All Run Finley wanted to do was plant some flowers and vegetables in a dirt patch outside

his house in South Central LA, and he got a ticket for doing that, for gardening without

a permit, which then led to a warrant for his arrest.

Well, after he got through that, he's been turning dirt patches into vegetable gardens

ever since. And as a result, he's completely rejuvenated neighborhoods and revolutionized

education through his gardening projects. So I wanted to talk to him, not just about

gardening, but what gardening serves as a metaphor for how we change our society, change our

communities and revolutionize education. This is a bit of optimism.

I've been talking to you while you are in your garden. Where exactly are you?

Exactly, exactly. I'm in Los Angeles, South Central, Los Angeles. This is a swimming pool.

I used to be a swim school, so I turned the pool into a garden. That's amazing.

The thing is, I tell people, design the life you want to live. Not the one that's been

designed for you. You can take something and change it to what you need it to be. You don't

necessarily have to go anywhere else to get it. How old were you when you discovered the

joy of gardening? Because you know, it's usually something that people discover in their

later years. I mean, it's been different times in different spaces that I've lived in.

You know, it happened after the depression that they keep calling a recession. You know,

it happened then. I was like, damn, it was a relaxing thing for me. I had what we call

a parkway. You know, it's the part of land between a street and a sidewalk and see, and

some cities don't have it. Some cities do, we happen to have them. And I plan on my parkway.

You know, I wanted to come out, Simon, and just see beauty. I wanted to feel beautiful.

I wanted to smell beauty. I wanted to see beautiful flowers. I wanted to, and it wasn't that

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