What A Garden Can Do

About a week ago I had the opportunity to meet, interview, and learn about the Compton Community Garden and its founder Dr. Sherridan Ross. A Renaissance man who has lived a lifetime of lifetimes; exploring, questioning, and improving the world. He told me about how he came to establish a garden in one of LA’s most neglected and underestimated cities. And how that garden flourished into a community focused on nutrition, health, and opportunities for the youth. 

<- Dr. Sherridan Ross and Lenore French at the Compton Community Garden

behind the man at the garden 

“I found out you need something to do to bring yourself down. And so gardening was my way of rolling myself down. Leave the hospital, come here, put my hands in dirt, raise the vegetables and everything so I didn't take any of that anger I had found from the medicine home with me. So I would stop at a garden, work in the garden for a while, and then I would go home and would have peace.”

Early in his life Dr. Ross contracted Polio. His parents, concerned with him going outside, gave him watercolors and oil paints to ground and entertain him. What his parents didn’t realise was that these tools would gift him with creative opportunities that would prove to be lucrative and help support him through medical school. His talent would land him a job drawing the for the 1970s cartoons “Yogi Bear” and “Spiderman” where he would make $15 an hour. He would also make money through art shows in Hollywood – eventually raking in roughly half a million dollars. 

With these funds he would go to medical school and prove to be an astute scholar, winning the prestigious Eisenhower Fellowship. After shifting his focus to Neuro Surgery, he would work with the University of California, Irvine to help them keep their accreditation and train their doctors in Triage. He also traveled to over 39 countries through Doctors Without Borders. In these travels he would gather knowledge about nutrition and wellness that would later help him develop his philosophy around gardening. 

To prevent the stress of long work days and weeks Dr. Ross would use gardening as a way to ground himself and bring peace into his otherwise hectic life.

The Roots 

“Believe it or not, my first community garden was in Beverly Hills.”

Dr. Ross got his start in community gardening when an actor in Beverly Hills requested his assistance in building one. From there he went on to create 15 community gardens throughout LA county. Compton is his 16th. 

“I was inspired [to help create the Compton Community Garden] when I met Bob and Susan Combs. They have a nonprofit which is called Metro Community Development, and they were trying to figure out what to do with this lot.” 

In the past, the lot had been home to a Hotel where you would rent the room by the hour. For 19 years, it sat vacant. Some attempts were made by the owner of the land to create another liquor store, but the city shut them down due to there already being one nearby. The city also got in the way of Dr. Ross turning the property into a garden. 

“When we first started this garden, the city shut us down twice. The first time they said, “You didn't do an impact study to see if the community wanted a garden”. I ask the city “you just want this to be a vacant lot?” They said, "Yes." So we had to go down and do an impact study with all the people in the community, and the people said, "Yes." Okay, the second time the city says, "Okay, you didn't get a zoning change." So we had to get this zoning change because [the land was] labeled as commercial land, so we had to get it zoned for agriculture. It took us a month to get it zoned so we could open back up.”

Despite the interference from the city, with the help of a crew made entirely of volunteers, the garden was able to officially open in June of 2012.

<- Compton Community Garden Instagram Logo

To Grow a Garden 

“And so we'll try just about anything. You name it, we probably have it here at one time or another one.”

Due to southern California’s mild and sunny climate, the Compton Community Garden has a beautiful ecosystem of delicious fruits and vegetables from all over the world. Some of the things grown are Red Okra, Red Popcorn, Peppers, Orange Watermelon, Ethiopian Collards, Lemon Grass, Pomegranates, Bay Leaves, and so much more. In the past they’ve even grown Rainbow corn and tobacco which was brought in by a community member just to see if they could. At one point they even grew a 63 pound watermelon. The garden also boasts 3 beehives of 85,000 European Honeybees and is the only place in Compton permitted to keep bees for training purposes. 

The garden, even in its modest space, knows almost no bounds. Especially when it comes to knowledge both from the community and Dr. Ross himself. 

“Some people come in and say, "My dad used to have a farm down in Mexico”, and they come in and they want to plant something. And I learn a lot. I have one guy that came in here and he saw one of the plants, he says, "I use this plant for burns." I thought it was a weed.”

Dr. Ross also gathered an abundance of wisdom in agriculture and nutrition while traveling abroad.

“What I've devised is that I've taken everything that I've learned in agriculture and I've put it into a new program which is called “Biodynamic French Intensive Agriculture”. What that means is you account for every square space so that on a bed [which] is four feet by eight feet you should be able to actually grow enough food to feed a family of four for an entire year and have enough food to give away.”

