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Fresno, Hmong agree to move garden: Plan relocates farmers to site at Melody Park.

Oct 18, 2008 (The Fresno Bee - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) –

It looks as though a group of Hmong farmers will have their community garden in Fresno after all -- but they will be tilling the soil in a new location.

Friday, city officials and five of the eight families who farm the garden on Belmont Avenue reached an accord to relocate it to Melody Park, near Fowler and Shields avenues.

"I don't like change very much, but as long as they are willing to provide this for us, we'll be willing to come over here," Joua Lue Lo, 65, said through an interpreter as he visited the Melody Park site. "All we want to do is to be able to farm."

For the past 13 years or so, the gardeners have grown sugar cane and Asian vegetables on a 4-acre patch of vacant land near Belmont and Clovis avenues.

The garden, however, is on city property, and four City Council members voted earlier this year to go ahead with plans to build a police substation there.

The city told the Hmong gardeners they had to leave by Nov. 1.

Community support to save the garden grew in recent weeks after the plight of the Hmong farmers was chronicled in The Bee.

About 70 people gathered Wednesday to express their disappointment over the council's decision and they laid plans to speak at Tuesday's City Council meeting.

The City Council will still have to sign off on the relocation plan, probably Tuesday, city spokesman John Wallace said. Under the agreement, the farmers will be allowed to stay at the Belmont location until Dec. 31 to harvest their crops. The city will provide irrigation water for the new garden at no charge.

Fresno's Hmong community of 32,000 is the second largest in the United States. The agrarian Lao tribe first arrived in the United States as the Vietnam War ended.

While many in the latest generation work in professions, the drive to work the land remains strong among some parents and grandparents.

A group of older Hmong immigrants cleared the overgrown vacant plot on Belmont Avenue. Today, about 20 gardeners work a few rows each, producing enough vegetables for about 300 extended family members year-round.

Monica Yang was at Melody Park on Friday to help translate the city's proposal to the group of farmers. She said moving to the new location was not likely to be a difficulty.

Many who grow their crops at the Belmont location drive or take a bus there. Now, they will just take a different bus line, she said.

The new plot has other perks, too. Randall Cooper, city parks director, said that to make room for the garden, a ponding basin will be filled in and divided into plots.

Unlike the Belmont land, the farmers will have some shade and access to restrooms and an air-conditioned community center.

"It's just a better location," he said.

Paul Caprioglio, City Council member for District 4, in which both parcels are located, called the Melody Park location "a great opportunity. "

"This is the first community garden, and there's more to come," he said. "We have basketball, tennis, baseball and now we have gardens here, including a children's garden, so the children can come here and learn how food is grown.

Caprioglio added that he has plans for tables and chairs, too, so people can enjoy the fruits of their labor under shade trees.

"And barbecues," he added. "Take your harvest and grill it."

The reporter can be reached at jguy@fresnobee. com or (559)441-6339.