Milagro Allegro

Alfresco dining

June 26, 2010. It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon to be taking a walk through Highland Park enjoying art, culture and history (old and not-so-old), which is just what 25 people participating in Trekking LA’s first “Walking Expedition” did the last Saturday in June. The “Urban Alfresco” series, which kicked off this summer in Highland Park is the fourth season of Trekking LA, presented by LA Commons, a project of Community Partners.  This year, Trekking LA participants explore LA’s community gardens, street art and homegrown food culture in four of LA”s most culturally rich and under-explored neighborhoods. Each of the curated tours will bring attendees into a new neighborhood (Highland Park , Boyle Heights, MacArthur Park/Koreatown, Leimert Park) to explore local street art and culture and will feature al fresco dining in four of the approximately 75 urban farms and community gardens throughout the city. For more information about upcoming tours, see the Trekking LA Press release.

guest chef, Amanda

The Trekking LA Highland Park tour began at Future Studio with a welcome by artist, Amy Inouye, mother of Chicken Boy. Participants then walked down several of Highland Park’s most beautiful tree-lined streets and well-traveled alleys to see more of the neighborhood’s historic homes, narrated by Highland Park historian, Charlie Fisher, and graffitti art, as explained by Steve Grody, author and expert in graffitti art. Tour participants ended their afternoon at Milagro Allegro and enjoyed a outdoor dinner provided by Las Cazuelas. Dessert was prepared by LA sprouts student and guest chef, Amanda Serna, a graduating 5th grader at Loreto Elementary who made fruit rainbows for a smiling crowd.  Our resident gardener, Milli Macen-Moore, led participants in making seedling cups and Milagro gardener, Nidia Garcia provided a tour of the garden and her plot.

Delores Chavez (l), Amy Inouye (r)

To hear the Trekking LA tour as featured by Shirley Jahad on KPCC 89.3 FM, click here.

For more photos of the afternoon, please see our photo gallery!

Milagro Allegro Community Garden was one of the numerous community groups present at the fifth annual Lummis Day Festival on June 6th held at the Heritage Square Museum this year. The Lummis Day event is known for showcasing the best home-grown Northeast L.A. music, dance, food and community resources.
Milagro shared a table at the festival with the UC Extension Common Ground Program, and provided information about our garden and gardening, gave away free seeds and seedlings and had our garden cookbooks available. It was a beautiful day and we were delighted to participate!

Milagro Allegro table at Lummis Day 2010

More photos of the event may be found at http://www.montecitohts.org/lummis5/ or visit the Lummis Day official website

FREE Composting Workshop at
Milagro Allegro Community Garden
115 S Avenue 56, L.A. 90042
June 26, 2010 9 a.m.-10:30 a.m.

You are invited to attend a free County of Los Angeles Smart Gardening composting workshop! Learn to reduce yard waste and improve your lawn and garden.  Get step-by-step instructions on how to compost, and learn the benefits of and the science behind the process.

Workshop is about 1.5 hours.  No reservations needed.

What: FREE Composting Workshop
Where: Milagro Allegro Community Garden
115 S Avenue 56, L.A. 90042
When: Saturday, June 26
Time: 9:00 a.m.- 10:30 a.m.

Cost: FREE!!!

COMPOSTING BINS FOR SALE

Backyard Compost Bin: $40 each
Worm Compost Bin: $65 each

Details on composting bins available here

The workshop is brought to you by the County of Los Angeles Smart Gardening Program

Hope to see you at Milagro Allegro for the FREE Composting Workshop on 6/26 at 9 a.m.!

the finished product!

Maybe you’ve walked by the Milagro Allegro Community Garden, attended one of our events, or seen photos of our colorful tool shed at the Northeast end of the garden. Or perhaps you’ve even witnessed our progress as we – along with two local artists, many student volunteers and several of our gardeners – made possible the transformation from its initial lumber and plywood beginings to its current state as a “stone cottage”. Where did our inspiration for this creation originate from, you might ask?

 Well…one of the garden’s founders and Director happened to be enjoying her Sunday morning coffee and reading the New York Times magazine several months ago when the shed was still just a generously donated simple wooden structure built by the Los Angeles Conservation Corps.  She happened upon an article about the work of Richard Woods, a British contemporary artist, and saw a photo of one of his projects, the “Stone Clad Cottage” and thought a similar look would jazz up the garden on a smaller scale (for the full-length article see http://www.nytimes.com/indexes/2009/04/19/style/t/index.html#pagewanted=1&pageName=19woodsw&). Woods is famous for covering things up, hiding objects — both large and small — beneath deliberately fake exteriors.  The Cottages are one of his more recent projects in which he covered a set of cottages outside London in loud ‘‘stone cladding’’ not unlike the kind Britons use to transform their homes into their castles. 

