Rain Boe Brings Color To Spring Street
Gardener Rain Boe Wave volunteers daily tending to the lush Spring Street Garden in the heart of downtown Los Angeles.
In the heart of the Historic Core of Downtown Los Angeles, nestled between the cracked sidewalk and a large orange parkade, diverse plant life bursts from concrete. The Spring Street Community Garden provides space for local residents to garden, picnic, and meet their neighbors. One gardener, Rain Boe Wave, has been a member since the garden’s inception in 2016. Over the years, Wave has helped to develop the space into a sanctuary amid the bustling backdrop of city life.
“It's a space where people can come to just relax and enjoy nature,” Wave said. She has helped design a picnic area where garden members and volunteers can sit and enjoy the plant life. That space is surrounded by flowers, greens, fruits, vegetables, and a banana tree that hangs overhead. Wave also works to maintain the surrounding plant life of many other areas within the garden, including a location for chess and a bathtub alongside a toilet stuffed with fruit trees.
Martin Burg, a founding member and part of the garden’s leadership team, attributes the success of Spring Street Community Garden to the community members who volunteer. “So many things about the garden evolved out of the ground and from who showed up,” he said.
Wave quickly got involved when the garden was first being developed. “In the beginning, she started out with a single plot, but it was obvious that she knew a lot about gardening,” Burg said. “She eventually brought things to plant in the public areas.”
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Wave started showing up every day. She began directing her attention to the design of the communal space. With the help of her fellow gardeners, Wave cultivated the public areas of Spring Street Garden into a lively and cohesive space by arranging plants, garden fixtures, and furniture. “She had the skill and good design sense and really responds to all of that stuff,” said Burg.
Wave said that she has always had a knack for plants and nature. Burg attributes her eye for design to her many years of making her own clothes. She ran a fashion brand, Itz Urz, in Los Angeles for 20 years and had a storefront on 4th Street in Downtown Los Angeles. Before that, Wave studied and recorded music, even performing locally.
Born and raised in Korea, Wave moved to Los Angeles in 1970 after the Korean post-war reconstruction. As she studied English in school, she practiced her skills by reading American magazines. “I read teen magazines and learned about rock concerts,” she said.
“I thought ‘that’s it!’ That’s the reason I wanted to come to America. I wanted to be a rockstar.”
Wave studied music at California State University, Northridge, and traveled abroad to study in Germany for a year. When recounting her interview to become an exchange student, she shared how the diploma fit into her passion for creativity. She told the interviewer, “‘I have a beautiful house and my walls are all decorated, but I have a little space to decorate it with one more thing, so that’s what the diploma is for.’”
Wave still practices music and continues to make all of her own clothes from scratch. She can always be found adorned in rainbow tye-dyed cashmere. She has now been a member of the garden for over six years. Her current venture is lining the walkways with durable vegetation so that Spring Street Community Garden is overflowing with greenery.
