The city of Los Angeles tried to arrest Ron Finley for planting carrots.

He grew up in South Central. Drive-throughs were on every corner. The dialysis clinics were multiplying. In 2003 he drove 45 minutes to buy a tomato.

He had built a fashion line in his garage. The Dropdead Collexion ended up in Saks Fifth Avenue and Nordstrom. He knew how to make things beautiful. And he knew what it meant when a neighborhood was denied beauty.

In 2010 he looked at the 10-foot strip of city-owned land between the sidewalk and the street outside his house. Old toilets. Broken furniture. Used condoms. The city owned that strip and had left it to rot.

He planted pomegranate and banana and almond and orange and tomato and blackberry and kale and strawberries.

The city cited him for it.

He refused to remove the garden.

They issued a warrant for his arrest.

He gathered 900 signatures.

The city backed down.

In 2013 Los Angeles changed the law.

Vacant lots became gardens. Children learned to grow food. Gardeners trained and took the knowledge home.

Gardening is the most therapeutic and defiant act you can do, especially in the city, he said. And you get strawberries.

Behind the city's oldest library in South Central he is building an urban garden oasis: a greenhouse, a café in a shipping container, a community garden where people can grow and sell and share.

If you're not growing your own food, you're eating someone else's agenda.

Image Credit: Emily Berl/The New York Times