Milagro’s version also colorful, fun and similarly transformed our “shed” into a tool palace!!!

stenciling our stones

our excellent volunteers helping paint

colors assigned to stones

painting away!

spiffy finished product!

Milagro Allegro was mentioned in a University of California article about new gardeners “cropping up” in Los Angeles County that appeared in the blog http://ucanr.org/blogs/food/ for our involvement in the UC Extension Grow LA Victory Garden program offered at our garden and at other sites in Los Angeles.

Check it out!

Milagro will be the final destination of a walking tour of Highland Park’s art, culture, food and… gardens on Saturday, June 26 being organized by Trekking LA, a project born out of a partnership between LA Commons and the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, that is focused on leveraging cultural tourism programs to benefit local economies. Please check the Trekking LA website for additional details as the date approaches!

In early May, Milagro welcomed a new educational project to the garden. Students from Franklin High School in Highland Park led by their teacher, Joseph Rowland, will be conducting a science experiment at the garden in which they will be growing varieties of chili peppers and assessing the effects of a number of different environmental conditions on the capsaicin, the active component in chili peppers that give them their spiciness and heat-like quality. The students are using a portion of one of Milagro’s three educational plots to grow the chili plants and will be modifying factors such as compost used, amount of watering, sun/shade conditions, etc.  Students will be documenting the experiment as part of their science class.  Milagro is pleased to be able to offer this out-of-the-classroom opportunity to FHS science students and their teacher, particularly once we learned that the science class size is currently a whopping 47 students!!! 

Please continue to check back to our website for the students’ progress!!!  Kudos to FHS for thinking of such an ingenious project!

April 24, 2010 – On what proved to be a beautiful April Saturday in Highland Park, Milagro Allegro Community Garden celebrated its first birthday and the culmination of our LA Sprouts afterschool program.  Beginning the morning was a harvest celebration and feast for the 50+ LA Sprouts participants and their families who prepared a healthy meal together at the garden and then harvested the two garden plots on which they had grown vegetables during the 12-week afterschool program that taught nutrition/cooking and gardening. 

Later in the afternoon, community members gathered to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and our garden’s first year at our Ave 56 location. Councilman Ed Reyes was present to join Milagro in honoring his field deputy, Suzanne Jimemez, who was departs from her position in early May, and who was instrumental in helping get the garden off the ground. Attendees enjoyed music by Jun Antazo and appetizers catered by Amy’s Culinary Adventures.  Guest speaker, Al Renner, Executive Director of the Los Angeles Community Garden Council talked about the history and importance of the community garden movement in Los Angeles. Resident Master Gardener, Milli Macen-Moore taught a mini-gardening class. Information tables provided more materials about our garden and the UC Extension Cooperative Extension Common Ground Master Gardener program. Whole Foods Arroyo Parkway also was present with an information table, providing recycled shopping bags, yummy snack bars and organic seeds from Rene’s Garden. Kids enjoyed art activities organized by local artists.

Later in the evening, the Highland Theater screened two films as part of Whole Foods’, “Let’s Retake Our Plates” April Film series, Food, Inc. and The Garden. Half of the proceeds from the ticket sales were donated to our  garden as a fundraiser.  The second film, The Garden, was introduced by Gabriel Tenorio, who wrote the musical score for the film, and was followed with a Q&A by director, Scott Hamilton Kennedy and some of farmers from the South Central Farm.

To see more photos from the day, please check out images from our photo gallery!

Sounds a little hard to believe, huh? However, there were a lot of smiles on the faces of Milagro Allegro gardeners during our first work days of 2010 the weekend of April 17 & 18, as we accomplished several tasks around the  garden. Bravo to gardeners for all their hard work… and smiles!!!

The garden is proud to host local artist Libby Gerber and her natural monument. Read her description below!

Monument to Seeds, Dirt, & Water is a five-foot tall monument created out of dirt, compost, clay, manure, and vegetable seeds.  These seeds (beans, cucumber, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes) are embedded within the tower. Watch as the plants grow and change the structure of the tower. This piece is part of a larger project, called LA: Observing the Urban – Rural. This project is a series of monuments placed in various locations throughout Los Angeles County where the urban and rural meet. These earthen monuments begin as a grandiose, towering structures, yet they embrace the notion of natural cycles, repurposing of materials, and the temporary. These towers are created from layers of untreated clay, dirt, plants, and sand; materials that are temporary and made not to last. Natural elements transform the towers in unknown ways. Will the relentless sun bake the towers and make them stronger? Will strong rains turn the towers to mud? Will seeds sprout from within the structure and take over the monument? These towers, in essence, are a quest to answer these questions.  More info:  www.observingtheurbanrural.com