No yard? No problem. She’ll teach you to grow mobile gardens that’ll shift your thinking in LA
“Which blows my mind, like, all this started with me just growing a pack of seeds on my parents’ back porch,” says Lindsey
By Dua Anjum
LA Times [need subscription]
July 17, 2023
Excerpt:
Hummingbirds hum. Chickens cluck. Domesticated wild cats attempt to find their way into the chicken coops. And squirrels crawl up the bird feeders to have a good old time — it’s fine dining up there, feasting on sunflower seeds. Taylor Lindsey’s mini urban farm in the South Los Angeles neighborhood where she lives with her parents is alive with hubbub.
With an aloe forest in the front yard, raised garden beds in the backyard, a pollinator patch, a variety of recycling and composting bins, rain barrels, fruit trees along the driveway and bird feeders all around, Lindsey has transformed all 300 square feet of her yard into a sustainability haven.
“Which blows my mind, like, all this started with me just growing a pack of seeds on my parents’ back porch,” says Lindsey, 36, who moved to South L.A. nearly 24 years ago with her family. In 2016, she planted four packs of seeds, which resulted in 75 squash, kale and zucchini plants over the summer. At the time, she didn’t foresee that it was more than simply growing plants. She was cultivating a new life — and career — for herself.
Lindsey grew up in Jefferson Park in Pasadena and went to high school in Hollywood. As a kid, she wanted to be an animator and illustrator. Gesturing to cartoon tattoos that cover the left side of her body, she says she wanted to give people who mocked her something to look at, but eventually, the body art became meaningful to her. “They stared at me my entire life because I’m completely covered with freckles or I was a very overweight child, but also I’m mixed, right,” Lindsey says. “People were harassing me about my ethnicity. And I dealt with it until my mid-20s.”
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