Dr. Ted Warren and his wife, Lesa, saw the hope and potential of building a community garden on the corner of Olive Street and Southern Avenue. With the help of award-winning designer, gardening and lifestyle expert P. Allen Smith, Warren is rallying community support for his dream.
Attendees of the Krewe of Highland Parade this year may have seen a double-decked, 24-foot float bearing the legend of Dittle’s Garden.
If the name is unfamiliar, it’s because the garden is just breaking ground in the Highland neighborhood. The brainchild of Dr. Ted Warren and his wife, Lesa Warren, Dittle’s Garden will sprout at the corner of Olive Street and Southern Avenue. Warren said he gave up his garden in Bossier three years ago when he and his wife moved to the Fairfield area of Shreveport and bought an old home there. He also had to leave his workshop behind. “That’s kind of my two hobbies. So I was looking for a place to have a shop and have a small garden,” Warren said.
He found the property on Olive Street and negotiated a purchase agreement for the site. “I was going to put a shop on one end and a garden on the other end and a parking lot. My wife and I were taking a master gardening class down at [the Randall T. Moore Center], and they were talking about community gardens, and we decided to do a community garden instead. That’s how the idea came about.”
Those familiar with the area may recall that a radiator repair shop once occupied a site very close by. “I did a soil test, and the LSU Ag guy wrote me back and said the soil was just perfect. There wasn’t anything wrong. No heavy metals. In fact, it was in pretty good shape. He thought that nobody’d ever lived there. Then I researched it, and I found out there used to be a park called Mildred Street Park.”
Warren said the park was named for the short section of street between Fairfield Avenue and Southern Avenue. It was called Mildred Street before being renamed as a continuation of Olive Street.
Warren said he and his wife watched P. Allen Smith on public television and liked his gardening techniques. Warren contacted Smith for help in designing his community garden. “For the last year or so, we’ve been working with him. He did the conceptual plans last year. This year, they’re working on the construction plans,” Warren said. “This year, we’re going to start a garden. We’re going to have a theme garden. He wants to have a salsa garden. So, we’re going to grow tomatoes, peppers and cilantro.”
Warren said when he was small, his grandfather nicknamed him “Dittle.” When Smith learned of this, he decided that would be the name of the new garden.
A number of Warren’s neighbors have been recruited to assist with the upstart venture, and they’ve formed a board of directors and have applied for nonprofit status. Warren describes the cultivation of a community garden an adventure. Right now, they are spreading the word about the project to others in the area.
He said the venture would offer those interested in participating with several kinds of opportunities. For those up for the manual labor, there will be the usual gardening chores. For those unable or disinclined to the physical kind of exertion, Warren said there will be plenty of office and sales activities when the garden is in full production.
“This year, our plan is to get a garden going, and we’re working on a barn-like
structure that we can have there. The city’s going to let us drill a water well. So those are kind of our goals this year, to get the well dug and the garden planted and the barn either done or started,” he said. Smith had indicated to Warren that he might take the seeding of the new venture as an opportunity to come to Shreveport and film segments for his television program, using his crew to assist in the planting of the new garden.
There is also a long-range plan for the garden, consisting of three distinct areas, producing a growing variety of consumables. And as the weather warms and the seeds germinate, things will certainly come alive on the corner of Olive and Southern. As Warren said, depending on how the garden grows, “We’re either going to sell salsa or give away salsa.” •
