When Tomas O’Grady enrolled his daughter, Erin, in L.A.’s Thomas Starr King Middle School in 2008, he was worried about street gangs. He shared his concern in a meeting with principal Kristen Murphy, telling her, “My daughter is precious and I want this school to be great.” Sensing an opportunity, Murphy suggested, “Why don’t you help me?” Not skipping a beat he asked, “Do you have a garden?”
O’Grady had a long history of working on and around land. He’d spent his youth farming in Galway, Ireland, later studying industrial engineering and eventually finding his way to New Jersey, where he and his wife Justine had great success restoring rundown houses. He’d stopped “working for the man” when they moved to Los Feliz, where he designed and built a largely sustainable home. Then when the first of his four kids started preschool, he initiated a sustainability program there and taught the little ones how to compost.
Now O’Grady was primed for a new challenge and sensed this project would give him a sense of purpose. With the drive and intensity he brings to all he undertakes, he and a group of volunteers created the school’s first edible garden.
“Hipsters that we are in Los Feliz and Silverlake, we wanted to change the image of the school by making it softer,” he said. And there’s no question those efforts have been successful. Over a five-year period King’s Academic Performance Index shot from middle 600s to 843 on a scale of 200–1,000. “That’s a meteoric rise,” O’Grady noted.
King also became an Environmental Studies Magnet.
Enrich LA Takes Root
A man of action, O’Grady ran for city council in District 4, the Hollywood/Silverlake/Los Feliz area, in 2011, hoping to have a greater impact on his adopted city. When he lost that bid he looked for an alternative way to serve his community.
The King garden project had been so successful (and L.A.’s graduation rates were so dismal—just 56 percent in 2011) that O’Grady decided to expand the 
program. “What worked for my children and for friends,” he says, “being an Irish Catholic and weighed down with guilt at all times, I thought, Why not try to help other schools throughout the city?” He decided to take his urban garden idea to the next level and “get a garden in every Los Angeles school.”
Enrich LA began that same year as an extended dream to help other public schools “soften,” and in the process teach their students to appreciate whole foods. O’Grady invested $20,000 of his own money into starting the new citywide nonprofit. With a passion to help others, he and LEED-accredited architect (and amateur beekeeper) Leonardo Chalupowicz began building gardens and enlisting volunteers.
When other schools heard about the positive impact on grades and school spirit, they wanted in. It’s probably no coincidence that in the first three years of Enrich LA’s operation, LAUSD graduation rates rose to 70 percent—still low, but a huge improvement.
“Some of these schools have metal [bars] on the windows. They are like prisons. All a child needs to see is someone looking out for him, doing something for him, then showing up again and again. I’m going to get my hands dirty, dig gardens and be there for everything we do,” promised O’Grady.
Even Whole Foods Market got excited about the project. “With the right goals and leadership, a garden is incredibly integral to the learning environment of any school,” said Nona Evans of Whole Kids, a division of Whole Foods. With the shared vision of creating healthy change, Whole Kids began offering garden grants in 2011, much to O’Grady’s amazement.
“[Whole Kids] funded a nonprofit that nobody even knew about, nobody trusted, and they were one of the first people to write a check,” he remembered. “I thought that was very cool.”
Evans was equally impressed with him. “He has passion, vision, and focuses on his relationship with the school to make sure the kids are getting a great experience,” she said.
Many Hands Make Light Work
Enrich LA relies on community support. The Garden Ranger program, a five-unit curriculum taught in six weeks, enlists committed volunteers to build and maintain school gardens, and teach the students how to work with them. Last year only 40 percent of LA schools were paying from their budgets into the Garden Ranger Program; this year it has doubled to 80 percent—proof once again that the program is a viable asset to the school system.
Armed with a background in agricultural education, Alexys Thomas began as a volunteer at Van Nuys Middle School shoveling mulch and soil. She quickly rose in ranks from intern to Garden Ranger (instructor), to program director. “Tomas really believes in everyone who works for Enrich LA and values everyone’s opinions,” said Thomas. “It’s something I feel passionate about, so it’s a privilege to work in the program.”
Ranger Hope Cox has an urban farm background as well as a degree in nutrition and dietetics. Her work with Enrich LA is to bring community awareness to 
health and wellness. “I want to have an impact on the next generation to be healthy,” said Cox. She’s been involved in 15 school gardens and discusses fresh food techniques with up to 100 students a day.
Keeping an online diary on Enrich LA’s website of what happens in these garden areas connects Rangers with their communities. “At every school we write a synopsis of what we did and include two or three pictures. I don’t always write about lessons; I pick out the best part of the day,” Cox explained. “Like, it blows [students’] minds that a carrot grows in the ground, and a tomato on a vine.”
Enrich LA has 60 gardens running currently and their goal is to reach 100 by year’s end. Expanding into non-school gardens, such as the Avalon Gardens Housing project, offers different possibilities. Plans are also afoot for a headquarters that will maintain a full garden, working farm, kitchen and beehive, and can host field trips. And at King, special education teacher David Egler integrates the garden into classroom activities with special-needs children.
As the L.A. community and schools move toward a more sustainable future, we are indebted to Enrich LA, but from O’Grady’s perspective, he’s just doing his job.
“I feel privileged that I came from nothing and invested well in my financial accounts, and now I’m investing in my karma account,” he explained. “I’m really privileged to meet all these principals, teachers [and] volunteers who care so deeply. My life is great.”
