The Green Bank: Good for the Air, Neighborhoods, and the Landfill!

Community gardens provide needed open space, food, and recreation to many urban dwellers. The City of Los Angeles currently has approximately 100 community gardens in a variety of city neighborhoods used by a diverse group of L.A. residents, according to Glen Dake of the Los Angeles Community Garden Council. While some gardens are in neighborhoods where the gardeners have ample money to buy gardening supplies, other gardens are in poorer areas where the gardeners can't afford them. That's where the Green Bank comes in.

The Green Bank was started in 1997 by the Garden Council and the Los Angeles Conservation Corps (LACC) to help support community gardens. The Green Bank's "capital" is garden supplies: seeds, plants, tools, soil, soil amendments, compost, mulch, lumber, etc. It is a valuable resource for community garden groups who can come to the Bank and get or borrow the supplies they need. With recent funding by the City of Los Angeles, the Bank will be expanding its services to include other urban greening projects such as public space tree planting and landscaping. The Green Bank also offers classes on composting, vermiculture, pruning, and planting to help gardeners get better results.

Waste Reduction

With its "capital" coming mostly from donations of used and recycled material, the Green Bank's business is also waste reduction. Donors include nurseries that have damaged plants or supplies (like ripped bags of soil amendment) that they can't sell. Landscape contractors donate leftover materials from work projects. Individuals in the community donate used tools, equipment, or excess gardening supplies. The City of Los Angeles provides compost, and a local vendor supplies the Bank with mulch from processed municipal green waste. The Green Bank also makes its own compost using green waste that is generated from LACC's street clean-up work and contributions of lettuce and coffee grounds from local restaurants.

Creative Green Bank staff and volunteers can find a use for almost anything, explains Bank Coordinator, Chris Braswell. Handicapped accessible raised beds are made from used 24-inch tree boxes. Limestone blocks and broken concrete are used to build terraces, garden borders, and pathways. Broken tools are repaired when possible. A recently refurbished on-site green house will be used for additional community gardening classes and to grow plants requested by community members.

Garden tools are in high demand and short supply, so the Bank is starting a "tool drive" to collect gardening tools. This is a great opportunity for local residents to clean out their tool sheds and garages and donate useable or repairable gardening tools and equipment for a new life in making a greener Los Angeles.

Gardens for Kids: Help for Schools

Gardens for Kids was started as a pilot project in the 1999/2000 school year to provide gardening spaces for inner-city schools. A total of $139,000 in funding was provided by the City of Los Angeles, the California Integrated Waste Management Board and the Urban Resources Partnership. The Green Bank was instrumental in launching this project by leveraging $80,000 in material donations to augment the funding and building of 170 recycled plastic lumber planter boxes for 34 schools. Lumber for the planter boxes was purchased from U.S. Plastic Lumber, which has just opened a new production plant in Fontana. The durable boxes are typically 4 by 8 feet, a size well suited for easy construction and mobility.

Schools must apply to participate in Gardens for Kids and make a commitment of staff and parent time for a comprehensive three-day training provided by the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and other local and national supporters of school-based gardening. The training covers how to use the provided curriculum, information about native plants, and basic gardening techniques. Prior to being accepted into Gardens for Kids, the school is visited by the Green Bank coordinator and staff to ensure that there is a suitable location for the planter box(es). The school custodial/maintenance staff must also support the project, as they often end up taking care of the boxes particularly during school holidays and vacations. The City of Los Angeles is continuing to fund Gardens for Kids in the current 2000/2001 year and schools can now apply to participate in the program.

Community Cooperation

A model of community cooperation, the Green Bank is housed at the Hammel Street/East L.A. site of the Los Angeles Conservation Corps (LACC) which also provides the Bank's paid staff. The site itself is owed by LAUSD and leased to LACC for $1/yr. Besides its founders, a number of organizations and agencies have provided volunteers, materials, and/or funds to the Green Bank, including L.A. Grows, L.A. Harvest, the Urban Resources Partnership, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the American Community Garden Association; Natural Resources Conservation Service; U.C. Cooperative Extension; and Food for All. Starting last year, the Green Bank's biggest investor has been the City of Los Angeles Environmental Affairs Department, whose $85,000 grant has kept the Bank functioning.

The Green Bank is only one of LACC's many programs, all of which provide employment in environmental fields to over 600 Los Angeles-area young adults and junior high school students each year. LACC's corps members do tree planting, landscaping, street and alley clean-up, graffiti removal, construction, and more. LACC also operates a Sea Lab which provides marine environmental education to inner city youth, a day care facility for corps members' children, and its own charter school that helps corpsmembers obtain their high school diplomas.

Currently there are two Green Bank staff. One is an AmeriCorps volunteer, Raul Gonzales, who came to LACC two years ago. Raul tends to the Green Bank's plants, teaches gardening classes, and works with school children on gardening projects. Happy with both his job and the program, Raul says, "I like to see the kids changing as they work in the garden." The other LACC Green Banker is Jessica Quiroz, who has been with the Bank a year and a half. Jessica's main job is to process requests from community groups for Green Bank supplies; an average of three per week are received. She also works on generating donations by contacting community groups, perusing the CalMAX catalog and website, and checking L.A. County's material exchange, LACoMAX. The Bank gets between five and twenty donations each month.

Green Bank Tool Drive
Your company or organization can help create a greener Los Angeles by providing needed supplies for community gardens, landscaping and tree planting efforts.

What's Needed:
All kinds of gardening aids: shovels, rakes, clippers, trowels, weeders, pruning shears, gloves, hoes, hoses, wheelbarrow, nozzles, sprinklers, buckets, weed eaters, watering cans, etc.

How You Can Help:
Contact the Green Bank, Los Angeles' nonprofit community gardening and greening resource (323) 526-1460.

For More Information Contact:
Chris Braswell, Los Angeles Conservation Corps
(323) 526-1460 (or) mailto:ctbraswell@aol.com

Creative Reuse Articles Home

Last updated: August 01, 2008