MISSION

Plant the Vine is an environmental urban-history project that uses an Interpretive Grape Garden in the Los Angeles State Historic Park to catalyze change in how Angelenos see the city, and see their role in shaping its future.

VISION

We believe in a city of communities empowered by knowledge of L.A.’s viticultural past to imagine a greener, more equitable, more livable future.

OUR FOCUS

Plant the Vine has two main areas of focus: (1) to establish a centrally located and accessible Interpretive Grape Garden in the Los Angeles State Historic Park; and (2) to inspire communities to plant and help maintain their own vineyards in parts of the city where vineyards once grew. These two branches of PTV’s activities build on and support each other to inspire a new understanding of the city and new ways to imagine its future.

THE INTERPRETIVE GRAPE GARDEN

Plant the Vine is working with educators and local communities to develop a curriculum that is built around a centrally located and accessible vineyard that it hopes to establish in the Los Angeles State Historic Park. This vineyard, called an Interpretive Grape Garden to emphasize its educational purpose, will feature a sequence of three historic, interrelated grapes -- the native Desert Wild, the Spanish Mission and the spontaneous hybrid of the two.

This sequence was first conceived by Plant the Vine after scientists at UC Davis used DNA to determine that the oldest living vine in California, located not far from the Park and long thought to be of the Spanish winemaking variety called Mission, was actually a non-winemaking hybrid of the Spanish and the native that was used exclusively for landscaping. This discovery upset the romantic, European-centered notion that the vine, known as the Vina Madre, linked us directly to the city's winemaking past. But it replaced it with a notion that is culturally more inclusive, one of decolonization, that ties us to the indigenous past.

Through this unique sequence of grapes -- the native, the Spanish and the hybrid -- the Interpretive Grape Garden will allow visitors to trace a chronology of early Los Angeles, from pre-contact to the city's industrialization, which started with the arrival of the intercontinental railroad on the very spot where the Los Angeles State Historic Park sits today!

Your tax-deductble donations will be used to:

• Design and plant the Interpretive Grape Garden
• Install irrigation
• Develop curricula for programming 
• Create signage and informational recordings for the Park
• Maintain the Interpretive Grape Garden
• Fundraising, outreach and events

THE WILLOWBROOK VINEYARD

The Interpretive Grape Garden will also inspire communities to plant their own vineyards. The Willowbrook Vineyard is the first in what we hope will be a tapestry of interpretive vineyards grown throughout the city that will connect communities to the land, to the history of the land and to each other, all of them involved in the common practice of growing historic Mission grapes. The Willowbrook Vineyard is an example of what we hope to inspire city-wide.

In 2018, Rose Pinkney, a community organizer from Watts, invited Plant the Vine to help establish the first vineyard of historic Mission grapes in the Willowbrook Community Garden. It was the first vineyard in over a century to be planted in what was once a vibrant winegrowing community. This was when Los Angeles was the winemaking capital of California, from the late 1700s to the late 1800s. 

The vines were planted in the method used at the time by the Spanish, bush-trained and spaced eight feet apart. Three years later, the first vintage of Willowbrook Natural and Organic wine was produced. Rose invited the community to a wine tasting, which also featured wines from South Africa and Santa Barbara. 

Above: The first bottling of Willowbrook Mission Rose. Below, class picture with Adam Huss of Centralas Wines.

WHY GIVE

Now Rose would like to expand the Vineyard and the Garden. But we need your help.

Your donations will go towards:

• New fencing to extend the garden to 120th St.
• Amendment and regeneration of the soil
• Organic pest and blight control
• Solar power for irrigation and security
• Irrigation system
• Soil, fertilizer and new plant material
• Winemaking workshops so folks can get their hands (and feet!) wet as home winemakers

Learn more: https://www.plantthevine.org/our-projects

Subscribe: https://www.plantthevine.org/

Follow: https://www.instagram.com/plantthevine/?img_index=1

Thank you for becoming a Friend of the Vine and making Los Angeles a greener, more just  and more breathable place to live!