A Garden for the People
With temperatures rising and skies clearing, activist Lily Baran started her day on a recent Saturday tending to a batch of strawberry seedlings she received from a farm in Dayton, Nevada. Her son Oliver and her dog Champagne are close behind, dodging wasps here and there. Once frost is a threat of the past, the seedlings can be put into the ground to bloom and grow into red delicious berries. For now, they are one of the first batches of seedlings grown by the Hampton House Community Garden Project.
Baran, a Reno citizen of almost eight years, partnered with Black Wall Street Reno about two months ago to start the project. Starting April 10th, volunteers will be welcome at 12 p.m. on Saturdays at 638 Elko Avenue to garden.
“I think I've always loved gardening, but, in my work and organizing and activism have really wanted to find a way after such a traumatic year for everyone, but especially for Black and Indigenous people, to try to find a way that we can have a space where we're restoring and healing and taking care of each other and ourselves and our communities.”
Baran says gardening is a way for Black and Indigenous people to heal, while also connecting to their roots.
“You couldn't walk to get a fresh head of lettuce in this neighborhood, in the snow. You know, you wouldn't do that if you didn't have a car, and that's intentional, I think, and I'd like to, you know, improve that.”
Volunteers have cleared the area of the backyard and started compost piles, which are turned every other day. Baran’s plans for the future include flowers, goats, and a beehive, alongside fruits and vegetables in the garden. Photo by Rachel Jackson.
Baran’s Vision
Baran’s current activism, engagement with the community and work for local progress goes much further than just running the garden. During the day, she works for Assemblywoman Shondra Summers-Armstrong from Assembly District 6 at the Nevada Legislature. She is also a musician and music teacher. Aside from her day jobs, she is a mother to her son Oliver, who often lends a helping hand with the garden.
“The vision is like, there are kids in the neighborhood, they don't have anything to do. Their parents maybe can't afford a summer camp or whatever. They come over here, they're picking strawberries, they're, you know, making honey, they're making their own salads or making French fries with the potatoes they grew, and they're feeling like they're a part of something and they're having fun and experience while also learning how to do, you know, something that's essential to survival and always has been.”
All of the food harvested will be donated to those in need.
“Reno is way too small with way too many houses and, development to have to be experiencing a crisis on this level,” Baran said of the current housing crisis, noting a lack of compassion towards the houseless community. “These people are brilliant minds in our community that could be, you know, participating in it and helping.”
After making a Facebook post asking for donations, HHGP received dozens of packets of seeds in the mail, ranging from watermelon and pepper seeds to sunflower and marigold seeds.
Mutual Aid and Marigolds
“I think Reno is a beautiful, a beautiful community that deserves much better. And I think that the way that we do that is by holding elected officials accountable, becoming elected officials and improving our community, no matter how small, you know, just doing something, to unite each other,” Baran said.
With the recent donations of seeds for the project, Baran is especially excited to plant marigolds for the incoming beehive from Wendy Baroli from Girlfarm, located 20 miles north of Reno. Baran loves marigolds not only for their beauty and pollen, but also their symbolism. In some traditions, marigolds are given to those who have lost a loved one.
“The other thing about them is that I give them away a lot because they're, the coolest thing is that they produce so many more marigolds out of the one. So one flower, you pull it out and there's like a hundred more seeds out of that one flower.”
Much like marigolds, Baran’s impacts others by a hundredfold. Mutual aid is her answer to what her and many others can do as individuals to help their communities. About a half hour into the gardening session, volunteer Jerome Silas showed up to help, as well as get some much needed healing after a long year for himself, with his participation in countless Black Lives Matter protests.
Baran teaches Silas the basics of planting seeds into pots that will later be transferred into the ground.
From Protests to Planting
Silas unintentionally went viral last year when a photo was taken of him at a Black Lives Matter protest in Minden, Nevada. The Aug. 8, 2020, photo by photographer Jason Bean shows Silas surrounded by armed counter-protesters.
While that moment has been talked about in news outlets and online, the lasting effects of last summer and protests have taken a toll. The Hampton House Community Garden Project is aimed at just that: helping people heal.
While people often count the amount of protestors injured, few take into account the trauma involved with having to protest for your right to live. The fear of being surrounded by open carriers and police officers as a Black person in America has lasting effects, even after everyone goes home.
As Baran put it, the garden was made, “to make something out of something good out of something bad.”