On a bright, warm Saturday morning in Ventura, 40 strangers arrived at Jeanne LaRocco's house to help create a sustainable garden.

The Grow Food Party Crew, as they call themselves, dug up the patchy turf in the backyard, shoveled mulch, pulled out weeds, laid out walkways and planted a variety of fruit trees, vegetables and herbs.

"I'm amazed," said LaRocco, who moved into the house at the end of October. "I've always loved the idea of growing food, but the hardest part is getting started. Then I talked to Devin, and he was so keen and enthusiastic and he said he would get me started."

Devin Slavin, an earnest 26-year-old, is the mastermind behind Ventura's Grow Food Party Crew. He describes himself as an ecological designer who embraces the philosophy of "permaculture," a holistic land-use planning system developed in Australia in the 1970s in response to the need to produce food, while conserving energy and water.

"People hire me to integrate nature into their gardens and show them how to live sustainably," he said.

Slavin said he normally does one yard at a time every few weeks, but he decided to put together a bigger event, creating several gardens over the course of one weekend to raise awareness of permaculture.

So a group of people of all ages and walks of life showed up at LaRocco's home last weekend to create her garden.

"Today we're going to do an herb spiral that compresses about 26 linear feet of earth into about a 6-foot wide spiral that goes up vertically, and then we can water it with one sprinkler," he said as he allocated tasks.

"Then we're going to do a veggie garden and some fruit trees, and we're starting to build a food forest with artichokes as the underneath, and strawberries, and the upper canopy is going to be fig, lemon and pomegranate."

Pat Burke, a teacher at Community Day School in Ventura, raised a sweat digging up the topsoil.

"It's been 20 years or so since I had a garden so I am pretty excited about this," he said, as he pushed his shovel into the hard earth. "I love the idea of community here — there are all these people I've never met before, and everybody's smiling."

LaRocco's neighbors John and Beth Cook and their two daughters were intrigued by what was going on.

"The idea of turning unfallowed land that's been this way pretty much since we've known it into something productive and good is great," said John Cook, 45, who designs exercise equipment and grows fruit in his own backyard.

Soon the Cook family was helping out with sharpening tools, providing a wheelbarrow and building an herb garden.

Ventura City Corps, a nonprofit youth development organization for people 12 to 24, partnered with Slavin for the weekend project.

The group's executive director, Jim Mangis, brought along 10 teens who shoveled mulch from the flat bed of a truck.

"I love this idea," said Mangis. "It's the healthy and spiritual side of connecting, especially for the kids who are having a tough time, feeling alienated and isolated. I guarantee that these guys never spend time with adults like this so it's really wonderful."

Slavin, who runs his own business, Abundance in Balance Design, said he became interested in ecological agriculture and sustainable landscapes while a student at Ventura High School.

"I was just surrounded by negativity and all the things that are wrong with the world," he recalled, "and then I ran into permaculture and started to look at finding solutions to the problems."

Brian Coltrin, another Ventura High School graduate who shares Slavin's dedication to permaculture, came from Santa Cruz to help out with the Grow Food Party Crew weekend.

"People want to do meaningful work, you know, and by volunteering in this way, you're connecting yourself to the land and growing food. Anyone can do it," said Coltrin, 33.

Coltrin works on community food-security projects, getting cities and counties to dedicate land to grow food for the local population.

Leticia Sandoval, 31, from Oxnard, said she had never done any gardening before but hoped to educate herself by being part of the crew.

"I really think it's important that we know how to grow our own food and appreciate where it comes from, not just as individuals but as a community coming together," she said.

After finishing work on LaRocco's garden, the volunteers split up into smaller groups and fanned out to work on a number of other sustainable gardens in Ventura and Camarillo.

Environmental consultant Donna Hebert invited them to give a permaculture makeover to a small strip of garden outside her west Ventura condo.

"I'd like to be self-sufficient as far as I can within my urban condo environment," she said. "I'd rather see that space making food than as a lawn."

On the Net: http://www.abundanceinbalance.com

http://www.myspace.com/growfoodpartycrew