Ravaged corn plants at Earl Boyles Community Garden
Ravaged corn plants at Earl Boyles Community Garden
  • Ravaged corn plants at Earl Boyles Community Garden

I know that as an editor I should be all reporterly and unbiased, but when I read this story from the Oregonian this morning posted on Good Morning News, I was frankly too pissed to care about bias:

Early this spring, Edith Gillis jumped at the chance to tend a community garden plot with her neighbors. Their Earl Boyles Community Garden was a verdant oasis in the heart of the struggling Powellhurst-Gilbert neighborhood.

Each of the 16 garden plots tucked in the shadow of Kelly Butte in Southeast Portland was snapped up almost immediately and became bountiful, thriving monuments to summer.

But Gillis arrived at 6 a.m. Wednesday to find half the gardens leveled by vandals. “I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach,” said Gillis, a mother of two. “I can’t afford to buy this food at a grocery store.”

The Earl Boyles Garden is just one of 32 community gardens around Portland. It’s part of the city sponsored Community Gardens Program, which began in 1975, and has long helped feed Portlanders from a wide variety of social and ethnic backgrounds. Many people rely on the gardens to provide fresh produce for their families. Those who relied on this patch of land in deep Southeast Portland now have nothing.

I was compelled to go down to the garden today to view the aftermath and talk to a few of the gardeners.

Destruction, and a Call for Help, After the Jump

Amber Clark has been working the same plot in the garden for two years. She became involved through the Earl Boyles School Sunclass, an after-school program that offers children and their families the opportunity to learn how to garden. The class gives guidance and support as families plant in the spring, tend the garden through the year, and harvest produce to supplement their diet. Clark’s family shares the plot with four others.

“This was all full and green,” she says sweeping her hand across a barren square of dirt. “Now this is what’s left.”

She walks around the perimeter of the plot, naming all of the vegetables that were already producing, but are now destroyed. “We had a whole row of tomato plants here. We had zucchini here, cucumbers here. Some bush beans.” She points to a thick, four inch stub sticking out of the ground. “That used to be an artichoke that was as tall as you,” she says.

An artichoke stump
  • An artichoke stump

“We didn’t know anything about gardening,” Clark says. “But we learned. It got my kids interested.” Her family planned on getting their own plot in the garden at a cost of $75 plus a $10 deposit. The paperwork was ready. Now Clark says her family isn’t so sure, citing the cost of starts and plants wasted to vandals.

The destruction in the garden was random and vicious, with some plots hit harder than others. Structures were especially targeted, and the remains of trellises litter the grounds.

Structures: hardest hit
  • Structures: hardest hit

Robert Haley stands at the edge of his fathers plot, looking dismayed. It’s one of the more devastated areas of the garden. He’s helped his father, who uses a wheelchair, to plant and tend the plot. His nephew has also pitched in.

“He was hoping to grow a pumpkin,” Haley says, “But they just cut them right off.”

The plot feeds Haley, his father, and his nephew. Haley was looking forward to canning tomatoes this year. He tells me that the vandalism has been an ongoing problem.

“I told them they should put a camera up so people could watch on-line and call the police if they see anything,” he says.

Haley, holding what's left of the destroyed bounty
  • Haley, holding what’s left of the destroyed bounty

The problem is that as the latest and most destructive vandalism occurred, people did see something. They are allegedly too intimidated to speak to the police, fearing retribution.

Gardener Alice Chavez has difficulty understanding that. She’s been in the garden for three years tending a plot with her partially disabled son. She’s heard that the vandals were a group of kids and one adult.

“I don’t know who sees all these things and doesn’t do anything about it,” she says.

Her garden avoided the brunt of the attack but she still lost tomato plants and peppers. “It doesn’t look bad,” she says. “But it’s the idea of it and the principle of it. Once you’ve watered the seeds and planted, it’s an investment.”

Chavez has been working in the community to help develop Earl Boyles Park for years, and it’s the destruction of that investment that saddens her. Without saying much more, she walks along the plots, sighing heavily before riding off on her bicycle with a basket of five salvaged tomatoes and a broken bottle.

