The Best Little Gardener in Deep East Oakland

In the far southeast corner of Oakland, where white people aren't, an eleven year-old boy is wondering whether the bulbs are off to a good start, inspecting the cabbage for camouflaged worms and nervously urging the peas up their trellis. Worry is a hallmark of great gardening, and this kid's got it.

Three years ago I needed to scrap together more income, and Dylan, although he didn't know it yet, very much needed a garden at his school. (Laugh now at my supposition that starting an after-school gardening program at a public elementary would be a lucrative lark.)

It didn't take him long to become a gardener. The transition was well underway when we planted crocuses that first fall. He was inspecting the packaging--intense, as usual, while the other kids were wilding out, also as usual. Printed on the crocus package was a flower icon that read "MAR-APR," and he asked me to interpret this.

"March through April. That's when they'll bloom."

Dylan's eyes went wide. His fingers curled like talons grasping prey. His skinny limbs trembled. And he squealed as little ghetto boys are not supposed to squeal: "THAT'S WHEN THEY'LL BLOOM??" Affirmative. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!"

We had discussed the bulb concept as a class beforehand, but imagining these brown lumps creating fat purple flowers in a mere (he had a gardener's patience already) five months was just too much.

He quickly learned to identify seedlings. Pale gray-green V sprout? California poppy! And why is it special? Because...Because! Oh! Oh! (Talon hands.) BecauseitsthestateflowerofCalifornia!! He attacked stands of oxalis with rage, ignoring the little girls' pleas that the yellow flowers were pretty. It's a weed, he answered with unveiled disdain. Miss Emma, tell them.

I knew from the start that Dylan was not, for lack of a more circumspect phrase, regular black. His pants were a little too tight and his hair was a little too long. When he came back for a second year of garden class, my only repeat recruit, he was mooning about orchids, which he said reminded him of Belize.

"Are you from Belize?"

He nodded, excited to tell me, and said he had been back over the summer. His fourth grade iteration included new big jeans and a fresh-clipped fade, but he was still kind of a loner and a bit weird. Certainly no other kid would play along when I wanted to talk in British accents. He developed an obsession with tomatillos (planted as a nod to the Mexican half of the class) even though he never quite understood what or why they were.

With Dylan as its stalwart, the garden program gained popularity. During one class I overheard a group of girls talking about how much they loved gardening. Dylan swished past them, busy with his trowel, and said, "I just come for the flowers."

That spring we planted tomatoes from seed. Each kid got to plant a four-inch pot with three seeds to take home. Ten kids in the class, plus the drop-ins who suckered the teacher into letting them plant their own pots too--probably sixty potential tomato plants were in those hopeful pots. Many were banished by parents who hated having their kids touch dirt. Some fell victim to kids' inevitable neglect. But one lucky seed was coddled and sprouted and fawned over and transplanted and in late summer it bore fruit to feed a large Belizian family.

The tomato experience planted a seed in Dylan as well. This year, our third, he began asking me for extra seeds and seedlings to take home and in my harried state I would pour a few seeds into his hand and move on to the next crying catastrophe. Only recently did I come to understand that he had created a vast menagerie of potted plants at home. I try to picture it, the mad scientist amid his many experiments. His mother explained that he had somehow obtained a cob of ornamental corn, painstakingly removed the kernels, and grown some cornstalks.



This fall the veteran fifth-grade Dylan showed the new crop of kids how to plant bulbs. (Two leftover bulbs were destined to join his menagerie.) He ripped open the package of paperwhites with glee, but was disturbed to find the roots already sprouting.

"Miss Emma, they think they're in the soil!" And that's when I knew the transition was complete. He knew what the bulbs were thinking.

Driving away from the school one cold night, jean cuffs dripping, I saw Dylan riding home on the handlebars of his big brother's bike. Seeing him perched so precariously, my little horticultural genius, heading off into the dark of a neighborhood where the murder rate is high and the optimism rate is low, I decided to drop the hardened teacher thing. I thought, I'm just gonna love this kid. /