Living Labyrinth

Edendale Grove Parish Garden & Living Labyrinth

Edendale Grove is a small urban farm located in the Downtown Los Angeles neighborhood of Echo Park adjacent to the Cathedral Center of St. Paul, the headquarters of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles. Its primary purpose is to provide fresh produce to the 350 families who visit the on-site food pantry each week. It was designed to serve the dual function of productive farm and beautiful, welcoming open space for the community while doing so in the most resource-responsible way possible. Additionally, it is meant as inspiration for rethinking and repurposing under-utilized urban spaces for food production and community engagement.

With more than 70 fruit trees and up to 700 vegetable and herb plants grown in each of the three Southern California growing seasons, Edendale Grove serves as a productive space to grow large amounts of food for individuals and families suffering from food insecurity in the surrounding community. It also serves as a peaceful reprieve from the often harsh noise and landscape of urban Los Angeles. Designed around a central Labyrinth, Edendale Grove is rooted in spiritual tradition that grounds and supplements its natural utility.

Walking a labyrinth is an ancient spiritual practice of stillness and meditation. The Living Labyrinth installed at the Edendale Grove Parish Garden at the Cathedral Center of St. Paul is an extension of this ancient tradition. In the words of Seeds of Hope Executive Director, Tim Alderson, the Living Labyrinth expands this ancient tradition and internal spiritual experience and allows it to be "an outward spiritual experience as well by producing food that we then carry and share with our neighbors ... It's truly a transformative time for this property and this community ..."

Constructed with the help of innovative urban agriculture non-profit Our Foods, the Living Labyrinth was organized and planted in water-efficient Grow Sox. The Labyrinth will grow and change over the seasons and years and it has the capacity to produce over 15,000 servings of various vegetables that can be distributed through the food bank at the Cathedral Center.

By the Numbers

Edendale Grove is currently home to 72 fruit trees including: 34 Citrus, 10 Avocado, 5 Banana, 5 Plum, 4 Apple, 4 Aprium, 2 Olive, 2 Pomegranate, 2 Apricot, 1 fig, 1 Goji Berry, 1Asian Pear, and 1 Mulberry.

The Living Labyrinth has been recently replanted for Spring with red leaf lettuce, cabbage, green lettuce, kale, broccoli, chili peppers, jalapeños, tomatoes, strawberries, rueda, rosemary, lavender, sage, basil, thai basil, parsley, oregano, peppermint, and thyme. Amongst the trees are also grapes, passion fruit, and a variety of drought tolerant native plants.

The Living Labyrinth

The Living Labyrinth is a fresh interpretation of an ancient practice. For hundreds of years, walking a labyrinth has been a spiritual practice of stillness, mindfulness, and meditation. Forming the labyrinth in carefully mapped rows utilizing the latest advances in soil enrichment and irrigation technology allows for the inner spiritual experience to be mirrored in a powerful external expression of growth, renewal, and abundance. In the words of Seeds of Hope Executive Director, Tim Alderson, the Living Labyrinth serves to connect this inward centering experience with a tangible act of service to our neighbors. It creates an opportunity to form farming into a meditative, spiritual practice.

The Labyrinth has the capacity to hold over 700 fruit, vegetable, and herb plants. As visitors walk the labyrinth's shaded course and seek to center themselves through quiet meditation, they are encouraged to interact with the garden by harvesting ripe fruit and pulling weeds-reminders of the blessings and hardships in the human experience and of the mindful work we must do in our daily lives to maintain physical, mental, and spiritual health.