'We love rejects': Inside the queer gardening club that's preserving L.A.'s native flora

The parkway plot sits connected a commercialized agelong of Glendale’s Brand Boulevard. It’s a humble spot of autochthonal plants, hardly disposable from the road.

But this babe crippled is the pridefulness and joyousness of the tight-knit radical of greenish thumbers who thin to it. They stitchery determination each past Sunday of the period for Club Gay Gardens, a plot nine catering to queer Angelenos, to support the parkway strip, larn astir autochthonal gardening and link with different works lovers.

At Club Gay Gardens’ September gathering, attendees ranged successful property and botanical savvy, with immoderate boasting degrees successful horticulture and others conscionable blessed to lend a hand. After a little circular of introductions — pronouns optional, astrological signs mandatory — they were breached into groups of seed-sorters, pavers, planters and detailers (a euphemism for trash crew).

Club regular Juno Stilley sat wrong with the seed-sorters, grinding achromatic sage betwixt her fingers. Stilley, who grew up successful L.A., attended her archetypal nine gathering successful 2023 and since past has established her ain scenery plan and attraction business, Juno Garden.

Before Club Gay Gardens, Stilley said her landscaping cognition was conscionable “a small seed,” but attending nine meetups equipped her with the acquisition resources and sheer assurance to crook it into a full-time gig.

Juno Stilley reaches for a dried bundle of stems portion sorting seeds.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Stilley tin place astir works taxon successful the parkway plot astatine a glance, but she inactive comes each week that she can, excited to glean caller wisdom.

“I ever larn thing erstwhile I’m here,” Stilley said, “because there’s truthful galore radical who travel with antithetic sorts of works knowledge, and there’s infinite antithetic things astir plants and ecology.”

When it comes to works expertise, Club Gay Gardens co-founder Maggie Smart-McCabe is among the stiffest competition, though she’s acold excessively humble to accidental truthful herself.

The 27-year-old municipality ecologist and biodiversity educator, primitively from New Jersey, has spent the past 5 years moving successful composting and autochthonal gardening. She’s besides a skilled assemblage organizer and often cited arsenic the glue that holds Club Gay Gardens together.

“We’re truly trying to find ways to assistance radical reimagine their transportation to space, too,” Club Gay Gardens co-founder Maggie Smart-McCabe said. “When you’re walking down a street, you should consciousness astatine location there.”

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

In 2022, Smart-McCabe met her lucifer successful Linnea Torres, a 29-year-old graphic decorator for Junior High, the mixed-use arts and lawsuit abstraction adjacent the parkway garden. The nine co-founders connected aft Smart-McCabe messaged Junior High’s Instagram relationship astir photos posted of the garden. Junior High laminitis Faye Orlove responded and acceptable Smart-McCabe and Torres up to conscionable a fewer weeks later.

“Basically, it was a unsighted day betwixt the 2 of us,” Smart-McCabe said. Luckily, the brace gelled easily, but they besides realized that maintaining the autochthonal plot would beryllium excessively gangly an bid for them alone.

“We were like, ‘Let’s effort and conscionable telephone retired and spot if we tin get immoderate volunteers to amusement up,’” Smart-McCabe said. “And radical showed up.”

For months, it was conscionable prep work: expanse mulching, teaching and much expanse mulching. The ungraded was truthful compacted that each clip they dug a planting hole, it took an hr to drain. By the pursuing spring, the archetypal wildflowers had sprung up, and the autochthonal plants were digging heavy basal systems.

Progress has travel successful waves, with blistery L.A. summers turning the plants “crispy,” Torres said, and passersby ever leaving down unusual litter. Recently, they recovered an Abraham Lincoln magnet successful the brush.

“People are gonna stomp connected your plants,” Smart-McCabe said. “It’s beauteous brutal, like, the parkway portion is simply a beauteous hostile environment.”

But arsenic the plot has grown, its eldest and astir mature plants person started shielding its youngest, and walkers person been much cautious astir wherever they step. When patches bash prolong damage, the gardeners are persistent successful nursing them backmost to health.

“Every effect needs definite conditions to thrive, and I deliberation truthful bash people,” said Nina Raj of the Altadena Seed Library. “Especially for queer folks, I deliberation that’s a potent metaphor.”

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

That persistence feels similar a queer instinct to Nina Raj, laminitis of the Altadena Seed Library. The community-run inaugural provides escaped seeds to L.A. residents done a web of speech boxes passim the area, 1 of which is astatine Junior High.

“There’s thing truly potent astir queer radical rooting for the underdog,” Raj said. “And truthful thing similar a small parkway plot that takes a batch of other attraction is truly sweet, due to the fact that you’re benignant of rooting for it to thrive contempt each the odds.”

Smart-McCabe agreed that queer radical are drawn to spaces wherever they tin instrumentality attraction of thing together.

“Maybe that benignant of helps radical with immoderate different benignant of antagonistic relationships they whitethorn person with home,” she said.

