Next time you're driving through downtown Vallejo, slow down as you go through the intersection of Marin and Ohio Streets, for there you'll come upon a magical little place with flowers and greenery peaking out over the fence. This place is St. Vinnie's Community Garden, and it was one of the gardens featured in the 2015 Vallejo Garden Tour. The Garden was built in 2014, but, as Lisa Marie Gerhard, one of the Garden's founding board members will tell you, the garden's been long in the making. It started several years back with her neighbor Kathy Beistel and a small group of St. Vinnie's residents who wanted to create a place that would serve as a gathering place for people to come and garden together, provide education about healthy food and gardening to young people, and to bring a new spark of life to what's historically been a rougher part of town.

Bringing this vision into reality took a lot of hard work and ingenuity as St. Vinnie's is the first and only Vallejo community garden on city-owned property. Not being satisfied by just getting their own project up and running, the originators of the garden wanted to blaze a bureaucratic trail for others who might want to similarly put underutilized city land into use. They found the city to be a willing and helpful partner, and they now have a lease from the city for the lot for $1/month for 5 years with an option for 5 more. St. Vinnie's was also one of 10 community gardens in the city that received money from Vallejo's 2013 Participatory Budgeting process, and this is where much of the funding for the garden came from.

That funding provided a solid foundation from which they were able to get construction underway. The space was partially a parking lot, and they had to remove 88 yards of asphalt to start.  Much of the materials and labor to create the impressive place that exists today, however, came via “angels” in the community who miraculously showed up just when they were needed. For example, when there was need to construct a walkway through the garden, Jim of James Kale Concrete (now the garden's construction manager) showed up and donated his labor, while Keith Orantes of Vallejo's Bayshore Materials donated the concrete to get the project done. Fittingly, a beautiful community created angel statue, donated by local artist Sherry Tobin, is poised centrally in the garden and embodies the feeling of magic that exists there.  

The garden now includes fifty-one garden beds: three of these are ADA compliant, allowing community members with varying physical ability levels to participate; ten are tended by school children from the local elementary school; and the others are rented out to individuals or groups on a yearly basis. The $50 yearly fee collected per garden includes electricity and water for irrigation. Food from the boxes tended by school children goes to feed those in need, and there is currently a sizable wait list for garden boxes.

It appears St. Vinnie's has been tremendously successful in its goal of creating a beautiful space in the heart of downtown Vallejo where gardens and community can grow and flourish. Todd Blakely and his husband, Tony, moved to the St. Vinnie's neighborhood, after having lived in the Glen Cove area for several years. It wasn't until they made this move and found St. Vinnie's Community Garden, that they truly found a sense of community. He's now joined the garden staff as their plot coordinator.

So, the next time you're driving through downtown Vallejo, take an extra moment to park, walk the garden, and meet the people who make the magic. Better yet, come out on a second Saturday of any month, St. Vinnie's standing workdays, and you'll find this planty place bustling with lots of great people full of love for their community.