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A volunteer gardener from Farm NOLA maintains 9th Ward lots planted with fruits and veggies

Matt Jones stands in a field of neatly clipped grass on Desire Street in the 9th Ward wearing a wide brimmed hat to protect his face from the sun, a loose-fitting shirt and khaki shorts — his go-to uniform for early spring gardening. He's working in one of two locations where the nonprofit Farming NOLA has cleaned overgrown vacant lots to grow fruit and vegetables.

Jones squints slightly, walks over to the kale bed and bends down.

“These darn caterpillars just love eating kale,” he said as he plucked a silky golden critter from the leaf of the plant and tossed it in the grass. “I just take them off the leaves and throw them in the grass because they like to eat grass, which means less work for me when it's time to mow.”

If anyone should know about the behavior of caterpillars, it would be Jones, an upper school biology teacher and chairman of the science department at Newman School. The school donates 100 pounds of cooked scraps per day from its kitchen for Jones to mix into the compost pile on the edge of the cultivated area.

“Sometimes there are pleasant surprises growing out of the compost — like the pineapple plants. I think that vine over there with the big leaves is a pumpkin vine,” he said.

The idea behind the nonprofit is to use some of 9th Ward blighted lots as mini-farms and to help end the "food desert" conditions there, he said.

“We are talking to Margie Green at NOCCA about collaborating on an organized food distribution system to residents, but so far, our crops haven’t been big enough. That will change this summer,” he said.

To date, crops have been given away to neighbors, and anyone can walk onto the grove of trees and help themselves — there are no fences. With 56 fruit trees at the Desire Street location and another 20 on North Miro Street, Jones expects a good harvest from the now mature trees that he planted four years ago.

“We tried to get a big variety — a few kinds of figs, mayhaw, pomegranate, citrus, papaya, pear, peach, persimmon,” Jones said. “Many of them were donated by friends, and many of the figs I propagated from cuttings.”

The vegetables (cucumbers, okra, tomatoes, peas), leafy greens (kale and Swiss chard) and herbs (cilantro) are planted in what stands in for raised beds — the cinder block foundation of a house that was never built.

Farming NOLA leases several lots from NORA through its Growing Green program, and a couple from Habitat for Humanity. It purchased one lot, and its seventh lot was a donation.

“You see this?” Jones asked, motioning to the thick tangle of vines, trees and debris at the edge of the compost pile. “This is what every lot looked like when we first started — a 15-foot-tall wall of weeds.”

A rented bush hog helped clear the lots so that Jones and student volunteers from Newman could level them with river sand and prepare them for planting.

One of the notable aspects of the garden is how found materials have been called into service. Curtain rods, paint stirrers and rebar make excellent plant stakes, and thin sheets of plywood — some of them dumped there — serve to suppress weeds. On North Miro, boards were culled from a pile of construction debris and fashioned into a planter. It’s a practical garden, created for function rather than beauty.

Nonetheless, beauty prevails.

 

“The sweet peas (flowers) for example. We didn't intend to have them in the garden, but that's what grew instead of the edible ones,” he said.

Jones lets a good number of plants go to seed rather than harvest them, with the hope that they will self-seed and return next season. He takes care of both the Desire and North Miro sites, mowing them with a push mower. He has improved the watering regimen by installing drip irrigation to the vegetables and herbs in the beds; he waters the trees by hand. All told, he devotes at least eight hours a week caring for the gardens.

In the years that Farming NOLA’s Desire and North Miro street gardens have been in existence, Jones says he has watched the surrounding 9th ward neighborhoods become more animated.

 “The city has been fixing the streets in both areas, and there are a lot of new houses being built near North Miro that aren’t part of the Make It Right development,” Jones said. “Others have taken advantage of the availability of lots for their projects — one woman grows flowers to sell, someone else has a bamboo nursery, and someone else keeps bees and sells the honey. It’s an incredibly interesting community.”

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

 

July 1, 2019

 

NEW ORLEANS REDEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY SOLD
105 PROPERTIES IN ONLINE ONLY AUCTION

NEW ORLEANS, LA – The New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) held another successful online only auction which garnered winning bids for 105 properties across the city. The auction was held on Monday, May 13th through Tuesday, May 14th.   Winning bids totaled over $2.29 million.  Hilco Real Estate, LLC and Paul A. Lynn, CCIM, Louisiana Real Estate Broker were the auctioneers. 

“The auction was a great success; we were extremely pleased with the level of participation from our online bidders.  We look forward to returning all of the properties back into commerce for market-rate housing opportunities,” said Brenda M. Breaux, Executive Director of NORA. “The winning bids at the auction once again exceeded our expectations.”

“We are proud to work with NORA in getting these properties back into the hands of the community,” said Paul Lynn, CCIM, Louisiana Licensed Real Estate Broker.

Over 275 bidders registered to bid in this online auction event and a total of 1900 bids were placed by participants during the auction. Winning bids ranged from $3,500 to $126,000.   Auction participants included first time homeowners, young buyers wanting to have their “dream home”, developers and investors interested in the rebuilding of New Orleans.  Buyers will be required to build or rehabilitate the property within 365 days in accordance with all required building ordinances and codes.  To be notified of future NORA auction events, register at www.noraworks.org.

 

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NORA is charged with implementing redevelopment projects for the City of New Orleans through acquiring and disposing of both residential and commercial properties and the disposition of Road Home properties in Orleans Parish.

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Portion of New Orleans' MLK Boulevard neutral ground rededicated after yearlong improvement project
BY JEFF ADELSON | This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. APR 12, 2019 - 7:15 PM

Local redevelopment officials, art experts and business owners on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard celebrated the rededication Friday of a portion of a neutral ground celebrating the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. following a more than yearlong project of improvements.

The newly refreshed neutral ground on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard between O.C. Haley and South Rampart Street now features a walking path, benches and landscaping, replacing the worn sidewalk and ragged grassy patches that formerly surrounded an unusual, 10-foot-tall bronze monument honoring King.

The sculpture — a modernist work by Frank Hayden installed eight years after King’s assassination in 1968, featuring an egg-shaped body marked with a bullet hole and crossed by multiple hands reaching out to one another — remains the centerpiece of the site.

Martin Payton, a visual artist, said the statue’s symbolism evokes themes of unity and brotherhood and is in keeping with the biblical commandment not to make graven images and King’s own wish not to be memorialized with his own image.

“King said, 'I don’t want you to worship my image. I want you to remember the principles I stood for,' ” Payton said.

The statue was controversial when it was first installed, something acknowledged by several of the speakers Friday, and eventually a second, more traditional statue of King was installed on South Claiborne Avenue.

The $333,000 improvement project on the neutral ground was funded through the state’s Office of Community Development and overseen by the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority.

It was done in time for this year’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day commemorations in January and served as the starting point for the city's annual march on that day. But Friday’s event served as formal recognition that the work had been completed.

The statue itself has been installed closer to ground level to make it more accessible, on a base that allows viewers to get close to the monument. Quotes from King that are inscribed inside the sculpture are repeated on benches and low walls along the neutral ground, which is framed with flowers.

“Love is going to trump hate: When this sculpture was done 40 years ago, that was the underlying message, and that’s the message today,” Councilman Jay H. Banks said.

The improvements to the neutral ground come as O.C. Haley has been undergoing a revitalization.

“We’ve gone from skid row to a Main Street model for the nation,” said Carol Bebelle, president of the O.C. Haley Boulevard Merchants and Business Association.

 “We’re going to try to make this a better place for the people who live here,” she said.

FOLLOW JEFF ADELSON ON TWITTER, @JADELSON

 

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