From the moment we stepped onto the corner lot — with cars rushing by on all sides — it was clear this garden was something special. What felt like a quiet sanctuary had been intentionally built in one of the most urban settings imaginable. Linda Harrington has turned a church lot into a place where community gathers, produce grows, and neighbors connect.
Linda Harrington runs the Park Hills Community Church Garden with a combination of conviction and pragmatism that makes things actually work. The garden is pesticide-free, community-led, and rooted in regenerative principles — but it is also productive, organized, and deeply embedded in the neighborhood.
The crops reflect the community: leafy greens, beans, peas, and seasonal vegetables that show up at local sharing events and community tables. Access is open to the congregation and broader neighborhood. Nothing grown here is sold — it is given.
Linda talks about the garden as a form of ministry, but one expressed in soil and seeds rather than words. She believes that tending a garden together changes how people relate to each other. The shared work creates shared investment.
Walking through the raised beds with her, you notice the care in every detail. Each bed is labeled, mulched, and maintained. The compost corner is active. The irrigation is efficient. This is not a symbolic gesture — it is a functioning food system at the neighborhood scale.
What Linda has built in Los Angeles is proof that urban agriculture does not require acreage. It requires intention, consistency, and someone willing to show up every week and do the work.
This material is based upon work supported by the Agricultural Marketing Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, under grant number 24FMPPCA1238. The contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the USDA.
