As Owens and two other men struggled under the weight of planting grids filled with cucumbers, tomatillos and lavender, George Irwin, the president of Green Living Technologies, whose company manufactured and donated the system of planting grids, watched with a careful eye.
"Lift and slide," Irwin told them as they carefully placed the grids onto brackets mounted on the wall. The plantings began above their heads, and vines and tendrils snaked down the wall. "One, two, three: good. Let it down."
Sweating a bit as he took a break from lifting 51 panels into place, each filled with soil and plants, Owens stepped back and was impressed. "We've opened up a space we never would have had," he said.
Rainbow resident Cenith Youngblood wiped the units with a white cloth, clearing away extra soil and organic matter. When she was done, she looked at the wall.
"It's gorgeous," Youngblood said. "I was trying to visualize what they meant by a green wall. Now it's beautiful. I see cucumbers and strawberries, and what are these? Basil?"
No, she was told: peppers.
"Jalapenos! Oh, I love jalapenos!"
Owens said the group planned to be responsible for the pruning and harvesting of the garden walls. In the next few months, he said, they would evaluate whether the mix of plants worked for the residents.
"Everybody will have a say about what they want," said Owens, who is partial to tomatoes because they are "very versatile."
Regardless of what the bounty is, he said, they would share their crops with the building's other residents.
"We try to share food with everyone," he said. "We don't like people taking it just for themselves."
A few days after the installation, the Rainbow parking lot was quiet. Underscoring changes that have taken place on skid row in the last few years, San Julian Street, which once teemed with people and homeless encampments, was largely empty. The green wall, visible through a metal slatted fence, was barely noticed by most passersby.
But Wilber Geter paused for a moment outside the fence, and peered in. "Are those tomatoes?" he asked.
Geter, who had just collected his mail at the Volunteers of America Drop-In Center nearby, shook his head.
"Everybody's got all kind of ideas," he said. "I like that. They did a good job on that."
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cara.dimassa@latimes.com
