Residents, Volunteers Plant Seeds of Community Spirit on 109th Street

Until this weekend, the 1400 block of 109th Street near Watts looked beleaguered. Tidy but drab front yards lay cheek by jowl with weed-choked lots, carefully tended little homes abutted toppling ones.

But on Saturday morning, the neighborhood began to bloom.

Crepe myrtle trees appeared along the previously barren sidewalks. Delicate dianthus flowers, lacy white alyssum and budding snapdragons brightened front yards.

Digging cheerfully with spades and hoes, the residents of 109th Street and a squad of volunteers planted the first seeds in a Rebuild L.A. project that sponsors hope will spread citywide.

“When I first moved here, I was a little hesitant and apprehensive . . . because of the way this community had been branded as so bad,” said Kathy Louis, 31, who bought her home six years ago. “What I found out is there are good, hard-working people here . . . who know that if the community as a whole could start feeling good about itself, we can all make a difference.”

When she first heard about the beautification plan, Louis said, “I thought a couple guys would come along and just put in a couple flowers and take a couple pictures and that would be it.

“But this,” she said, smiling in wonder at yard after yard of fresh greenery. “I never thought it would be anything like this. These flowers are a living thing, something a community can build on. It’s up to us now to keep it up, to show we’ve got pride in where we live.”

The beautification idea sprang from what was left untouched by last spring’s unrest.

“We looked around and we realized there were four institutions still standing and pretty much untouched: the schools, the churches, the McDonald’s restaurants and the recreation centers we had already refurbished,” said city Recreation and Parks General Manager Jackie Tatum.

The center on 109th Street, spruced up by the city in 1988, had become a focal point of community pride in the area, where about three-quarters of the residents own their homes and at least half the families have lived there more than a decade. Residents keep an eye on the recreation center’s tiny gardens, Tatum said, and its carefully tended flower beds. Graffiti never mar its walls.

Tatum suggested that that pride could be extended to surrounding houses with a little shovel work.

Volunteers from the California Conservation Corps, the Recreation and Parks Department, the Public Works Department and the Police Department began going door to door along the surrounding block, asking permission to dig long flower beds in front of each house.

Nearly a dozen nurseries, lumber suppliers and a fertilizer company donated greenery and supplies, including 500 one-gallon plants, 50 five-gallon plants, about 250 flats of flower seedlings and more than 50 trees.

On Saturday, dozens of residents and nearly 100 city volunteers created a carnival atmosphere along the street. Laughing toddlers wielded mini shovels alongside senior citizens and teen-agers, who gently pressed hundreds of seedlings into the community’s soil.

“It’s exciting because we’re all working together to make our neighborhood pretty,” said Lupe Delgado, 31, as she happily planted broad-leaf agapanthus in a neighbor’s yard. “Without all these free plants, we couldn’t do it. We appreciate this. . . . Now our children can be proud living on a street that’s so much nicer than the others.”