Old money, lost farm

Henry Huntington, the streetcar and subdivision tycoon who did more to suburbanize Los Angeles by 1910 than freeways did by 1990, called his San Marino manor "the ranch." The owners of grand piles of robber baron masonry at Newport, Rhode Island called them "cottages." Wealth and self-deprecating irony do not mix well.

Henry Huntington gave his art and some of his money to the library, gallery, and gardens that carry his name. And now, nearly a hundred years later, a modest donation - almost forgotten in the ruin of the South Central Farm - forms part of the rootstock of a new garden at the Huntington. The new garden is partly an experiment in urban agriculture and partly a conservation project.

It's called the Huntington Ranch - without irony. Its mission is to reshape perceptions about the uses of landscape, including homegrown food. And some of the food will come from plant stock salvaged from a lost urban farm that once bloomed on the fringes of Vernon.

At the Huntington Ranch "(g)rowing approaches include designed edible landscapes, small-scale backyard orchards, intensive vegetable gardens, container gardens, and a semi-wild food forest. In the coming months, blog posts will cover the step-by-step transformation and construction of the space, providing the details needed to re-create and maintain any of these approaches at home. The Huntington Ranch will feature workshops, tours, and events that open the site up to the public, teach varying approaches to growing food at home, and allow participants to get their hands dirty while gaining the experience and confidence to try it at home."

Home, in this instance, is intended not to be San Marino alone. But it's hard to imagine how the aspirations for the Huntington Ranch can reach all the way to Alameda and 41st streets, where the gardeners of the South Central Farm - mostly immigrant and many undocumented - did not need instruction in making their small part of wasteland flourish. Until their work was tractored out under the guise of a failed land deal, the South Central farmers applied an abundance of experience and confidence to feeding themselves and their families.

Their efforts over several years turned 14 acres of city-owned land into what was thought to be the largest co-operative urban farm in the nation.

The farm is gone, blighted by poverty politics, ethnic conflict, developer hubris, and sleazy land deals. The South Central farmers were evicted in 2006 to make way for a warehouse complex. It was never built. When I ride the Blue Line downtown, I pass the empty wasteland that the South Central Farm returned to.

And the last irony is that banana, guava, and other trees that came from the hands of the poor now feed the curiosity of those who want to turn their suburban lawn into a micro-farm.

The image on this page was taken by flickr user Joel Carranza. It is used under a Creative Commons License.