Community Corner
Homeless Man Creates Sidewalk Garden on Telegraph – With Bare Hands
With plants from friends and neighbors, a homeless man known as "O.G." has established a well-tended little "community garden" between the sidewalk and curb at the busy intersection of Dwight Way and Telegraph Avenue.
Bell peppers, tomato plants, and a cactus are not something you expect to see on a city street in a busy business district – even on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue where the unusual seems ordinary.
Three weeks ago, Michael Gesregan started a community garden on a small patch of dirt with his bare hands – literally.
For over a year, the 52-year-old Gesregan, who goes by the name "O.G." for "Old Guy," has been sleeping on the sidewalk just four feet away from what is now the community garden.
After a construction project left behind plant-friendly dirt along the sidewalk at Dwight Way and Telegraph Avenue, Gesregan bought bags of topsoil and brought it here.
"I woke up one morning and God told me to plant a garden," he said.
He began tilling and digging the dirt with his bare hands without any tools or shovels.
He first installed a three-inch tomato plant, which is now two-feet high.
With local businesses and neighbors bringing him things to plant, the community garden is already flourishing.
The community garden is packed with spider plants, marigold flowers, an eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, a cactus, sunflowers, beans, and other plants.
Gesregan spends his day in People's Park and comes down to the community garden five times a day for about half an hour at a time to care for the garden.
"The garden is not mine," Gesregan said. "I just take care of it."
A local business across the street printed signs that read "Community Garden. Watch Your Step" to tape on the fence Gesregan put up.
Why does he do it?
"I want to change the world. If everybody did this, America would be different," he said with tears in his eyes.
Several passersby came up to Gesregan to shake his hand or bump his fist, say "thank you," and wish him good luck with the garden.
Gesregan came to Berkeley over a year ago from Florida, where he acknowledged he had a run-in with the law years earlier over "doing something stupid" he will "never do again."
Gesregan doesn't have any prior experience gardening but he wants to do this full-time and even expand his garden to the triangle patch of dirt at the intersection nearby.
He said it would "keep him out of trouble."
"People care – they really do," said Gesregan.
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