A community garden sprouts up in Seaside, born of nostalgia and environmentalism.

Robert Daniels, Jr. was in his early 20s and living in Arizona when he fell ill with cancer. As he fought to recover, he had to move back home to Seaside.

“Getting sick kind of messed up my relationship. And I couldn’t work. So I was forced to move back into the neighborhood,” says Daniels, who is now 26. “But I’m kind of glad I did. It gave me an opportunity to open my perspective and reground myself.”

After the cancer went into remission, Daniels found a new sense of purpose in the soil of Havana-Soliz Park, a patch of open space with mature trees and a view of the Monterey Bay located three blocks from his home. The park was overrun with weeds and neglected. Daniels decided to salvage it and recruited his childhood friends to help. They spent the past four months pulling weeds, planting native species and establishing a community garden. So far, they are doing all of it with almost no support.

On a recent Friday morning, the Weekly met up with Daniels to check out the project.

Weekly: Tell me about the shirt you’re wearing. (His shirt displays the words “Black King,” followed by a definition.)

Daniels: People have a [range] of different perspectives on what the definition of a Black man is. When people read my shirt, they say to themselves, he must identify himself as a Black King. So maybe the negativity that you automatically have is nullified by reading the definition of what I think I am.

How did this project get started?

I took an environmental biology class at Monterey Peninsula College. We went out to Carmel and did a revitalization project of the dunes, removing ice plant. Our professor was explaining the theory that ice plants came here on slave ships. He told us how the ice plants reverse the soil by taking the sediment from below the soil, kind of like flipping it.

The next day, I came to Havana-Soliz Park with my daughter and she fell and got a bunch of dirt in her mouth. I asked myself, “Why am I spending all this time over there when I should be doing this in my own neighborhood?”

From making sure your cancer doesn’t come back to taking care of a 7-year-old daughter, you have a lot on your shoulders. What inspires you to give back?

God. [Pauses.] And good people. When you’re at your lowest and people make an effort to help you, it’s out of compassion. Having somebody reach out to me and help me, especially my teachers, while I was really sick and still going to school, it showed me how I need to treat the rest of the world.

Everything is one. The best version of me has to have the best community. The best community has to have the best version of me.

Do you have an example that comes to mind?

I had a counselor and I didn’t know he was fighting cancer at the same time I was. One day, I went in for radiation and we saw each other. At first, we didn’t say anything, but [when we saw each other again] it just seemed like the facade we both had built – the strength that we were trying to portray to each other – had just crumbled. When somebody makes himself vulnerable, it leads to compassion.

How did you convince your friends to join the Havana-Soliz project?

I tried to remind them of how the park used to be. When we were kids, it was all grass and we would play football. As you can see now, everything is dirt. It just is a complete contrast of what we remember as kids. I said, “Let’s try to get it back to as good as we can remember for the next generations that are coming.”

What do you hope to do next?

I would definitely like to keep this going. I have a huge disdain for ice plant now. I want to remove them everywhere. I’d beautify all the parks in Seaside. That’d be a great start.

I’m just an environmental person. I like soil. I like to be able to bring food, with homelessness being a big issue out here. All the area we have in parks, it wouldn’t be too hard to kind of make agriculture out of free space. Grow vegetables to where anybody can come in and grab it or we can donate.