The Garden

In the middle of L.A.’s South Central district sat one of the largest and lushest community gardens in the world. A small association of mostly Latino farmers grew crops there for years; then, in 2004, the city mysteriously decided to evict them. Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s documentary charts how shady backroom deals threatened to destroy this urban Eden, though more screen time is spent on the agrarian activists who bravely fought back. The Garden does a fine job of promoting the power of grassroots advocacy; in almost all other respects, however, this is nonfiction filmmaking that’s nearly as dull as dirt.