Find Your Green Thumb at Pacifica Gardens

Pacifica Gardens is a 30,000 square foot urban agricultural project located on an abandoned soccer field at Linda Mar School.

The organization that runs Pacifica Gardens, Pacifica’s Environmental Family, is a nonprofit organization whose goal is to “increase environmental awareness in the community and in the schools.” Pacifica Gardens’ mission is to “Educate, Cultivate and Inspire the community to grow food locally.”

The regular volunteer workday is on Saturdays from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. and there are teams of volunteers that water the garden through out the week.

Every Saturday there’s something different to do; no one ever sits around doing nothing waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Farming skills are basic but fun, and once someone learns a skill, the garden gives them the independence to make it their own.

Besides watering the plants, there’s a group of people who are responsible for building various garden structures. There’s also a native plants effort, a medicinal herbs effort, ongoing work creating compost, and there’s always planting, harvesting, and tending to the plants and soil.

Whenever the garden harvests fruits and vegetables, at the end of the day, the volunteers can take home bags of fresh organic produce. Whatever produce the volunteers don’t take is donated to the Pacifica Resource Center.

This is a great opportunity for anyone interested in gardening or anyone who just wants to be outside and help the Pacifica community.

Interested? Contact the garden and get involved.

This article originally appeared on The Weekly Fog, Oceana High School's online newspaper.