Vandals Volunteers in the Garden

This week’s Last Supper is concerned with the sad tale of the vandal-ravaged Earl Boyles Community Garden. When I visited almost two weeks ago, the destruction was still fresh; the remains of violated vegetables and the shattered remnants of garden structures littered the plots. A mid-summer garden that should have been full of bushy plant life was flattened and bare in many places.

But occasionally some very good things can come from destruction.

This last Saturday I attended the Earl Boyles work party convened by the Community Garden Program. In just two short hours the garden was transformed from plots looking like this:

To plots looking like this:

Also, this happened:

• Mayor Adams: tilling the earth

That’s Mayor Sam Adams in the preceding photo butching-out behind a roto-tiller. I asked the Mayor if he’d tilled before. He told me he had plenty of experience with it, having been a gardener for 20 years. Still, it looked like he had a bit of trouble hanging onto the bucking machine. “It needs a new ball-bearing,” he claimed.

Previous to all the work getting done, the Mayor, Commissioner Nick Fish, and Commander Krebs of the East Portland police district, took turns addressing the attendees.

Mayor Adams, whom Fish insisted on calling the “Gardener in Chief” throughout the ceremony, pledged that he would eliminate the 13,000 1,300 name waiting list of those wanting a community garden plot, and promised a “big announcement” regarding community gardens in an upcoming council meeting.

For his part, Commissioner Fish brought passion to the proceedings, saying “Portland took it personally,” when Boyles was vandalized.

“First off,” he said, “If a vandal can strike here, then they can do it anywhere.” He said he wanted to send a strong message to the vandals.

“Not here! Not now!” Fish continued. “Not at this garden! We won’t allow it to happen again.” He acknowleged that yes, the city could not always keep bad things from happening, but “the true test of our city is how we respond.”

The police appeared to be responding with frustration. Commander Krebs said that there was a detective on the case but that, “leads are slim.” He said that he knew someone had seen something on the night in question and pleaded for anyone who had seen the vandalism to come forward and talk to the police. He also suggested neighbors join in foot patrols arranged by the Office of Neighborhood Involvement.

All through the speechifying, it was clear that the neighbors wanted to get busy on the garden. I spent some time with a couple of those anxious neighbors, Becky Wandell and her husband Mark Cullington.

As we were turning soil Wandell told me the reason she was in such a hurry to get moving. “I’m going to Jackson Brown tonight,” she said. “I think I’m going to meet him.”

Wandell is one of the teachers who used the Earl Boyles Community Garden to teach students and parents the mysterious ways of carrots and kale. The plot she worked with four local families had been one of the hardest hit. But with a little roto-tilling from the mayor, a bag of fertilizer and some donated starts, things were starting to look up.

Ocassionally Wandell would stop and look around with a big smile. “Look at this!” she’d exclaim. “It’s so amazing! This would have never happened if it weren’t for all these people.”

Later, as I was leaving the garden, I passed a two volunteers loading up bag after bag of donated vegetables to be given to the families whose plots were destroyed in the vandalism. It was a bounty that might have even rivaled what had been destroyed.

• A portion of the donated produce