We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christopher Burroughs a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Christopher, appreciate you joining us today. What’s been the most meaningful project you’ve worked on?

When creating garden spaces in disadvantaged communities they all offer a rewarding and fulfilling experience. Building something that you know people will get joy from and teaching them about the earth and plants is uplifting. Watching as people become inspired by nature and passionate about learning is an amazing feeling. I built a garden at a church in SouthEast San Diego. The neighbor across the street would watch me each day and sometimes she would come out and speak to me. She was not interested in the garden. However, as the garden got closer to completion she started asking me more questions about the garden- “what plant is that?”, “why are you doing that?” “What is going to grow there?”. Eventually, she began relating her experience gardening as a child with her family and became completely involved in the garden I was building. She now grows food at the garden on a continuing basis.

Christopher, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I am a formerly incarcerated entrepreneur. from the age of 14 I couldn’t figure out how to stay out of jail. I had substance abuse issues and grew up in a violent culture. I robbed, I stole, I gang-banged, I hustled, and did anything else I could to fill myself with perceived pleasures and journey further down the road of destruction. I just couldn’t figure out how to do it right. As a result of all this debauchery and fornication, I spent 14 years in the California state prison system and became an absent father to my two children. I kept bumping my head against a wall. At the age of 40, I caught my last prison sentence. I had been doing relatively well in society but again fell short and ended up with a 7-year 4-month sentence for burglary, evading the police, and dissuading a witness. I was almost hopeless. I knew there was something good in me that was meant to help others but I couldn’t seem to reach it. Of course, I was in prison hustling like I was still on the streets and this landed me in “the Hole”. A snitch dropped a kite on me and they put me in the hole pending investigation. At the very time, this happened my father who is my best friend was on hospice due to terminal cancer and he was going through his process of death and rebirth. I was in the hole alone and desperate and losing the man that knew me better than anyone on Earth including myself. The pain and desperation brought me to my knees-literally- and I prayed. I asked God to help me, to show me a better way. I told him that I wanted to trust him with my life but I didn’t know how. I am him to teach me and to remove from me whatever was in my life that was not meant for good. Later that day I was lying on my bunk thinking that whatever I do with the rest of my life must bring some value to my community. No more just for-profit endeavors. While laying there I received a vision of organic farming. It was powerful, practical, purposeful, and based on truth. I knew right away that it came from the creator. Upon being released from the hole I began writing the business plan for an organic farming operation that would train men and women that had been locked up to run their own farms while localizing a healthy, sustainable food supply and keeping our dollars in our community. I wrote the Small Business Administration requesting sample business plans and spent 5 months developing the 26-page business plan that would become Garden 31 Community Initiative.
Upon release from prison, I began taking sustainable agriculture classes to learn how to farm and became inundated with the agricultural industry in San Diego County.
I think the thing I am most proud of is that I had the humility to bow and ask for help and then the courage to take the steps. Upon release from prison, I was not confident and there was nothing in my track record that would make me think that I could be successful. I believed in myself though and I believed in my God-given purpose. I took the steps and all of the doors were opened for me. Imagine that.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

I am seeking to change the way that we see and treat each other as well as our environment in this world. I believe that we can love ourselves and one another in a state of union. My mission is to teach people how to be okay with themselves, how to love others, and how to care for our environment.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

The lesson that I had to unlearn is that “we are all different and some are better than others”. We are all just as valuable and deserve to be treated with respect. It really amazes me that that concept is not more apparent. Men-women, black-white-brown, it doesn’t matter. Who can jump higher, run faster, and make the biggest machine? We are all the same. I grew up playing sports on a competitive level. I was always taught that I needed to be the best. My daughter taught me something different. Jasmine dances in a troop and for two years she was the troop’s captain. Because of my incarceration issues, I had never seen her dance but I assumed that since she had been doing it for so long and was chosen to be the captain that she must be the best. Well, one time we were sitting at my mother’s house and I told my daughter ‘You’re probably the best dancer in your troop”. I think I was probably looking for something to boost my ego. She responded, ” Dad, we don’t think about things like that”! Completely brought me to a new awareness that we don’t have to be trying to be better than one another. that concept had never occurred to me. She taught me a very important lesson in one sentence.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.garden31.org
• Instagram: garden.31

Image Credits
Christopher Burroughs