At the parkway successful precocious September, Smart-McCabe plunged her shovel into the ungraded a 3rd time. The nine co-founder was opening the day’s works demo, and connected her archetypal 2 swings, she’d deed grate beneath the ground. This time, arsenic she sunk the metallic into the earth, the dependable was soft.

“Yes! We recovered soil! At the parkway!” Smart-McCabe shouted victoriously. The radical cheered arsenic though she’d won the Powerball jackpot.

Linnea Torres prepares to spot a works into a planter box.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

Beside Smart-McCabe’s planting spread is simply a raised works bed, which the gardeners designated arsenic the “goth” furniture with acheronian plants only. On the other extremity of the parkway is its fraternal twin, the “rainbow” furniture — a free-for-all of colorful plants. In between, rows of mallow and different autochthonal plants were separated by pavers.

As Smart McCabe began sending nine attendees to their stations, Cassandra Marketos announced that her trunk was packed with donations from a section nursery. The plants were excessively dormant for the nursery to sell.

“We emotion rejects,” Smart-McCabe said with a grin.

Like galore of her peers, Smart-McCabe grew up envisioning location gardeners arsenic conforming to a precise peculiar archetype: usually wealthy, often achromatic and ever women. With Club Gay Gardens, she and Torres sought to deconstruct that archetype.

Bex Muñoz waters a planting spread successful a raised plot bed.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

They did truthful with the club’s name, a riff connected the 1975 documentary “Grey Gardens,” which chronicles the lives of ex-socialites Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith “Little Edie” Bouvier Beale, who, contempt retiring to a rundown Long Island estate, proceed sporting luxurious furs and gowns arsenic they spell astir their regular lives.

Gardeners astatine the September meetup were dressed successful assorted looks, from frayed overalls and shot caps to babydoll dresses and chokers.

Niamh Sprout wore a smattering of chunky metallic rings, which complemented the agelong achromatic nails she had dug into the parkway ungraded arsenic Smart-McCabe did her works demo. It was astir intolerable for Sprout to scrape the ungraded wholly from nether her nails, but aft a beingness of being “raised by plants,” arsenic she enactment it, she was utilized to the mess.

“I don’t person the accepted hands of a gardener,” Sprout said astatine the seed-sorting table. “For me, it’s gotten to the constituent where, like, I’m truthful utilized to it, and it doesn’t consciousness truthful strange.”

From the beginning, Smart-McCabe and Torres didn’t privation Club Gay Gardens to beryllium successful a vacuum. They wanted to politicize the enactment of gardening and spot it wrong a broader societal justness framework.

As portion of that mission, the brace each twelvemonth hosts an lawsuit called Pisces Plantasia, which features autochthonal works resources, section artists and more. In its archetypal year, profits from the lawsuit went to the Palestine Children Relief Fund. This past year, they went to the Altadena Seed Library and the No Canyon Hills ineligible defence fund.

The nine co-founders besides regularly talk during meetups astir nutrient accessibility and improving people’s entree to municipality greenish space, thing nine subordinate Katya Forsyth believes is not valued capable by metropolis planners.

“Everyone’s ever been like, ‘Oh, truthful however bash you instrumentality attraction of plants?’” Niamh Sprout said. “I’m like, ‘I conscionable perceive to them. They conscionable archer maine however they request to beryllium taken attraction of.’”

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

“The ground of each quality society, quality life, is the ungraded and the plants that turn retired of it,” Forsyth said. “It’s truthful abundant, and it wants to springiness america truthful much, and we’re like, ‘I’m gonna enactment immoderate factual implicit you.’”

The parkway plot connected Brand Boulevard mightiness beryllium small, but to Forsyth, it’s a definite measurement successful the close direction.

In the future, Smart McCabe hopes to assistance found Club Gay Gardens outer locations crossed L.A. and to make much nonrecreational improvement opportunities for section gardeners. In the fall, she’ll get immoderate enactment connected that beforehand done a assistance benefiting Club Gay Gardens, the Altadena Seed Library and ecological landscaping concern Soil Wise.

The assistance volition let 4 Club Gay Gardens members to instrumentality a six-week people connected moving safely with contaminated soils, which Smart-McCabe said is particularly needed successful the aftermath of the January wildfires successful Altadena and Pacific Palisades.

Smart-McCabe has a favourite saying astir autochthonal plants successful Southern California: “First they sleep, past they creep, past they leap.”

It’s a notation to however these plants person adapted to a rhythm of hot, adust summers and cool, bedewed winters by establishing heavy pat roots that support them hydrated adjacent during agelong adust spells.

“So that means successful their archetypal year, they’re not increasing arsenic overmuch arsenic they are establishing their basal system,” Smart-McCabe said. She likens this improvement to the dilatory but dependable maturation of Club Gay Gardens.

As the nine co-founder discussed the details of the caller assistance with grantees, nine regular Bex Muñoz began to teardrop up.

“We’re leaping,” they said.