Gardener, 73, honored for leading East Side garden project
Vincent T. Davis
San Antonio Express-News
Jun 25, 2009
Retiree Martin Gomez pedals his bicycle through his East Side neighborhood, scouting sites that might one day prove pleasing to the eye. He has biked the roads near Interstate 10 and Hackberry Street, conjuring images of landscapes replacing high grass and vacant lots.
Several years ago he imagined a garden, thick with esperanza, palms and sunflowers, on a bare patch outside the Denver Heights Community Center at 300 Porter where children could play and adults could relax. Volunteers and the Nevada Street-Denver Heights Neighborhood Association helped Gomez transform the dry field into the oasis in his mind.
Recently, the Green Spaces Alliance honored the 73-year-old gardener with the 2009 Community Garden Cultivator award for creating a garden that draws residents of all ages.
“It belongs to the community,” Gomez said, standing on a gravel path that once was scrub brush and weeds. “This is so successive generations of leaders will take over and maintain the gardens.”
The project started in 2007 and was one of three pilot plans established by the alliance and funded by the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation. Today there are 19 gardens in the Green Spaces Community Garden Network.
Julie Koppenheffer, executive director of Green Spaces Alliance, said the garden — featuring a playground, wooden gazebo and metal benches — reflects hundreds of hours contributed by Gomez and volunteers.
“What a labor of love this is,” Koppenheffer said. “This has been a sustained effort.”
Angela Hartsell, community gardens coordinator for Green Spaces, helped Gomez and a core group of volunteers lease the land from the city. Gomez said $60,000 from the last city bond election paid for an irrigation system and playground equipment set up by USAA volunteers.
Participants from across the city joined the effort after viewing alerts from the alliance about work days and gardens in need of work. The group pulled weeds, spread soil, mulched and planted native plants that Gomez watered faithfully three times a week.
Now, on Saturday mornings, Gomez pushes a wheelbarrow stacked with tools from his home to the center. He waters any plants that are sagging or wilted and muses about possibilities such as an educational vegetable garden planted and tended by children.
Mirella P. Rojas, 50, said she's seen more neighbors congregate in the area than any other time in 31 years of living near the center.
“There's more people coming out to walk around in the morning and afternoon,” said Rojas, who often sits on a bench in the garden. “They come out to eat lunch, and they come with their babies. Everything is great.”