parkway

While Craig’s team did most of the work creating the front yard, Kolding and Estrada took on the job of removing the weeds and Bermuda grass in the parkway in front of their home.

They gather there every last Sunday of the month for Club Gay Gardens, a garden club catering to queer Angelenos, to maintain the parkway strip, learn about native gardening and connect with other plant lovers.

In exchange, the city’s parkway program provided free native plants suitable for Long Beach to replant the area and mulch to help retain rainwater.

The goal was to suppress the weeds on the parkway so they didn’t add more seeds to the habitat she was trying to create on the other side of the sidewalk.

After sunrise, the city went to work clearing an encampment along the parkway between the 110 Freeway and the flood channel that’s existed there since the beginning of the pandemic.