Cornelia Fletcher, Gardener, Landscape Contractor, and Farmers' Market Organizer in East Palo Alto

Cornelia Fletcher is well known among her neighbors in East Palo Alto. Her one acre property has a nursery, gardens, fruit trees, a barn and is beautifully landscaped. Cornelia is a landscape contractor by trade and has long history of community involvement in East Palo Alto. Recently, Cornelia was hired by the East Palo Alto Community Farmers' Market to help organize the market, scheduled to open in May of 2008. Click here for more information about the project. You may also email Cornelia by clicking here.

The photo below shows Cornelia spreading mulch in her large garden.

The following interview with Cornelia Fletcher occured on February 16, 2008. Cornelia was interviewed in her East Palo Alto Garden.

Who taught you to garden?

My great grandmother, mother and my aunt are avid gardeners. I guess when I was young I was very interested in gardening but that stopped from middle school through the beginning of college. When I was in college I started having dreams about gardens. I also had nightmares about having my hands cut off and trying to pretend that everything was okay. I take me dreams pretty seriously so I started thinking about having a garden and working with my hands because I was growing very depressed and having a hard time functioning. I fell into the opportunity to have a garden behind a couple's home near where I was renting an apartment. I started reading everything I could on gardening and taking some classes at our local organic gardening shop, Common Ground. At the center I asked who were the best horticulturists in the area. I called the two women whose names were given to me and volunteered to work with them in exchange for what I would learn. Eventually one of them, Susie Mader hired me to work for her as an employee. I began taking classes in Ornamental Horticulture at Foothill Community College at night while I worked with Suzie during the day. So ... that's my story I'm sticking to it!

Where do you garden now?

I eventually started doing landscape maintenance to support myself while I was attending the Foothill program and later the UC Extension Program in Landscape Architecture. I eventually built a maintenance business, then hired employees and starting putting in actual landscapes. I got my landscape contractor license and continued designing, installing and maintaining landscapes for a number of years. I have scaled down that business and have put time in with the EPAC school garden and I've been working on my garden a lot lately. Oh, and I help friends!

What are you doing now?

I am putting out very thick mulch because animals ate holes in all the drip lines providing water to my fruit trees. The animals and the trees are desperate for water in the summer. I tried putting out dishes of water for the animals but they still ate through the drip lines. I want my fruit trees to survive so I'm covering the lines with a foot of mulch, which my friend Wolfram recommended to do. I'm hoping this will work. If it doesn't work, I'm not sure what I'm going to do but I sure don't want to lose all these fruit trees, and I really don't feel like putting in sprinklers. And, the mulch keeps things cleaner. It's very muddy in the winter with my dogs and people running around here.

I live in East Palo Alto, California. I have an acre which I share with a landscaping friend Joe Vuvoris of Vuvoris Landscaping. I have a big vegetable garden over here and fruit trees. In the front, I have a big cut flower garden. It's dormant right now so its not worth seeing and actually the vegetable garden doesn't look too hot right now either. I pretty much only grow stuff that is useful and or that I can give away. I have a little bit of landscaping around the house to hide my rather unattractive factory built house. It is so amazing. My fruit trees are only a few years old and I have so much fruit to give all my friends for a long time because they just come in different rounds…Peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, pluots, prunes, Asian pears, pears, apples, citrus, persimmons, berries and grapes. You only have a few months where you don't get much. I'm so blessed because we can grow almost everything in this area.

What's special about gardening in East Palo Alto?

We have beautiful soil because the soil has been sifted and carried by water coming down from the hills making its way to the Bay. It's nice friable soil for the most part. And, we have beautiful weather because we are right by the bay and it is a little more temperate and we don't have quite as bad freezes. We get wonderful breezes in the evening and there's a real popular wind surfing spot a couple of miles from here because in the summer you can count on real nice evening breezes. And its kinda country like over here for the bay area. It was also kind of a tough city 10-15 years ago so it didn't get bought out and developed the way a lot of other areas have. I don't know if you can have the animals in the backyard but my neighbor has tons of chickens and sheep and goats and its nice you kind feel like you are in the country.

What about other gardeners in East Palo Alto that you know?

My neighbor has a full-on animal husbandry operation over there (pointing over the fence). There is a man down the street named David Winsburg who has Happy Quail Farms and he grows mostly heirloom peppers. He has some big greenhouses so he can get the peppers out real early in the season and command a good price for them. He actually has chickens and other growing patches in other people's back yards. He drives his electric golf cart and home-made trailer around the neighborhood. He goes to farmers' markets around this area ... and he does pretty well. Our friend David has bee hives at Happy Quail and he sells honey at the farmers’ markets. There is a housing cooperative down the street called Greenwave and the landscaping around the whole property is designed with fruit trees, grape vines and food gardens. It's pretty inspiring and beautiful.

Originally, East Palo Alto was a poultry colony. Then, as I understand it, after World War II, when the incarcerated Japanese were released, a number of them moved over here because they had had to sell their farmland. The women grew cut flowers, and the men worked as gardeners in some of the fancier places out in Palo Alto and Atherton. There are still a few of the older Japanese couples here. I guess some of the last cut flower nurseries have been sold off. So I guess my point is that there is a real history of growing food here.

What do you have to say to young people about gardening and growing their own food?

My first thought would be about considering gardening as a career or at least an excellent thing to do. I was going to Stanford University and I was miserable. I fell in love with horticulture and I started a business around it, much to my parents and other people's dismay I might add, and found great joy. It is a great business. I do well financially and I meet all kinds of people that I never would meet in other professions. I get to be outside, move freely, be creative and do my own thing. First thing I would tell youth is that if you really love gardening or something different than what's traditional, and it suits you, you should pursue it. So, if there are kids out there that love gardening and or cooking nutritious food, I think they should explore it and not worry that perhaps it seems like a groovy granola hippie thing to do. I think if you work hard at something that is beneficial to you and others, and you like, you are probably going to be okay.

Why do you connect with the work of Collective Roots?

I think of how much I suffered and how hard I struggled because I separated from gardening, my love of the environment and connection to the earth. In high school I got into all kinds of stupid stuff. I wish I had stronger influences when I was younger legitimizing working with the earth as an important theme and as a worthy thing to spend your time doing. I think Collective Roots provides a venue for kids to experience gardening and the natural environment. I am sad when I think how separated I got from such experiences and had such a struggle to find the connection again. I don't know where many kids can find these experiences because everybody has a gardener now or they don't have a yard. I heard a report from REI that an average child in the United States spends half an hour of unstructured time outside a week. I think that's really scary if we are going to try to raise healthy children and to protect our environment. Also, I am concerned that people are growing so disconnected from our food system.

What do the words "Collective Roots" mean to you?

Well, when I think of "Collective"... here in our East Palo Alto Charter School garden, we have all kinds of people from all different places coming together and participating in a mutually beneficial project together. And "Roots"... is about gardening, and digging in deep or investing yourself or sustaining yourself.

Anything else you want to say?

Wear sunscreen! I was an idiot when I was young and raced bikes and did everything in the sun and now my skin is fried and I have some pre-cancerous skin growth issues going on. So please wear sunscreen when you are gardening and outdoors!

Editors' Note

REI CEO Sally Jewell states that the average child spends forty-seven hours a week watching television, playing video games, or on computers. "And that is really scary. OK, so 47 hours a week in front of a screen; in unstructured outside play, 30 minutes a week." Click here to read the whole interview with Sally Jewell.