potrero view
Photo by Mary Purpura

Photo by Mary Purpura

Volunteers prepare the soil at the new permaculture garden on 18th Street.

December 2008

Permaculture Garden Takes Root in Potrero

By Mary Purpura and Silvano Purpura-Pontoniere

If you’ve passed by the corner of 18th and Rhode Island streets recently you’ve probably noticed that the familiar empty lot there has changed dramatically. The parcel’s western side – which consisted of the typical rocky terrain we expect from Potrero Hill open space – now boasts contoured raised planting beds.  The transformation occurred through the serendipitous intersection of imagination, experience, and willingness, which has joined together an enthusiastic group of volunteers that includes a generous, forward-thinking Potrero Hill property owner, an experienced permaculture designer, a project coordinator, eager students of organic gardening and permaculture, local businesses, and various Potrero Hill neighbors.

On a Friday last month volunteers unloaded 1,000 pounds of cardboard, donated by Whole Foods-Potrero Hill, and spread wood mulch, donated by Bay View Greenwaste.  A thick layer of cardboard was laid down as the first step in building rich, viable soil; after soaking the cardboard, volunteers sculpted the wood mulch over it into beds and dips that were carefully designed to absorb rainfall.  The mood throughout the workday was friendly, as many neighbors out for a walk or bike ride stopped to chat about what was going on.

“We want everyone to feel welcome here,” said Potrero Hill resident and organic gardening student David Glober, who has been involved with the project since the first workday in early October.  “When you engage in a healthy activity in an open space, people are naturally attracted to it.  For me, this has been great: I’m meeting more and more of my neighbors.”

Building community is one of the project’s goals. “We have a series of goals for the 18th and Rhode Island garden,” explained project coordinator David Cody, “and all of them are equally important.”  Besides building community and healthy soil, those working on the project hope to grow an abundance of organic produce and donate it to the Mission neighborhood’s Free Farm Stand, which distributes free organic food to those who can’t afford it; create a green space for neighbors to enjoy; and experiment to discover the best practices for growing food in an urban setting, using permaculture principles.

“Permaculture is a design system that copies nature, but accelerates some processes through human intervention,” said Cody. It might take a thousand years for an inch of topsoil to form in a forest setting, but Cody and his fellow volunteers, by using mulching and permaculture landscaping principles, hope to be growing plants in healthy, vital soil next spring.  “We don’t plant plants,” he said. “We plant ecosystems.” Eventual plans for the lot include growing dwarf fruit trees, interspersed with lower-growing vegetables.  Cody explained that it won’t look like a typical garden, with rows of peas next to rows of lettuce, but more what you’d expect from a lush natural environment, with all the variety that implies.

Volunteers copied natural systems to design the planting beds and swales – slight depressions – between them for maximum water retention.  The beds and swales at 18th and Rhode Island streets are contoured to conform to the hillside’s natural flow of water. Rain falling on the site will collect in the swales, sink slowly into the soil, and then spread out, providing a sub-surface water source. As a result, less water will have to be added to the site to keep plants healthy.

“A lot of permaculture principles have been worked out in rural settings, but we don’t really have established practices for urban permaculture,” explained Cody.  Because permaculture design is specific to the site involved, the knowledge gained from a particular place will be very localized. Cody pointed out that the experiment could demonstrate how to apply permaculture ideas to other San Francisco neighborhoods, even though the specific information acquired will be most meaningful to Potrero Hill residents.

The garden wouldn’t have been possible without the imagination and largesse of Aaron Roland, M.D., a family physician in private practice, who owns the double lot where the 18th and Rhode Island Garden is taking root. Roland lived at 18th and Kansas for about 12 years in the ‘80s and ‘90s.  During that time, he grew corn, tomatoes, and, one especially warm summer, cantaloupe, on the empty lot at 18th and Rhode Island. “When the lot came up for sale, I bought it, thinking I would eventually build a home on it,” said Roland, who now lives in San Francisco’s Liberty Hill neighborhood. Despite extravagant offers to buy the land during the height of the real estate boom, Roland kept the lot as open space, and his relationship to it deepened as time passed. “In the southeast corner of the lot, I planted an olive tree in memory of a dear friend who died of HIV/AIDS.  Friends gave me acorns, which I planted. Now those oaks are about 20 years old.”

“Over the years, I’ve been in conversation with SLUG [San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners] and with different local schools about gardening on the lot,” he said, but he had no takers. “I believe in local agriculture,” said Roland. “I believe it’s possible and desirable to grow a lot in little spaces.”

Last spring  Roland read an article in the San Francisco Chronicle’s Home & Garden section that sparked his interest. It featured Kevin Bayuk, who, with David

Cody, is an active member of the San Francisco Permaculture Guild. As a guild project, Bayuk had researched the number of vacant lots in the City, and found more than a thousand.  He intended to contact property owners to request permission to garden organically in these open spaces until they wanted to develop their land. Instead, Dr. Roland contacted him, and offered his parcel for the project.

According to Cody and Glober, everyone’s welcome to volunteer at the site. Workdays currently begin on Fridays at 10:30 a.m.; a regular weekend workday may be added soon.  The site will ultimately include an outdoor  classroom space, which may be used to train people in permaculture design, with an emphasis on urban applications of the ideas and practices.

For those who’d like an accessible resource to learn more about permaculture and how it can be applied in your backyard, Cody and Glober recommend Gaia’s Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture by Toby Hemenway (second edition due out in May 2009).  To learn more about the organizations mentioned in this article check out http://18thandrhodeisland.org.

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