La Vida Garden sits in a small plot of land shadowed by a boarded-up building in the next lot. Shingles hang at odd angles from its roof. A multi-colored facade of red and blue bricks draw your eye back to the garden and make the inner-city street look more like a block from Dr. Seuss instead of the City of Newburgh.

59 Chambers Street the once abandoned garbage-filled lot, has now been converted to an organic farm and cultural center by inner city youth.

The garden is green and still young. Sunlight pours into a DJ booth while volunteers mingle among the plots of growing plants.

A youth-run urban farm in the City of Newburgh had its grand opening last Saturday afternoon, drawing locals to free food, music, budding fruits and vegetables and cold lemonade in hotter than 90-degree weather.

The garden at 59 Chambers St. was started by the Urban Farmers League, a youth program designed to create a way for youth to participate in their community through environmental awareness and provide locally grown food to the area.

“In Newburgh you don’t really find things like this and that’s the thing I appreciate about it the most that it’s so unusual,” said Chante Coppedge, a senior at Newburgh Free Academy and one of the youth volunteers.

At one time a garbage-filled lot, the space will now host movie nights, open mic nights, and special events. The plot of land is leased for free from the City of Newburgh for one year.

The garden grows organic tomatoes, egg plants, hot and sweet peppers, grapes, basil, mint, lavender, marigolds, arugula, mescaline mix, peaches, raspberries as well as other flowers.

“It’s one of those things where Newburgh has so much potential and the youth and teenagers are the ones who are suffering the most neglect. So it’s just helping them realize their potential,” said Kim Bersin, an adviser to the Urban Farmers League.

Bersin said the Urban Farmers League plans on playing movies at the garden that have to do with the food industry or organic culture. The movies will be played every Sunday evening until September.

Decora, a Chambers Street resident and co-director of another garden on Gidney Avenue said the project grew out of a class he taught at Newburgh Free Academy two years ago that compared hip-hop culture to gardening and organic food.

“With all the abandoned property and lack of culture, lack of sustainable food and organic food because Newburgh is a food desert, like most other cities, we decided to start this project,” said Decora.

Decora, 27, also ran a summer youth employment program for the City of Newburgh that focused on green jobs. He said that he drew from the youth he met at these programs and helped get them leadership training so they could begin to manage this project themselves.
The garden opens up only a few months after a giant gang raid where federal, state and local law enforcement agents swooped down into the City of Newburgh to arrest members of the Blood and Latin Kings gangs on drug charges.

Sixty-five of those charged in the raid were from Newburgh. The City of Newburgh has also seen 16 homicides in the past two and a half years and in 2008 had the highest violent crime per capita in the state. Just across the street from the garden “Gangstr Crip” can be seen scrawled on a wall, a sharp contrast from the volunteers who spread out from the garden to chop weeds and collect garbage from the area on the hot Saturday afternoon.

For more information you can visit: Urbanfarmersleague.blogspot.com

By JAMES NANI