CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 6/30/2025

Raise your spades for Ron Finley, Gangsta Gardener

This photograph—by Dae Howerton and Dallas J. Logan—of Los Angeles community organizer, urban gardener, humanitarian, artist, designer, father and “ecolutionary” Ron Finley is reproduced from staff favorite new release Ron Finley: The Gangsta Gardener. The first book devoted to this heroic horticulturalist, The Gangsta Gardener chronicles Finley’s journey from 2009, when he was first fined for planting vegetables, fruit trees and flowers in barren spaces around his neighborhood, through his participation in the 2024 Hammer Museum exhibition, Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice. “Growing your own food is a human right! Or it should be!” he writes in the book. “Being healthy is a form of resistance. Swords to Plowshares. Let your shovel be your Weapon of Choice to change the system of food inequality. Raise Your Spades!”