By John Ramos<\/p>\n
An unusual community garden in San Jose, established 27 years ago, is struggling to survive. The land has been sold to a developer, and the gardeners have just days to leave, and they\u2019re hoping some kind of miracle can keep it from being plowed under.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s called Plant and Soul California, a native plant garden on Race Street in the middle of San Jose\u2019s urban landscape. \u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is nothing else like this anywhere in San Jose,\u201d said board member Jessicka Chamberlin.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She walked through the garden pointing out all kinds of edible plants that most people don\u2019t even realize can be eaten: fennel flowers, French sorrel, salt bush, nasturtiums.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor instance, this tree behind us over here, this is an elderberry,\u201d said Chamberlin. \u201cYou can make pies. We make custard from the berries. We make syrup from the berries.\u201d<\/p>\n
But on Sept. 30, they got a letter from the property owner saying it was in escrow to be sold. And they were given 20 days to move out, meaning their last day is Tuesday, Oct. 20. This weekend they held a community yard sale to raise some money, but also to raise awareness of what was happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s sad to see that it might have to move. It\u2019d be nice to see if they could save it,\u201d said Delmar Duldulao, a professional landscaper who grows edible plants in his own front yard. He began volunteering at Plant and Soul just a few weeks ago, not sure what it would be like.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a farmer in this city, and I just took to this place like, wow, this is beautiful to me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s actually been inspiring, let\u2019s just put it that way. \u00a0It\u2019s been actually more inspiring than I expected it to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
With little money, and even less time, they\u2019re banking on a miracle to keep the dream from dying.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cI mean, there have been miracles before. I give some credit to the plant spirits!\u201d said the garden\u2019s board chair Melissa Blum. \u201cI don\u2019t know how it happens. \u00a0So, we\u2019re not going to give up until we\u2019re gone. But, I mean, the ideal would be if we got some kind of angel investor and some kind of miracle, and maybe the escrow fell through and, who knows what will happen?\u201d<\/p>\n
But even more than the love of the garden is the love for each other. And they say, if they can\u2019t stay there, they\u2019re hoping someone will help them secure another location in the city where the community they\u2019ve built can stay together, providing a place for people to come and enjoy a small respite in nature.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe garden is a place to come, and slow down, and escape from the pressures of the technological, oppressive era that we live in,\u201d said Jessicka. \u201cPeople don\u2019t understand the power and the beauty of what we\u2019re standing on, what we drive on every day. \u00a0And we barely scratched the surface of the potential that this place has for the community.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By John Ramos An unusual community garden in San Jose, established 27 years ago, is struggling to survive.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":500743,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[88,90,89],"class_list":["post-500742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-jose","tag-san-jose","tag-san-jose-headlines","tag-san-jose-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500742","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=500742"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/500742\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/500743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=500742"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=500742"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=500742"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}