Pregerson’s Garden Growing Some Good

By SIERRA DAVIS | Pali Life Editor

Hundreds gathered in the garden at the Salvation Army Bell Shelter for an afternoon of music, food and the opportunity to learn about community farming at Riverfest 2015 on April 11.

Hosted in part by GrowGood, an urban garden program that provided more than 800 pounds of fresh produce to the shelter’s kitchen last year, the gathering provided Palisadian Brad Pregerson the opportunity to garner support for his passion project.

Pregerson, deputy city attorney for the City of Los Angeles, founded GrowGood in 2010 after working in the shelter’s kitchen for a month after college.

Witnessing the challenges of providing more than 6,000 meals to residents each week with a fresh produce budget of only $200, Pregerson sought to find a sustainable solution.

When shelter residents expressed interest in a garden program, co-founder Andrew Hunt and Pregerson determined GrowGood’s mission would be to provide food, a beautiful and therapeutic green space for residents to socialize and job training opportunities for the shelter’s residents.

“We are so fortunate to have Brad and the GrowGood team working with our garden, not just because of the produce they’re contributing, but the vocational training and the therapeutic intervention the garden provides is really what helps our clients thrive,” said Steve Lytle, director of the Salvation Army Bell Shelter.

The appreciation flows both ways.

“We are really grateful for the opportunity and thankful for the Salvation Army for believing in us,” Pregerson said of the Shelter.

Located in a converted military hangar, Bell Shelter opened in January 1988 with help from Pregerson’s grandfather, U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson, who recognized a critical need for emergency shelter for homeless people in southeast Los Angeles County.

Today it offers transitional care for up to 300 homeless men and women at one time by providing emergency shelter, transitional housing and a number of wellness services.

“The Shelter has always been part of our family, from volunteering to spending Thanksgiving there serving dinner. Dave was always really involved. He loved to volunteer in the garden and was always documenting the things we did. My brother was such a generous and giving person, our mission just fit so well with his personality,” Pregerson said of his younger brother David Pregerson who passed away in 2013. “He inspired us with his creative spring and generous heart. What we do now is in memory of Dave and honoring him through the work we do.”

Pregerson was recently awarded a $12,000 prize from the UCLA Social Enterprise Academy business plan competition. It will be used to help launch a micro-green business to eliminate the project’s dependency on donations and to provide meaningful job training opportunities to the shelter’s residents by teaching them vocational skills like gardening, marketing and building vendor relationships. The residents will sell the micro-greens to area restaurants.

The funding will also support the expansion of the existing outdoor garden space to one acre with the goal of providing 75 percent of the shelter’s fresh produce needs. According to Lytle, however, the garden’s impact on clients extends well beyond the benefits of daily fruits and vegetables.

“GrowGood has provided phenomenal enrichment for the clients who have participated in the garden,” Lytle said. “It provides a way for our clients to connect to each other and to the earth and it provides a very important therapeutic outlet where they can transcend their day-to-day struggles and see a bigger picture of the world and their place in it.”

To volunteer at GrowGood, contact master gardener Jayne Torres at jayne@grow-good.org or 213-321-7778.