Ontario community garden flourishing

"They have a zeal to help," Hernandez said. "When you hear him talk, it gets you all excited."

Bennett, who admits he's a novice gardener, only became interested after a trip to New Orleans the year before. He visited a high school that grew all the food eaten on the campus and realized the potential of community gardens.

Since his involvement, Bennett has brought in Emigh and a couple of other students in the area.

"The role of the students is to come and apply the knowledge we have gained in the classroom to the garden," Bennett said.

The gardens, about three quarters of an acre in total, are spread out in two sites at the school. One is at the front of the campus, where there was once a koi pond. The other is to the north.

Most evenings, and sometimes on weekends, you'll find Maria Alonso busy at work. The mother of three, also referred to by many of the volunteers as the "mother" of the group, is the garden's manager.

"It has been a wonderfully, totally different impact," she said. "It is such a pleasure being able to taste the food we grow."

Alonso began to describe all the new dishes she has begun to make using the fresh vegetables.

"There is so much food. We're never short," said Alonso, who along with the other residents harvests items from the garden at least three times a week.

Now, when she doesn't make it in the evening, Alonso is out there the next morning by

6 a.m. making sure the plants have been watered.

Walking around in cropped jeans, her bare feet entrenched in the dirt, she wipes the sweat from her forehead as she lays a water hose near sweet corn.

Alonso, who has the same enthusiasm for the program as Bennett, proudly talks about the garden. She points out what she has helped grow and recounts some lessons - like the time they had to start over with their first crop of corn because of bad soil.

Before working on this garden, Alonso said, she had never grown her own corn and didn't even know that Swiss chard existed.

Her lack of knowledge didn't stop her from getting others involved. About 30 families near the school participate.

Bennett has decided to take a semester off school so that he can focus on the garden. And the next couple of weeks will be crucial for Emigh and Bennett, who are hoping to leverage community services and programs to get grant funding.

The group is working with Healthy Ontario to apply for a grant from Kaiser Permanente.

On Friday, Kaiser Permanente officials will visit the garden to see how it operates.

With the community garden at Linda Vista School flourishing, the duo have some ambitious ideas for expanding the program.

"How can we get the garden to impact residents as much as possible? This is helping about 20 to 30 families, (but with) the size of Ontario there are many more people we need to help," Emigh said.

The key to a community garden is local access, he said. With the help of Hernandez and Fresh Start Ministries, they are working on that. The group has already found two other sites in the city to start other gardens.

Ultimately, the duo said they would also like to start a greenhouse where they can grow 2,000 to 3,000 plants, Emigh said. Those plants could then go to other community gardens.