City Heights Roots Garden is one of the original sites of a national community garden project. The City Heights Garden is comprised of 89 plots and has been going strong for over a decade. Originally designed to provide resettled refugees families with land space to grow produce as a means of income from the sale of their organic produce. As many newcomers gain skills and integrate into their new homeland, they find other means of supporting their families. Yet they continue to invest time and energy in the Roots Community Garden. Beyond a means of generating an income, it is common space where they can welcome new immigrant/refugee families as they were welcomed and supported upon their own resettlement.
Supporting refugee and immigrated residents to establish roots in the community is a key aspect of the Roots Garden and Roots Farms projects. Community gardeners tend the soil and plants using the skills honed from experience crop growing in their homelands that they were forced to abandon. Gardeners learn practical skills from each other, noting similarities and differences in techniques depending upon their experiences in their home agriculture. Working side by side they adapt their skills and knowledge to the characteristics of the local soil in their new neighborhoods. The garden serves as a common space to gather, feel productive and gain a sense of purpose. It also serves as a gathering space to cultivate a sense of belonging of community membership. Camaraderie among its gardeners allows them to share their resettlement experiences with others who can truly understand the burden and sadness of leaving home. Their special bond is a type of kinship used to encourage support each other to take advantage of new opportunities with optimism and to celebrate accomplishments (in and beyond the garden space) with joy. In a similar way, the plants in the garden and the gardeners themselves are both growing roots, producing fruit, and thriving.
I recently visited the Roots Garden in City Heights a richly diverse neighborhood of San Diego that is home to many refugee families. The community garden is in an urban area, surrounded by local commerce and adjacent to a very busy highway. Yet, once you enter the garden itself it is a peaceful and serene place. As a collective the garden is a cohesive plot with vegetation of varying hues of green and yellow peppered by shots of vivid color creating a multi-sensory landscape. As you walk around the individual gardening plots, the specific features of the plants including differences in size (large and small), shape (climbing vines, low bushes, tall stalks), texture (rough, smooth, prickly) and scents (pungent, sweet, citrusy) come into focus. The garden offers a range of types of plants as diverse as their gardeners. I couldn’t help but recognize the connection between the natural ecosystem where diverse plant life coexists and the human ecosystem that supports and cultivates the diversity of gardeners’ human life to thrive.
To compliment the above City Height Roots Garden photo essay, I generated a creative text combining original poetry with lyrics quoted from songs about refugee/immigrant life. My goal is to honor the resilience and achievements of refugee/immigrant families of this community.
Growing Roots
War, draught, economic recession
Causing stress and depression
No relief, no hope
Creates drama
Deciding to stay or leave
Families living with trauma
I might be in this bed for the last time
All I really want is some peace of mind
Seems like the blind still leading the blind
Rumours of war on the borderline
When we ask a question, no one knows
Tell me, what the hell are we fighting for? (1)
Families have no voice
Families have no choice
It doesn’t matter that you’re a landowner, no concern for documents
Forced to leave by politics and corrupt governments
Leaving their beloved homeland
Heading for a new land
Fleeing their native country
Means risks to their safety
See us go, as they go, across the borderlines
I can feel the fear hang heavy on the water
Glinting sharply with the pale moonlight
Mothers hold on tightly to your children
The waves are breaking violently tonight (2)
You don't ask why our farms were abandoned
Or of our choice between vida y muerte
Or why we would take such a gamble
Por las esperanzas del Norte (3)
Refugee families seek a new home
To call their own
No longer need to roam
The journey is hard
Waiting for officials to process your life and process your card
One by one
We will come
You make me wait
At the gate
To see your face again
Walked a thousand miles (4)
New faces, world citizens building unity
New places, creating a sense of community
New sights
Purpose and thriving in City heights
Pain and distance can hearts harden
Softened by tending the soil
Healing through natures toil
City Heights Roots Garden
A refugee Eden
Sharing their burden and sadness
Supporting their healing and encouraging their gladness From leaving cherished homeland
To growing community roots in their new land
Special bonds of friendship
Dirt therapy is a kinship
Through this sacred space
I have found a place
Made me a professional
The garden gave me a name
From varied heritage but the same
United with one another
As sister and brother
References
YouTube video available on 14 Songs about The Refugee Experience Lyrics available on Genius
1 Follow Me by Moxi Raia and Wyclef
2 Émigré’ by Alexa Diane
3 Vayan Al Norte by Eliza Gilkyson
4 1x1 – by Cold War kids