throughout the area<\/a>, one of which is at Junior High.<\/p>\n\u201cThere\u2019s something really potent about queer people rooting for the underdog,\u201d Raj said. \u201cAnd so something like a little parkway garden that takes a lot of extra care is really sweet, because you\u2019re kind of rooting for it to thrive despite all the odds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smart-McCabe agreed that queer people are drawn to spaces where they can take care of something together. <\/p>\n
\u201cMaybe that kind of helps people with any other sort of negative relationships they may have with home,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
At the parkway in late September, Smart-McCabe plunged her shovel into the dirt a third time. The club co-founder was beginning the day\u2019s plant demo, and on her first two swings, she\u2019d hit grate below the ground. This time, as she sunk the metal into the earth, the sound was soft.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes! We found soil! At the parkway!\u201d Smart-McCabe shouted victoriously. The group cheered as though she\u2019d won the Powerball jackpot.<\/p>\n
![\"Linnea](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760523079_441_\")
<\/p>\n
Linnea Torres prepares to place a plant into a planter box.<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Beside Smart-McCabe\u2019s planting hole is a raised plant bed, which the gardeners designated as the \u201cgoth\u201d bed with dark plants only. On the opposite end of the parkway is its fraternal twin, the \u201crainbow\u201d bed \u2014 a free-for-all of colorful plants. In between, rows of mallow and other native plants were separated by pavers.<\/p>\n
As Smart McCabe began sending club attendees to their stations, Cassandra Marketos announced that her trunk was packed with donations from Silver Lake\u2019s Plant Material. The plants were too dead for the nursery to sell.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe love rejects,\u201d Smart-McCabe said with a grin.<\/p>\n
Like many of her peers, Smart-McCabe grew up envisioning home gardeners as conforming to a very particular archetype: usually wealthy, often white and always women. With Club Gay Gardens, she and Torres sought to deconstruct that archetype.<\/p>\n
They did so with the club\u2019s name, a riff on the 1975 documentary \u201cGrey Gardens,\u201d which chronicles the lives of ex-socialites Edith \u201cBig Edie\u201d Ewing Bouvier Beale and her daughter, Edith \u201cLittle Edie\u201d Bouvier Beale, who, despite retiring to a rundown Long Island estate, continue sporting luxurious furs and gowns as they go about their daily lives.<\/p>\n
Gardeners at the September meetup were dressed in various looks, from frayed overalls and baseball caps to babydoll dresses and chokers.<\/p>\n
![\"Bex](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760523082_678_\")
<\/p>\n
Bex Mu\u00f1oz waters a planting hole in a raised garden bed. <\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
Niamh Sprout wore a smattering of chunky silver rings, which complemented the long black nails she had dug into the parkway soil as Smart-McCabe did her plant demo. It was nearly impossible for Sprout to scrape the dirt completely from under her nails, but after a lifetime of being \u201craised by plants,\u201d as she put it, she was used to the mess.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t have the traditional hands of a gardener,\u201d Sprout said at the seed-sorting table. \u201cFor me, it\u2019s gotten to the point where, like, I\u2019m so used to it, and it doesn\u2019t feel so strange.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Close-up](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/1760523084_55_\")
<\/p>\n
\u201cEveryone\u2019s always been like, \u2018Oh, so how do you take care of plants?\u2019\u201d Niamh Sprout said. \u201cI\u2019m like, \u2018I just listen to them. They just tell me how they need to be taken care of.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
(Juliana Yamada \/ Los Angeles Times)<\/p>\n
From the beginning, Smart-McCabe and Torres didn\u2019t want Club Gay Gardens to exist in a vacuum. They wanted to politicize the act of gardening and place it within a broader social justice framework.<\/p>\n
As part of that mission, the pair each year hosts an event called Pisces Plantasia, which features native plant resources, local artists and more. In its first year, profits from the event went to the Palestine Children Relief Fund. This past year, they went to the Altadena Seed Library and the No Canyon Hills legal defense fund.<\/p>\n
The club co-founders also regularly speak during meetups about food accessibility and improving people\u2019s access to urban green space, something club member Katya Forsyth believes is not valued enough by city planners.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe basis of all human society, human life, is the soil and the plants that grow out of it,\u201d Forsyth said. \u201cIt\u2019s so abundant, and it wants to give us so much, and we\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019m gonna put some concrete over you.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The parkway garden on Brand Boulevard might be small, but to Forsyth, it\u2019s a definite step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
In the future, Smart McCabe hopes to help establish Club Gay Gardens satellite locations across L.A. and to create more professional development opportunities for local gardeners. In the fall, she\u2019ll get some support on that front through a grant benefiting Club Gay Gardens, the Altadena Seed Library and ecological landscaping business Soil Wise.<\/p>\n
The grant will allow four Club Gay Gardens members to take a six-week course on working safely with contaminated soils, which Smart-McCabe said is especially needed in the aftermath of the January wildfires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades.<\/p>\n
Smart-McCabe has a favorite saying about native plants in Southern California: \u201cFirst they sleep, then they creep, then they leap.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a reference to how these plants have adapted to a cycle of hot, dry summers and cool, wet winters by establishing deep tap roots that keep them hydrated even during long dry spells.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo that means in their first year, they\u2019re not growing as much as they are establishing their root system,\u201d Smart-McCabe said. She likens this phenomenon to the slow but steady growth of Club Gay Gardens.<\/p>\n
As the club co-founder discussed the details of the new grant with grantees, club regular Bex Mu\u00f1oz began to tear up.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re leaping,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The parkway garden sits on a commercial stretch of Glendale\u2019s Brand Boulevard. It\u2019s a modest patch of native…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":305075,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[154688,1582,276,154689,154687,154691,2961,154690,224,5337,91900,3546,77490,154694,154686,17467,154692,154693,6620,1628],"class_list":{"0":"post-305074","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-block-long-parkway-garden","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-club-co-founder","12":"tag-club-gay-gardens","13":"tag-gardener","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-linnea-torres","16":"tag-los-angeles","17":"tag-losangeles","18":"tag-native-plant","19":"tag-people","20":"tag-plant","21":"tag-plant-bed","22":"tag-smart-mccabe","23":"tag-soil","24":"tag-stilley","25":"tag-tight-knit-group","26":"tag-time","27":"tag-year"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115377647577862880","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305074","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305074"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305074\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305075"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305074"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305074"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305074"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}