Jean Paul Hernandez got excited talking about the monarch butterfly. 

He explained the importance of planting milkweed for the monarchs, and he talked about the incredible 3,000-mile migration journey they take every year to Mexico. Then, sitting at a wooden picnic table in the BarrioBoy Garden he and neighbors from the Clark-Fulton community built, Hernandez pointed to a large butterfly in the distance. 

“See the monarch?” he asked. 

“How you could tell they’re monarchs, they fly really fast,” he said. 

The butterflies’ journey across North America is multi-generational, said Hernandez, known as JP to his friends and neighbors. Monarchs lay eggs on milkweed, and the caterpillars feed on milkweed before growing into butterflies.  

“You’re helping a butterfly that has one of the most insane, like … one of the most insane migrations of all wildlife,” he said. “And we are lucky enough to see them.”

‘If you look at that mural, you see home’

In 2021, Hernandez was DJing an event at the Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center when he mentioned to Leticia Lopez, the center’s executive director, that he wanted to start a garden in the vacant lots next to his parents’ home. 

Not long after that conversation, a wildlife officer with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources told Lopez about a fund to create butterfly gardens in the city and asked if she knew anyone who would be interested. Lopez connected the officer to Hernandez. 

Now that butterfly garden sits in the front corner of what has become the BarrioBoy Garden. It has a mix of several types of milkweed and other plants that attract the monarch, plus, raised beds framed by logs that hold strawberries, tomatoes, flowers like marigolds, perennials and pollinator plants. The Department of Natural Resources installed an interpretive sign in front of the garden, where people can read and learn about the monarchs in Spanish and in English. 

When Hernandez was planning what the garden would look like, he thought back to when he visited family in Honduras, where they had hens and a coconut tree in their yard. 

“When you think of a community garden, the first thing you think of is food,”  Hernandez said. “But when I went to visit my family in Honduras, it was you being one with nature.”

That’s the feeling Hernandez wanted to bring to his community when he started the garden. On a recent summer afternoon, as rain subsided, birds sang among the trees, drowning out the sound of cars passing in the distance. Bees hopscotched from flower to flower. 

A colorful mural depicting indigenous people, wildlife, fruit and plants separates a parking lot from the community garden. 

“If you look at that mural, you see home,” Hernandez said. “You see flowers, you see birds, you see vegetables, fruits, a simple life, culture, heritage that we kind of forget about when we leave our country.”

‘It’s a space that welcomes people’

The garden also includes a stage where Hernandez has hosted poetry readings and where Playhouse Square brought a Spanish language play to the community. The garden was filled with visitors that day, Hernandez remembered. 

A ramada with picnic tables offers shade to visitors next to the butterfly garden. And a fire pit with a half-circle wooden bench, painted by neighborhood children, offers a community gathering space. 

From day one, Rosa Cruz, a Spanish and multicultural studies teacher at Lincoln-West School of Science & Health, has taken her students to plant seeds.They also helped build the fire pit and the stage and paint the benches. The students also help maintain the garden. 

The garden has allowed her Multicultural Studies students to practice what they know from their own culture about gardening and agriculture, Cruz said. 

The garden doesn’t ask much of people individually but brings community members together to achieve a lot, Cruz said.

“It’s a space that welcomes people,” Cruz said in Spanish. “And it’s a free space that allows us, as I said before, to express ourselves in the way we express ourselves and to take whatever initiatives are necessary in our community.”

 Hernandez has used the garden to host giveaway events. People have gotten school supplies, trees, pumpkins and bikes, all donated by those who support his vision of the garden as a community resource hub.

Melissa Santana has used the garden as a gathering space for her mental health support group. Santana, a counselor who works with and advocates for victims of violence, started a podcast and an informal support group on a volunteer basis. 

She has also taken her daughters to events at the garden, including a yoga and planting class and most recently, on July 11, a planting, painting and percussion party where community members painted the buckets in which they planted seeds.

“So he is constantly building these spaces where people can come and learn,” Santana said.  “And they do it in such a fun, relaxed and comfortable setting that it’s just kind of unbeatable.”

Giving back to the community that raised him

On the corner of Sackett Avenue and West 33rd Street, surrounded by the BarrioBoy Garden, is Hernandez’s parents’ home. It’s the home he grew up in, where he ran around in his and his neighbors’ yards. Down the street, Hernandez would spend hours in his best friend’s basement freestyling raps and learning to use his friend’s cousin’s turntables. 

All of those childhood experiences led  Hernandez to his passions as an adult. In his early 20s,  Hernandez knew one thing for certain – he wanted to help people. He considered joining the military, but his mom thought that was too dangerous. He suggested becoming a firefighter, but again, his mom said he shouldn’t do that either. Too dangerous. 

So in 2020, he decided he wanted to help his community by creating the community garden. And what better place to do it than the vacant lots next to the house where he grew up?

The garden is just one of the many ways Hernandez is involved in his community. 

He gives children DJ lessons at Julia de Burgos, where he makes sure to include a lesson on the history and influence of hip hop. He works with Literary Cleveland on classes that blend music and poetry. 

When Hernandez first learned about the monarch’s migration, he thought of his own parents’ migration from Honduras to the United States.

“They’re that monarch,” Hernandez said. “You know what I’m saying? They left home and they came here, so they traveled all of those miles to give me an opportunity to fly and be that … be the change in my neighborhood.”

Want to get involved with BarrioBoy Garden? Contact JP by email or on Instagram.