benefits/

Published and (C) by El Paso Matters.org
Content appears here under this condition or license: Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0 International.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/elpasomatters/

You are viewing proxied material from magical.fish. The copyright of proxied material belongs to its original authors. Any comments or complaints in relation to proxied material should be directed to the original authors of the content concerned. Please see the disclaimer for more details.