Providing shade in schoolyards and valuable skills to young job seekers

Jessie Salazar's love of plants and landscaping began when he was about 6 years old, growing up in Compton.

“My father was a gardener, so we used to go out to rich peoples’ homes out in Beverly Hills and different areas,” he said.

He earned a landscape architecture degree from the prestigious program at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, and after graduation worked at a few firms. But that left him unsatisfied.

In 2015, he founded his own company, SLA Inc. , in Bell Gardens and was awarded schoolyard greening contracts for the area — and coincidentally, for some of the schools he attended.

A growing number of nonprofits and landscaping companies are taking on this kind of work. It's due in large part to the allocation of millions of dollars in state and local funds in 2022.

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