La Colonia de Eden Gardens, Inc., is raising funds to improve a community garden where Lucia Kim holds court as neighbors arrive in the late afternoon to tend their plots.
Many of the gardeners are peers of Kim, 84, and travel from Silverado Apartments to place their hands in the soil, exchange their bounties and socialize, according to a news release.
“It’s very relaxing,” said a gardener named Lyli in the news release. “You have any problem, it just goes away.”
The community garden opened in 2012 with a $10,000 grant from Home Depot.Kim has served as garden coordinator since 2015. Decades earlier, in South Korea, she studied horticulture. Later, her family emigrated to Los Angeles to run a linen business. In Solana Beach, Kim was volunteering at the Boys & Girls Club when she met Manny Aguilar, president of La Colonia de Eden Gardens, Inc. (LCEG, Inc).
Located on the grounds of St. Leo Mission Church on Genevieve Street, the garden contains 12 plots hemmed in by a low fence heavy with passion fruit. Broad cabbage leaves spill from one plot. Artichokes stand tall in another.
Fragrant epazote, a key ingredient in many Mexican soups and sauces, offers still another shade of green among the stalks of green onions, strawberry plants and trellised cucumber vines. Marigolds, squash flowers and ripe tomatoes punctuate the greenery with color.
Amid the abundance, however, is a need to refresh the grounds to better suit the many elderly gardeners.
To reduce bending and stooping, the beds should be at least 36 inches tall, said Aguilar in the news release. That would require dismantling the existing plots, pouring footings and rebuilding the beds with a few more rows of concrete blocks.
Crabgrass is poking through the gravel between the planting beds. Aguilar said all of the gravel should come up and be respread atop a new layer of weed cloth.He has received bids ranging between $15,000 to $20,000 to complete the job, the news release stated.
The garden is one of many social services the nonprofit LCEG, Inc., provides to people of all ages. Programming includes after-school homework help at the Solana Beach Library, summer camps for families, computer literacy training and yoga classes.
At the garden, Kim said she walks two miles a day to tend to the plots where, in addition to vegetables, she grows succulents on raised, hydroponic beds. She helps LCEG, Inc., sell the colorful plants every year at Fiesta del Sol and plows the profits right back into the garden.
She said she takes no medicine.“I like under the sun,” she said in the news release. “Spend time in nature.”
To support the garden restoration, visit www.lceg.org.