Broken tomatoes
  • Broken tomatoes

Maybe it’s because the last week has been full of positive stories about growing food. Maybe it’s because all the fretting over my own garden has just started paying off. Either way, the thought of people destroying someone’s food source for no apparent reason completely enrages me.

But anger, while thrilling, is a useless emotion unless it leads to something constructive. While in the garden there was a hopeful sign, written on the flaps of a cardboard box.

A hopefull cardboard box
  • A hopeful cardboard box

Next Saturday, August 22nd, the Community Gardens program will be holding a work party at the Earl Boyles Community Garden [10822 SE Bush St] from 1 to 3 pm. All are invited to come and help make repairs. It is asked that people come to work, or bring vegetable donations, tools, and starts to help the garden get back on track.

I’ll be there. It would be great to see some Blogtownies too.

20 replies on “Vandals in the Garden”

  2. I’m not sure if it’s anything different than the already scheduled work party for next Saturday. But I suspect if there’s a chance for Adam’s team to pick up some hoes sooner than next Saturday, they’ll do it.

    (Maybe I should have said “rakes”)

  3. I’m not much of a gardener, but do you think donating seeds, or a gift certificate for Portland Nursery, would be helpful? If yes, is there somewhere I could send them?

  4. “Adam’s team to pick up some hoes”

    Like they’re not already out on 82nd pickin’ up some hoes.

    Also, quick question…

    What is the mayor’s last name?

    It isn’t Adam.

  5. The sucky thing is the people too intimidated to speak. C’mon neighbors, these are sissy children who destroyed a community garden.
    Unless it was some mob hit to , you know, send a message.

  6. Jessica, I’m still waiting for a call from the Community Gardens Program, but I bet they’d be happy to take any donations you’d like to send. Community Gardens Office, 6437 SE Division, Portland, OR 97206.

  14. A public caning, as in China, then making them rebuild and re-plant the garden would be a fitting punishment. And witnesses are afraid of recriminations? From (apparently) a bunch of kids? No guts.

  15. Witnesses are best advised to not speak up at this point. For being such wastes of life that they can’t protect/stand up for their community, I hope they get an even worse fate than the vandals. The vandals should pay for every piece of wood broken, for every plant cut, for every tomato smashed, but the neighbors who know something about it and have said nothing for they “are allegedly too intimidated to speak to the police, fearing retribution” should fear retribution at this point. I would hope that when ever it is discovered who knew something about the incident and didn’t speak up, the other neighbors destroy their yards and gardens and anything of value to “share the wealth” of such horror.

    Sorry for the vent but this is awful and I hope whoever did this pays, and whoever says nothing and knows something meets a worse fate than death for ‘All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men (and the ladies too) do nothing’.

