The Learning Garden Opens at Ishihara Park in Santa Monica

The park is named after George Ishihara, a Japanese-American, whose family was interned in the U.S concentration camps during World War II.

By Talia Tinari
Santa Monica Daily Press
March 18, 2017

The Learning Garden is a communal garden and differs from the other community garden sites in that it there are no individual plots. Instead it will host seminars and workshops for children and adults alike. There will be communal planting and harvest opportunities and many chances to help cultivate the gardens in between planting and harvesting.

The Learning Garden sits at the end of the long narrow park. It’s approach is framed by a colonnade of eighteen citrus trees; the city’s first urban fruit tree orchard. They are young trees, about shoulder height, but are producing fruit. A few steps away from the urban fruit tree orchard is a fenced-in area with raised garden beds – three large beds in the center, flanked by six narrower beds on the side. The site also includes a composting area.

The highlight of the day for the gardeners of the Santa Monica Community Gardens was the opening of The Learning Garden at Ishihara Park. The park was established to function as a buffer zone from the Expo Line maintenance yard. During the planning stages, one of the requests from the community was to include a place for Stewart Street and Pico neighborhood residents to learn how to garden.

It is fitting that this park, on the 75th anniversary of executive order 9066, which ordered the internment of Japanese Americans into concentration camps, is named after Mr. Ishihara. And it is even more fitting that, in the current national political climate, the Learning Garden will welcome everyone from the Stewart Street and Pico neighborhoods, as well as Santa Monica residents at large.

Read the complete article here.