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John Allen believes that growing a community is much like tending a garden.

To that end, Allen, a project organizer for Vallejo?s Fighting Back Partnership, hopes that a year-old community garden on Westwood Avenue will be the seed that sparks the East Vallejo neighborhood?s revitalization.

Allen, and volunteers from area organizations, including the Bay Area Alumni Group and Church on the Hill, will pitch in Saturday, May 13 to help prepare the neighborhood community garden.

?We plan to have a good day of planting and working with the neighbors,? said Allen, who believes the garden will be more than a symbolic gesture toward pulling the low-income neighborhood together.

The neighborhood, which has long suffered from blight, is dominated by duplex and four plex apartments. For far too long, Allen said the ethnically diverse community has been a isolated ?cultural divide.?

While African-American, Filipino and Latino neighbors live virtually side by side, ?each group sticks to themselves.? That kind of separation, Allen explains, creates an incubator-like atmosphere that breeds distrust.

?When neighborhoods are divided and isolated, the people who are causing problems have free reign,? Allen said.

Already the community garden, established by former Fighting Back director Mel Orpilla, has produced positive changes in the neighborhood. The fenced-in lot was once a litter- strewn eyesore. Students from nearby Hogan High School used the lot as a shortcut to nearby stores and fast food restaurants. Others would back their cars in the lot and dump their trash.

?The community garden has eliminated this area as a magnet for other people?s garbage,? Allen said. Even with a late start caused by recent rains, Allen envisions a blooming garden where ?people can begin a dialogue and start talking and working on quality of life issues.?

Want to pitch in and volunteer in the Westwood Community Garden? Call John Allen, Fighting Back Partnership at 707-648-5230.

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