Overview: Summer fun at San Carlos Community Garden
After months of tending to seedlings, nurturing young transplants, watering, pruning (and praying), the San Carlos Community Garden’s (SCCG) 66 leased plots are spilling over with fresh produce from tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini to artichokes, eggplant, watermelons and more.
Happy summer, y’all!
Once again, July has arrived as the grand climax of the gardening year, a time when the promise of every gardener’s spring season of effort unfolds in abundance.
After months of tending to seedlings, nurturing young transplants, watering, pruning (and praying), the San Carlos Community Garden’s 66 leased plots are spilling over with fresh produce from tomatoes, summer squash and zucchini to artichokes, eggplant, watermelons and more.
Our orchard, with 33 fruit trees, is popping with buds of apples citrus, figs, jujubes, peaches and pears.
All of this is the culminating result of SCCG’s dedicated gardeners and countless volunteers who have contributed their time and talents to grow food for themselves and to share with others, and support SCCG’s Growing Community mission.
SCCG visits The Big Apple
Last month, SCCG’s landscape architect, George Mercer and I had the pleasure of representing the San Carlos Community Garden at the 2025 National GrowTogether Conference in New York City.
The conference, titled “Planting Seeds of Resilience”, was an impressive gathering of community garden leaders from around the country who came together to foster collaboration, thought partnership, capacity building, and advocacy within the growing community gardening movement.
George and I had the distinction of presenting SCCG’s collaborative evolution and success story, “Think Beyond the Plot”, as a community garden, that has been built and maintained over the last thirteen years as an all-volunteer run non-profit organization that serves the community in ways far beyond the traditional community garden plot.
It was rewarding to be recognized as a “success story” on the grand stage among an esteemed audience of passionate community gardeners, but as every gardener knows… the work is never done.
One of the conference highlights was the keynote delivered by Robin Wall Kimmerer, a Potawatomi botanist, bestselling author, and director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry.
Robin’s keynote reminded us that gardens are not simply places to grow food — they are places to build community, create history, and remember.
Community gardens, she said, are living classrooms where we can relearn the language of gratitude and reciprocity, where the land becomes a teacher and we become students once more.
She urged us to remember our sacred responsibility: to leave the land better than we found it, to tend not only the soil but the human spirit.
Community gardens, she declared, are among the most profound acts of hope we can perform, because they restore belonging — to place, to each other, and to ourselves.
“If plants can live by sharing sunlight, soil, and rain, then so can we.” she explained. “By caring for the land, we care for each other, and by caring for each other, we strengthen the roots of our shared future.”
For the fridge (SCCG events you don’t want to miss)
Yoga: Every Sunday, 9–10 a.m. Meditation: Every Wednesday, 6:30–7:30 p.m.
Friday, July 11, 5 – 8 p.m. : Free event. Stuff the Pantry Summer Concert Series, Presented by Aloha Solar Power. Gates open at 5 p.m. Mr. Greek Food Truck starts serving at 5:30. Live music from 6-8. BYO Chair. Bring a non-perishable food item for entry to be donated to the Good Shepherd Food Pantry of El Cajon.
Saturday, July 19, 9-10:30 a.m.: Local Author Event: Walking the Seven Stone Path with Peter Bolland. Join us in the garden as local author, Peter Bolland, shares insights from his book, The Seven Stone Path: An Everyday Journey to Wisdom. Through stories and vivid examples from the world’s wisdom traditions, Bolland has built a blueprint for incorporating wisdom into our ordinary lives, right where we need it most. Signed books will be for sale at the special event. Register in advance on our website.
Thursday, July 24, 6:30-7:30 p.m.: Free event. Come drum. All ages and levels are welcome to join our community drum circle every second and fourth Thursday. Local music teacher, Aaron Irwin, will facilitate a fun and inclusive drumming experience. Some instruments will be provided or bring your own.
Saturday, July 26, 9-11 a.m.: Come one, come all for our first Produce Super Swap! Bring anything garden related (tools, pots, gloves, books, produce, seeds, indoor/outdoor plants) — all for swapping and sharing with others.
Become a sustaining garden member for $40 per year. Learn more at sancarloscommunitygarden.com. We hope to see you in the garden soon.
