NEIGHBORHOODS A GARDEN OF HOPE

You don’t build the other guy’s muscle by chopping his wood,” says H.S. Stevens of the Dallas County Office of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service. He says “people helping people” is the Extension Service’s motto, and it applies perfectly to the East Dallas Community Garden project for Asian refugees.

Near the intersection of Bryan and Fitzhugh, in one of the bleakest parts of inner-city Dallas, a garden is about to spring up. The one-acre tract in “Little Asia,” surrounded by an eight-foot-tall cyclone fence, will serve as a source of food and pride for refugees. Families are chosen based on need (widows, ex-farmers, and the elderly are given priority), and each will be assigned a 300-square-foot plot, says Joe Sewell, president of the Rotary Club of Fair Park and head of The East Dallas Community Garden Alliance, which began the garden program.

The area that is called Little Asia is home to 40,000 people in a one-square-mile area in East Dallas. Many live in rat-infested, boarded-up tenements with little or no ventilation or air conditioning. Many of the refugees are elderly, and women head many large families (their husbands were killed or abducted in their native countries).

Each family will grow Oriental vegetables, such as bok choi (oriental cabbage), foo gwa (bitter melon), mao gwa (fuzzy melons), Asian yard-long beans, and broccoli and carrots American style.

Cooperative plans are under way to initiate a 300-square-foot teaching plot in the Community Garden. Master gardeners, using interpreters and examples, will teach the refugees about Texas soil, climate, and better fanning methods. The refugees will have the satisfaction of providing food for themselves and their families for perhaps the first time since they arrived in this country.