  16. Without further victimizing neighbors, please realize that some neighbors/witnesses have very sound, logical fact-based reasons to fear additional retribution, violence, false allegations, and violence above what they have already suffered from neighbors and strangers. Try to empathize with the grief and PTSD about a child’s recent death. Try to empathize with the traumas that led to leaving one’s country, the dashed hopes, the police brutality and negligence, the fear they feel when men stand outside their house watching their windows, the men with guns, the teens who drive up without lights on and leave one sentry threatening outside their window making a point of watching them while the others steal. How would you feel when you see pairs of men and different groups of women of different races different times leave one standing watch under the roofed playground or hidden in the playstructure at the nearby school or under the tree against the trunk by the school parking lot or in the structure in the park while the other person or persons jump the fence, steal our food, and damage our crops. Try to feel how it is to politely and firmly and appropriately tell children who jumped the fence to stop stealing, and that if they asked nicely they might have some food, only to have the children backtalk, say racist or mean words, run home, and send their fathers back to angrily threaten their lives shouting that the kids said the good neighbor was strangling their kids and that the kids did not vandalize because they were at home? How would you feel when you keep calling and calling and asking for help from the police but they do not answer or do not return calls or do not take reports or if seen in person, act contemptuous and refuse to do anything, but other times police beat or kill and/or falsely accuse the innocent victims? How would you feel if you saw a Mexican woman with long black hair said to be around 45 years old sitting on the school swing, yelling at her kids 11 pm, 12 midnight, 1 am, 2 am, to tell them to jump the fence with [backpacks on] then yell back and forth as the children steal and vandalize at least two times, with the other witnesses not getting directly involved and the past attempts to get the police to help failed, and the past attempts by other gardeners who repeatedly try to get the parks and police to help without result, then awake and find that all the faucets were left running full force to drown some plants and erode the paths? To come out and see three times the garden gates or locks damaged and yet wait weeks for the city to respond, never with the city ever replacing or repairing one lock, and then the city reprimanding you with a wheel-chair-bound old man for wiring shut a gate that was kicked open so it would not close properly? If you have never had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which should be called perpetual on-going trauma escalation, that makes relatively small attacks or threats larger because they bring up the overwhelming emotional and physiological pain and difficulty breathing, the difficulty seeing, the difficulty with nausea and trembling and balance and dizziness, the sensorial distortions, the devastating memories, the sense of overpowering helplessness and urgent desperation, the guilt and shame, the terror…. If you have not suffered this, please be decent and fair and not criticize others. These neighbors have reason to fear the adults and teens, the criminal gangs, the police, the kids. They have to protect their little children, their cars, their income, their reputations, their freedom from deportation or costly legal expenses. They have to protect their health. One dear grandma can barely get any rest or sleep at all, before all this, and even less now. This sleep deprivation is the fastest way to lose physical and mental health, which is why torturers and brainwashers use it. Please, please, realize what it is like to be poor, disabled, powerless, disempowered, contemptuously mistreated, punished for being so caring and brave and helpful. Please realize how you are adding to the problem, not to the solution. Please understand how it feels to see a teen girl last night start a fire on the picnic table, and then have the police who unexpectedly did come, refuse to address the garden vandalism and threats to neighbors’ lives. That police response was only after one person kept calling and calling and calling the police and four tv stations and one newspaper were involved. When you go out in the middle of the night in your bathrobe with a flashlight, risking your life to guard the garden from a stranger, then you can talk, when you know other neighbors and the police with all their weapons refuse to help, when you have to live with the neighbors who threaten and hurt your children and grandchildren, who falsely accuse you of crimes yet they get away with crimes, who do so much harm, and when you have found a better solution, then you can criticize. Revenge is not the answer, since every criminal is guilty of self-justification and self-pity angry at those they imagine have wronged them, or who are the weaker ones at hand to lash out in pain. It is the same underlying thought you show here, that is magnified in the next step of contemptuous mean words, mean acts, destruction. The solution is caring community, and you can start here and now being a caring neighbor, a caring part of the solution, with an honest, humble heart and helpful hands. Thus saith MOM.

  17. The five times of senseless wanton violence defies one’s sensibility. That is reason enough to worry about the sanity and violence of the criminals who keep getting away with it and the trustworthiness of the Parks and Police employees. Lumber broken and smashed, bamboo poles broken, bean trellises ripped out and dragged into another garden to destroy those other plants, clay pots smashed and thrown about, one tomato alone hacked with what looks like must have been a knife 87 times, nonripe plants ripped out, plants stomped on, the tall artichoke plant hacked and hacked down, corn stalks pulled out and used as bats and golf clubs to destroy other plants, garbage can used a a large bowling ball to knock down corn stalks, shovels stolen to dig up potatoes, a rake swung around and entangled in corn stalks, hoe smashing tomato plants, squash thrown at plants to destroy them, a lock pulled apart, kicking and kicking and kicking another gate latch until the steel is bent, leaving water on full blast, stomping on plants, throwing rocks at plants, kicking and hacking away with tools to destroy and scatter raised mounds recently replanted three times so the soil is in the gravel path, throwing about the fencing materials, breaking nozzles, …. Do you get how it can seem a bit emotionally threatening and mindboggling to the victims? One cannot reason with these criminals who are fearless or bold and so obviously full of hate and self-destruction. Please stop adding to the negativity.

  18. Wow… that was like a good novel. Except the good part. Children dying and PTSD? What? Please explain. Do you know something that could help? THEN HELP! Stop being so selfish. I will personally be donating new seeds and my time and my money to help in any way I can. I will also try to drive by any chance I get in order to catch these vandals in the act.

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