A community garden with a purpose in Marina has seen better days, and maybe will again.

Excerpted from April 25, 2019

The community garden at the Nancy Dodd Community Center in Marina is isolated, a former military neighborhood built on sand dunes and lined with chaparral.

With the wind, sand and fog, it doesn’t seem like a natural choice for a community garden. And yet, there it is. Not long ago it was well-tended, flourishing with vegetables and flowers in 38 raised beds. Now, it’s overgrown with weeds and looks feral and neglected. But it’s not abandoned.

The garden belongs to addiction recovery nonprofit Sun Street Centers, and was built for the residents of its Pueblo Del Mar program. Pueblo has 52 transitional housing units for homeless families in recovery from alcoholism and addiction. It is the only one of its kind in California, says Sun Street CEO Anna Foglia.

“Ninety-five percent of the families are single moms,” she says. “They arrive homeless with little to no property, having just completed a substance abuse treatment program and been reunited with their children.”

Sun Street helps residents work on financial stability, parenting skills, employment, education and sobriety. The garden helps in their recovery.

“One resident who had planted flowers said it was her meditative time,” says Marilyn Anderson, Pueblo’s director of family services. “The residents who grow their own food are very proud.”

But three things practically wiped out that work.

The garden was started in 2010 by nonprofit Rebuilding Together and CSU Monterey Bay staff and students. But the lead caretakers moved away.

Second, the nature of Pueblo Del Mar is transitional. The first priority is for residents to move on with their lives, so garden beds get left behind.

Third, last winter’s rains reclaimed the garden and turned it wild.

Juli Hoffman is president of the Marina Tree and Garden Club. On a windy Sunday in April, Hoffman visited the Pueblo garden. Grass has filled in. Cauliflower is surrounded by false alfalfa. Lettuce and broccoli have given way to weeds. A peach tree has leaf tip burn from the salt air, Hoffman says, and probably won’t produce fruit anytime soon.

There is hope. Bright succulents are flourishing. Several of the beds are clear of weeds; someone is still working the soil. Hoffman surveys the garden and says, “It’s lovely even in its ruin. A couple of weekends and it could look nice.”