Robert Oliver is a member of the Heart 2 Heart Family Worship Center’s, an up and coming church on Washington Avenue where Green Light recently installed a vegetable garden. He generously agreed to meet me in the middle of the day, when the city’s heat is at its most sweltering, to visit the garden build. On oak tree rimmed Washington Ave, Robert Olliver shares his aspirations for this garden. As he does, I find his hope and motivation, frankly, contagious. 

 Grace: What motivated you to contact Green Light New Orleans for a garden?

Rob: We wanted to shine a light on intercity students kids and get them interested in conservation and getting outside. The garden we installed here is really for the children’s ministries and it’s their project.

Grace: How do you think the kids have reacted to having it?

Rob: Well, I’ll tell you what, for the kids, seeing something grow is quite an experience for them because a lot of them they’re not going to sit and watch grass grow but to come to church and see oh we have a bud growing on the plant or to watch them interact and know they had a hand helping in it grow they are very excited about it. The kids, every time they see me at the church, “I want to water the plants! I want to water the plants!” So our garden gets plenty of water, plenty of sunlight. So the kids are very instrumental in helping and they just want to do more. My goal is to work with Green Light NOLA on a much bigger scale.

Grace: Yea they work with schools and other groups all the time, rely on them even, so they’d be really excited to set something up. So what did your garden originally come with?

Rob: After they came they had the four by four square, the lining and about fourteen inches of dirt, and we planted things like okra, watermelon, squash and bell peppers, are the main things that are growing in our garden now. As you can see it’s just rising up and my plan is to…

Grace: Do you plan to expand?

Rob: Yes actually we are hoping to acquire, what we want to do is, we firmly believe that in the future our economy is going to be such to wear we are going to know need to know how to grow our own food. I don’t think we would ever go to a bartering system but there is a need for us to  plant our own food. And where we are, there is an ever growing need to teach people to be green, to preserve the land, to teach people that this is where we have to live and if we keep it up and take care of it, we can be here for a long time. And unfortunately some times in an intercity we get people who aren’t mindful of the economy an environment and the things we need to do to preserve our the land.

Grace: Do you have any specific plans for it?

 Rob: I’m glad you asked, this land is not ours (pointing to the plot) We are working to try and acquire that land. Heart to Heart Family Worship Center owns the land the church sits on but this vacant lot sometimes turns into an eyesore. The grass is sometimes overgrown and it’s poorly kept up. We have on occasion gone down there and cut the grass ourselves. But our goal see that back wall there is to make at least a 12 ft garden that extends from Washington about the length of a basketball court and have that all growing green and if it’s successful we’d like to keep going and plant all around there and make it a beautiful sight for the community. Then harvest time what we can do is take those vegetables and fruit whatever we grown in there and issue it to the community, to let people know, hey if you take an interest in your land, your land will take care of you.

Grace: Yea and if anyone who works in that community garden also wants to get one

installed in their own home, you know who to call. I’ve found a lot of people just need a little help or a push to get started.  We’ll give them a modest four by four to begin with.

Rob: Yea I went to one of their seminars, Megan invited me out, and they were teaching all kinds of things. I heard about compost, but never knew that you could use coffee grinds for compost so all of my coffee grounds are sitting in a ziplock bag and are going to be poured in a compost. And I just never really knew the importance of recycling and things that you’ve already eaten and used.  And they talked about the importance of having a balance of greens versus browns in your compost. And we’re trying to work through all these things and once we have this garden and we learn to take care of it we’ll know how to sustain it.

Grace: That’s very exciting

Rob: Yes it is. And you know people will be passing by on the strip and see. The way that we have this church, there’s a bar right on the corner and after people come out of it they’re throwing cans and beer bottles and things like that. And in thinking green we have to realize litter is actually cluttering and squeezing the life out of our soil and we have rich soil here cause we’re such a tropical climate. And just to have the litter all over, we voluntarily come out and we pick up trash around the area so that it can look like this. You know what I mean, and that’s how we want that lot across the street to look but it’s not our property yet. And people will see the good that we’re trying to do with it and at least lease it out to us. Show us how we can better serve our community.

Grace: I know it was installed only a month ago. so I don’t know if your garden has had time to produce anything but if it has, did you make anything special with it or…?

Rob: My garden is about say in July we came out, or June. so she came out in June and planted it and we’ve only had a month but you can see where we are. We had a pepper growing and it was a small one I don’t think it was fully mature but it tasted great! My idea is once we start growing and producing the vegetable for our garden we’ll have the children make a dish using it and be able to eat the fruit of their labor. I think it would be awesome to have them slicing up stuff that they’ve grown and realize “hey this actually tastes great.” Get them involved in thinking about going green that idea, that hey if we don’t take care of our land we won’t be here for long. So the goal is to have the kids harvest what they’ve grown and make a nice meal.

Grace: And it definitely won’t hurt to get them interested in eating a vegetable now and then.

Rob: Let me tell you something if they grow it, they’re going to want to eat it and indulge in it. Especially if we get a watermelon to grow.

Grace: I think you’ll be surprised, watermelon is a vine and they tend to just take off. You look away for a few days and it will have taken over.

Rob: That’s what we want if we can get that we’ll definitely have some iced, chilled watermelon

Grace: Do you have any tips you’d like to pass along to other Green Light gardeners?

Rob: Oh yea! Prune, prune, prune and daily observation. Keep your eye on your garden. Never let a couple days go by without checking up on it. There’s so many things that can go wrong,  we’re in a tropical climate and there are just so many bugs and insects that love to just mess around and chewing away at the value of your garden. So just constant observation. You know I don’t have a green thumb or know too much about the gardening tips for maintaining a healthy garden but if you observe it every so often I know it will do you some good in the long run.

Grace: If you had to summarize your experience with Green Light in one word, what would you say?

Rob: Essential. I think that the work that Green Light NOLA is doing is essential to the preservation of human life. Not just to beautify peoples’ yards but it’s and essential part of our daily lives to know how to cultivate the land and know how to harvest. And if we spread this information to every neighborhood I don’t think we’d be too worried when hurricanes come, we’d have more food to fall back on. It’s a no-brainer.

Grace: Well is there anyone else involved in the garden program or is this solely your project.

Rob: Well it’s all the kids too. I just wanted to find a way to. We’ve lost as a kid, we would be outside you’d never spend a day without going outside. But todays youth, they sit inside and they’re on cell phones, on electronics that requires a touch of a finger.  My idea is to get them to use their hands, not just their fingers, to get them active, to get their hands dirty. Unfortunately, our kids are stuck inside all day long but we have to get them to understand that being active in your garden or in your yard is a very positive thing. The church has been here just under a year and a half and our  youth organization has just been put in place, children’s church so I think we’ve made some great strides for having just started.

Grace: Well I have a lot of admiration for what you are trying to do here and what you’ve already accomplished.

Rob: When you bring something new on board it’s always growing pains for people. They don’t always understand, and when they don’t understand they tend to put it on the back burner. But the more we educate, and the more we get people to understand why backyard vegetable gardens and caring for our planet is so important, I mean that’s really it.