Ron Finley
Ron Finley grew up in South Central Los Angeles and started planting vegetables in the dirt parkway strip outside his West Adams home in 2010. The city cited him for gardening without a permit; he fought the citation and won, and his advocacy helped bring new parkway landscaping guidelines in 2015.
His TED talk, "Gardening is my graffiti," made the idea famous: turn food deserts into "food sanctuaries" by growing food where people live. He founded the nonprofit Ron Finley Project to teach it, and in 2017 raised the money to buy back the property where he lives and gardens after it was sold out from under him. His 2020 MasterClass on gardening was the platform's most-watched course that year.
A book, Ron Finley: The Gangsta Gardener (Delmonico Books with the Hammer Museum), came out in July 2025, along with a short documentary, Gangsta Gardener.
- Known for
- Parkway gardens; Ron Finley Project; TED talk; MasterClass
- Book
- Ron Finley: The Gangsta Gardener (2025)
Sources: BlackPast.org (Feb 2025) · Occidental College, 2026 Ruenitz lecture · KCRW, "Ron Finley saves his garden" (May 2017) · Harvard Book Store, book listing · Coast Film Festival, Gangsta Gardener (2025). Profiles use public interviews and published information only. Is this you and something's wrong or missing? Tell us.