Destruction in the Amazon. Clear-cutting of virgin forests. These are sad, infuriating events, but they can also seem distant – even abstract. How about the wanton destruction of a thriving Los Angeles community garden? Now that brought me to tears.

Who owns the land?

In 1992, after the Los Angeles riots, a 14-acre community garden was formed in an industrial section of South Central LA. Over 350 families banded together to create an urban paradise and grow their own food in the middle of a largely forgotten and blighted concrete jungle.

There was only one problem. Although they were clearly stewards of the land, they never legally owned it. Thus began a saga that played out for years and garnered the active support of the likes of Daryl Hannah. The families had been granted a revocable license to use the lot, but in 2004 the original owner decided to sell it and a few years later bulldozed the lush gardens (watch the heartbreaking video and you’ll be moved to tears) to build another warehouse in an already industrial part of town. The gardeners banded together as the South Central Farmers and protested to save their community gardens, but it wasn’t to be. The story is poignantly told in the Academy Award nominated documentary entitled The Garden.

Adding insult to injury, the proposed warehouse to be built on the now bulldozed and barren lot is a storage and distribution center for Forever 21. The South Central Farmers are working hard to stop that from happening too, and if possible, reclaim their beloved land to create paradise once again.

Listen to Joni Mitchell: Big Yellow Taxi

If there’s one way to sum up the English, it’s in our approach to community gardening.

Across the Atlantic, gardeners club together and collectively transform large swathes of common land into something beautiful and useful. Agrarian democracy, you might say. Here, it’s feudalism – with the land carved into allotments and parceled out to individuals, for individuals. For a nominal fee to the local town council, an allotment is an Englishman/-woman’s private kingdom to tend and make productive. It’s an opportunity for good, satisfying hard work, a sense of community with one’s neighbors (who often became good friends), and the simple yet deep pleasure that comes from shouting “Gerroff my land!”

In recent years the allotment system has struggled. Growing demand has severely outstripped dwindling supply – from the million allotments available to the public at the end of the Second World War, only a quarter remained by 1997. In recent years the figure has risen – but so has the waiting list of people, currently around the 100,000 mark. In the ’70s it was green issues (championed by the iconic sitcom The Good Life) that made gardening hot again. Now it’s the economy. Free food? Where do I sign?

Our local and national government simply can’t keep up – but it’s just got an enormous boost from a most unlikely direction. The National Trust (a charitable organization looking after historic properties, and one of Britain’s biggest landowners) has just released land for the creation of 1,000 new allotments. That may not sound much compared with demand, but it’s thrown the plight of allotmenteers directly into the limelight – and those 1,000 plots could still create around $2.5 million’s worth of groceries for their lucky owners. There’s also the symbolism: one of Britain’s traditionally conservative organizations (in a literal sense), recognizing that food self-sufficiency is the way forward. Exciting stuff.

A new generation of gardeners and landowners are dragging on their wellies – and while the economy suffers, our green and pleasant land is going to work.

Image: lizjones112