Next to a tidy neighborhood in Southwest Fresno, the non-profit organization Fresno Metro Ministry, alongside a team of dedicated volunteers, has nurtured a 7.5-acre garden and farm into a productive community hub.

The Yo’Ville Community Garden and Farm boosts neighbors’ food security, guides novice gardeners and farmers, and demonstrates how families can help cut greenhouse gas emissions. 

Garden manager Yvonne Segundo said when she joined the staff at the Yo’Ville Community Garden, she saw a reflection of herself in the people who were tending to the land. 

“That connected me to the work here and our efforts to bring a focus to this area and empower community members to stand on their own,” she said.

Two years ago, Segundo and her fellow Metro Ministry staff member Nancy Guiterrez applied to become Fresno County Master Gardeners. Master Gardeners are trained and certified by the University of California to offer education and advice on research-based sustainable gardening practices. On the way to certification, Segundo and Guiterrez received training from UC experts on irrigation, pest management, soil building, and growing fruit and vegetables and native plants.

The goals of the Master Gardener program align with the values at Yo’Ville, where dozens of individual plots rented by community members form a vibrant mosaic of tomatoes, onions, squash, corn and all manner of vegetables. Bounded by river rocks and arranged in a mandala pattern, the 115 individual gardens are interspersed with small patches of native plants designed to attract beneficial insects. The abundant bees, butterflies, lady bugs and lace wings help the gardeners manage pests that threaten their healthy food harvest. 

The Yo’Ville Community Garden also promotes gardening practices that reduce greenhouse gas emissions caused when food and other organic waste are sent to landfills. When green waste is combined with municipal trash and compressed into huge mounds, the mixed-in organic matter breaks down in an anerobic environment, producing methane gas. Methane is the most potent greenhouse gas. 

The Yo’Ville Garden partners with the California Climate Action Corps – part of the national AmeriCorps Program – to fund participants with stipends that allow them to work fulltime on efforts to divert food waste, prevent wildfire and promote native plants.

Aaron de la Cerda, the Farm and Gardens Program Director at Yo’Ville, was an AmeriCorps volunteer in Oakland, a time which brought into focus his commitment to urban food production.

“I learned that I like plants and saw how they can address issues of poverty, food insecurity and hunger while supporting a sense of accomplishment and self-reliance,” de la Cerda said. “You don’t just talk about it, you be about it.”

Gardeners may take home produce from the garden to share with family and friends. Any extra is placed on a shelf outside the garden gate, where anyone who can use it may pick it up for free. 

The Yo’Ville Community Garden also has eight farmers, who play a pivotal role in the new Yo’ville Farmers Market. The market aims to make the harvest more widely available and will soon launch a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. (CSAs offer “subscriptions” to consumers, who then receive a box of seasonal fruit and vegetables on a regular basis.)

Volunteers from the community are invited to help at Yo’Ville Community Garden by raking, pruning, weeding, harvesting and other tasks from 8 to 11 a.m. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

• For more information about the Yo’Ville Community Garden and Farm, contact Yvonne Segundo at yvonne@metromin.org or Aaron de la Cerda at aaron@metromin.org.
   
• Get information about becoming a Fresno County UC Master Gardener. 

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Written by UC Master Gardener Jeannette Warnert