Residents enjoy toiling in garden, growing vegetables and
sharing the fruits of their labors
By Betsy Avelar
Staff Writer
Gilroy – Many elderly fear getting older and living alone. It’s a reality that struck Elisa Ortega five years ago when she arrived at the Plum Tree Apartments, a home for the disabled and those 65 and older. At 73 Ortega is often alone, but she has found something that gives her and other residents of the complex something to live for. Gardening.
She finds refuge in watering her garden and watching the plants grow and wither before her very eyes. As a child she survived by helping the family business in maintaining a garden; today, she maintains a garden to thrive on the memories that keep her alive.
Like many other residents from the apartments south of First Street in central Gilroy, Ortega feels at peace with herself when she recalls the days she worked along side her six younger siblings at age 10 in the town of Oaxaca, Mexico. She and other residents have used their skills to grow vegetables, often sharing the fruits of their labor with other residents. The garden that was once barren land is now flourishing with tomatoes, large corn stalks, lemon tea bushes, melons, cucumbers, chiles and much more. Wooden picks lean crookedly to hold the tomato plants in place and chicken wire mark the boundaries of the neatly organized gardens.
About 15 of the 70 residents maintain a garden. Helen Ruiz a 65-year-old resident points out that there aren’t many resident complexes in Gilroy that allow people to go out and maintain a garden.
“The residents ask if they can go prune the flower or the trees and they are told no,” Ruiz said. “Here, every one is out and doing something, we’re not sitting here waiting to die.”
Ruiz also said she understands the state of loneliness that residents feel while at the apartments, which is why she enjoys helping others with their gardens.
“As we get old, we get frightened; we get scared,” she said. “It feels like a hopelessness not having family around. I guess that’s the reason why I got involved because I know that they are lonely.” Ruiz has belonged to the home for a year and enjoys the opportunity and feeling of maintaining a garden.
Some tools for the garden were provided by apartment complex manager Sophia Zamora, whose own mother was disabled after undergoing numerous hip surgeries. But Zamora remembered how she used to help her maintain a garden and thought it would be good for her residents too.
“When I was young she used to garden a lot,” Zamora said. “I think it’s the best therapy in the world for them to be outdoors whether it’s sunshine or rain verse sitting in their apartment doing nothing. I’m just amazed that people of this age have so much to give.”
And sure enough, when the harvest arrives, most of the gardeners produce too many tomatoes, chiles or cucumbers to eat themselves.
“I share with everyone,” said Ortega holding a large red tomato in her hand that she later gave to another resident. “My father used to say that I must give the best of my harvest to the poor.”
Manuel Esparza learned how to garden while he worked for a company in Merced. When he came to the apartments two years ago, there were no tools to work the land. He used only what was available, a pick and a shovel; or as he put it “a puro pico y pala.” He now applies his knowledge to maintaining neat rows of corn, melons, lettuce, chiles and more.
“We give some of our fruits and vegetables to our neighbors,” he said nodding to his wife Margarete Aguirre, 64. “The garden produces too much for only us.”
Now, Ortega has the memories of the past, and her flourishing garden and her fellow gardeners to keep her company.
Betsy Avelar is an intern for The Dispatch and attends Gavilan College. Reach her at 847-7216 or ba*****@************ch.com.
