Sharing Roots
Sharing Roots: Growing our Community was written by the students in Chicas Verdes Gardening Program at Manual Arts High School.
Introduction
I was born in Minnesota to a family full of gardeners - people who cared deeply about the environment around them. Every spring, when the snow melted and the ground thawed, we returned to the garden. My grandmothers, my mom, and my aunts poured their energy into creating beautiful spaces for our family to enjoy.
Being outside in the garden has always brought me a deep sense of calm. I didn’t have the words for it when I was younger, but now I understand that nature has been a constant in my life - a place to play, express creativity, explore the systems around me, and feel present.
When I moved to Los Angeles and began teaching at Manual Arts High School, I realized that many of my students did not have access to green space or healthy food. I knew this lack of access was putting unfair burdens onto them. I wanted to remove some of the barriers to accessing the content we were studying in Chemistry class and help provide students with what I thought might help improve their physical and mental health.
I started thinking about the role gardens had played in my own life and how spending time in gardens might help my students, and me, feel better physically, mentally, and as a community.
As I worked in the school garden with my students, I began to understand that tending to the land is not only about beauty or harvest. It is about our relationship with all life around us. Caring for the environment nurtures us personally, but it also sustains the larger ecosystems we are part of - the soil, the insects, the water, and the countless forms of life that share the world with us. The garden is a reminder that our well-being and the health of the planet are deeply intertwined.
All people, whether they realize it or not, have a personal and ancestral connection to nature. Our existence is proof that our families once lived in close relationship with the land. Yet many people today feel disconnected from nature simply because they have not had the opportunity to experience that relationship firsthand.
The garden became a place where students could gather, learn, and imagine new possibilities for their communities.
At its heart, Chicas Verdes has always been about what happens when young people are given the space to grow. In the garden, students discover that they are capable of creating change. They learn that small actions, a seed planted, a meal shared, a space cared for, can ripple outward.
Gardens remind us that growth takes patience, care, and many hands.
And when young people begin to see themselves as part of nature, they start to see their own potential more clearly.
In these pages, you will find their stories: stories of roots, resilience, and the many ways a garden can transform a life.
Bari Applebaum,
Chicas Verdes Executive Director