Wanted: Vacant space for a community garden.
Location: Anywhere suitable in Pacific Beach.
About to lose the Pacific Beach Community Garden (PBCG), which has existed for nearly 38 years at Roosevelt Avenue and Shasta Street, community activists searching for new urban gardening sites say they won’t be too picky.
Gardening enthusiast Paula Ferracco noted there isn’t an overabundance of prospective locales from which to choose.
“PB is rather unique, not too much open space, and what space there is isn’t ‘free,’ ” said Ferracco. “I have nothing definite, but a few ‘maybes,’”
The land for the PBCG is owned by The Arc of San Diego, which provides services to children and adults with disabilities and owns a group-living home in the neighborhood. ARC had previously allowed its land to be used as a community garden. But changing financial circumstances has forced ARC to take its property back and sell it.
“Currently The Arc of San Diego is conducting confidential negotiations with a prospective buyer and at this time we do not have additional details regarding timeline for vacating the property,” said ARC spokesperson Jennifer Bates Navarra.
On Monday, March 9, a couple gardeners who were working on their plots, and who did not want to be named, said they were told the property would be sold as early as June, but “we’ll see if it goes through.”
“I have been reaching out to likely landowners, asking for space to develop gardens,” Ferraco said of her garden quest.
Noting a couple of local landowners have offered small side yards or pedestrian strips, Ferracco noted, “A real find is one that would accommodate 20 to 30 gardeners. I still look, call, knock on doors. I am hopeful.”
Ocean Beach Community Garden in Loma Portal is accepting a few of the displaced Pacific Beach Community Planning Group members’ gardens.
“Wonderful news for those lucky gardeners,” Ferracco said.
The PBCG with 55 cultivated plots has bloomed largely under the radar at Shasta and Roosevelt in Crown Point. Nearby residents, who didn’t have room to garden at their own homes, waited two years or longer for a chance to till the soil there. The garden’s vegetables, which have included tomatoes, squash, zucchini, beans, peppers and chard, have been its biggest crops. Flowers have also shared many of the 15-foot-by-20-foot and half-size plots.
Garden enthusiasts have been banding together for months, even before the bad news about losing PBCG, under the auspices of PBDIGS with a website of the same name. Grassroots group spokesman Andrew Martin has been involved in a related effort to obtain city approval for a prospective community garden/beautification in the Pacific Beach Drive median between Jewell and Kendall streets. But, he admitted, it’s a time-consuming effort.
“We’ve been trying to start a garden there, but the city’s raised some concerns about safety with that because of the traffic,” Martin said. “They said we’re going to have to do something to slow down traffic by reworking that intersection on both sides (ends) by putting in roundabouts or stop signs.”
Ultimately, Martin said what gardeners would like to see is every community space available be converted from lean to green.
“Residents along the streets who’ve created their own cactus gardens, we’re not interested in tearing those up,” said Martin. “But in the middle of our medians, some of which are pretty barren, gardening is what we’d like to do. Unfortunately, it’s a slow effort.”
Martin said the next step in the city-approval process for setting up a new PB community garden is to “get signatures to support it.”
“We have 20 now and we needed 10,” he said of the garden project’s status.
Ferracco said her open-ended gardening request has already borne fruit.
“A PB neighbor has offered half of his backyard for a community garden,” she said. “We are so grateful. He had more back yard than he could manage, and he has welcomed eight of us to garden the unused section.”
Ferracco added the soil in the new gardening spot, with the help of an arborist, is being prepared pruning trees and clearing weeds with an eye toward planting by late April.
“We assumed all the costs for building the garden,” Ferracco said. “We’ll pay our portion of the water.” Have green space?
Pacific Beach Community Garden members are looking for new areas to keep growing. Visit www.pbdigs.com to help them out.