This system is what helped the Compton Community Garden feed 40 families during the pandemic on land that is less than a third of an acre. 

However, providing food is not where the garden’s resources stop. Dr. Ross and the Compton Community Garden also work to inform people about the ways to best nourish your body. He emphasizes that we need to be making sure we are hydrated, eating fruits and vegetables that are ripe and in season, and we need to increase our palette. 

“And so what we have to do is we have to learn what is good for our body. When you're eating, learn what your body needs and your body will tell you. You have to listen to it.  Keep a journal. If you're eating something and it makes you feel bloated, that's something that you should not eat.”

The Seeds of Youth

“So this is what I want to do with the Agriculture Academy. Teach kids how to do this, how to take this knowledge that they're learning, go out into the community and make it happen. So that's what an academy can do.”

Dr. Ross has long placed an importance on informing and teaching kids about gardening and wellness. Since this garden’s conception, kids who come by have been inspired to discover and fall in love with the practice of gardening and tasting fresh produce.  

“I always like to tell the story of a young kid that came here. His mom brought him and she says, "My kid won't eat vegetables." At that time we didn't have all the trees in the back, [instead] we had peas growing all across the back there. And so I'm walking around with him and I take a pea and I put it in my hand. I take another and I put it in his hand. And then I throw [the pea] in my mouth. He looks at me and he says, "Egh." He says, "You didn't even wash that." So I'm walking around and all of sudden he puts it in his mouth and he eats it. And as anybody knows, peas that come right off the vine are super sweet, they're almost like sugar cubes. And so I'm walking around and he says, "kay, I gotta go, can you walk me across the street?" I say, "Yeah, let me finish with the other people." And so I turned around, and he has his whole shirt turned up with peas. And so he left and I took him home and everything and I come back about two months later. His mom comes and she says, "What did you do to my kid?" I says, "What do you mean?" She said, "He came home and he talked to his buddies and he cleared off a spot in a yard to make his own garden.” She was crying, "My kid now makes me dinner. Now, he wants to be a chef". This was a kid who didn't want to go to the kitchen. He's now training to be a chef.

This is what a garden can do.”  

Dr. Ross wants kids to come to the garden and come out with a new sense of purpose in their life. And he wants to take the impact of this small (less than a third of an acre) garden he has made and scale it up through an Agricultural Academy. 

“In the city of Compton we have an old dump site and I've been after the city for a long time to remediate the soil and the city doesn't want to. Every time they get ready to sell it, they sell it to somebody who when they find out what it costs to remediate the soil ,they give it back to the city. And so I want the city to give it to me. I can remediate the soil. And what I want to do is make an agricultural academy. So that we can have kids come through and not only look at plants growing like this, but [also have access to] a greenhouse. So kids can see how plants actually start, how seeds actually start. I also want to set up, just like we have bees here, I want to set up a house where they can walk in which has a glass lining on it so they can stand there and watch the beehives in action. So they can see what bees actually do. [I also want to] build a little amphitheater there for holding classes to teach kids about urban agriculture. We know about farming lands and everything, but let's talk about what can happen in a city. How much food can you raise in a city on just the vacant lots that you see? L.A. county has over 57,000 vacant lots that are more than 10 by 10 and they don't have anything planned to do with them. They're just on their records. Can you imagine if we convert all of those into agricultural space? You wouldn’t have homeless people. You wouldn't have kids hungry. So if we had a full time staff, can you imagine what can become of this? So if we get the 17 acres, then we'll be able to actually be our own nonprofit and get full time staff and grow so much food [to] give away to people. To show people how to grow their own food. To teach people how to get rid of their grass and grow food and on just an area which is four feet by eight feet. We have classes here. The most we can get here is probably about 60 people and then it becomes kind of overcrowded and everything. [But with] that acreage, with an amphitheater, we can have a lot more people. And so that's the thing that I'm looking forward to doing.”

Uprooted? Not for the next 100 years!

In May of 2023, the Compton Community Garden faced displacement. The owner of the land was looking to sell it. In just 12 days through a GoFundMe the community raised $500,000, bought the land, and gifted it to Dr. Ross.

“We partnered with LA Land Trust, and so this garden can be nothing but a garden for the next 100 years.”

Today, if you were to go to the Compton Community Garden, you will see the original “For Sale” sign and probably never realize it. With the help of an artist and a design made by children, it has been painted and repurposed as their new welcome sign.

<- Compton Community Garden welcome sign.