Nurturing your green thumb: making the most of a little space

National Post, May 10, 2000
By Shannon Black

It's as old a custom as exists, involving special clothes and a lot of time on bended knee for an uncertain reward. The need to put one's hands into the soil is almost fundamental. But what about those with no space to grow?

Since 1993, the number of community gardens in the old city of Toronto has more than tripled, from 26 to 81. The waiting lists for plots at three downtown allotment gardens are longer than ever. These days, staff at the parks and recreation department call community gardening a "movement."

Solomon Boye is the Community Gardens Co-ordinator for the city. He helps community groups organize gardens in the city's parks, as well as on private property. He says that in addition to obvious factors like the demand triggered by a scarce resource and the soothing effects of handling soil, gardeners are motivated by environmental factors.

"A lot of people are now conscious about the environment and issues with genetic food and pesticides," he began. "I [also] think people are also getting a lot of information, getting educated about responsible environmental stewardship." And the parks department supports these public initiatives to establish everything from butterfly gardens to native plant beds to vegetable plots by taking away trash, supplying mulch or compost or donating surplus plants or other supplies used in the city parks.

But for all that solitude and communing with nature, gardening is a social sport, said Laura Berman, program co-ordinator for FoodShare, a 15-year-old community garden organization that offers information and advice to would-be community gardeners.

"There are many newcomers to Canada and this is a great way to become part of the community," said Ms. Berman, adding that many may have come from a place where growing food was a way of life.

"[For them] community gardens are really a way of preserving a sense of their culture."

The number of international gardeners in Toronto is evidenced by Growing Cultures, a photography exhibit that opened last weekend at the Royal Ontario Museum featuring gardeners from 18 countries who are helping to reshape this city's neighbourhoods.

"I think it's a very interesting way for people to see their similarities," said Ms. Berman. "They may not have a language in common but they'll see they're growing the same food. They do have something in common, even though on the surface they don't."

Carole Conde has been gardening in Alex Wilson Community Garden, and serving as the community co-ordinator, since it opened two years ago. This alleyway garden running north from Richmond Street West near Portland Street is exceptional within the context of the city's community gardens in at least two ways:

First, it lies on private property donated to the city to be used as a community garden.

Second, the plans for its landscaping won a design competition between dozens of finalists. The garden represents the Ontario landscape, from the sand and dune plants of the lakeshore to the northern woods.

Ms. Conde says the miniscule plots (40 of them rented for $20 each year) are used by private residents as well as a homeless drop-in centre to grow vegetables for the soup kitchen; residents of a nearby housing agency for the handicapped; and a Spanish-speaking centre that holds some language classes in the garden.

As for the three "allotment gardens" in Toronto that rent 10- by 10-foot plots (also for $20 each year), they serve at least 360 additional gardeners. The garden in High Park has 109 plots while another at the foot of Leslie Street has 230 plots. At Silverthorn Avenue, in Little Italy, there are 24 plots for rent.

At Leslie Street, the tenants like to grow flowers and sit on the garden chairs they carry into the fenced lots, said Jasmine Uljarevic, the permitting officer for the Parks department. Meanwhile, the largely Eastern European crowd at High Park grows lots of vegetables, as do the Italians in the Silverthorn allotment garden.

"I find the most committed ones are the seniors. They're there every day," she said.

Ms. Berman has noticed the same phenomenon at a seniors' building on Gerrard Street East near Pape Street. The plots are very small but enjoy the most bountiful harvest in the city, she said, describing the gardeners as predominantly Asian women aged about 85 on average.

"I guess the secret is the many years of life and experience these women have. They've probably been gardening all their lives and now they have the time to do it."

And new gardens keep popping up. On Sunday, another was inaugurated in Moss Park by a partnership including corporate sponsor Starbucks Coffee, whose coffee grinds will be added to the compost and whose employees will serve as volunteers.

Although people are spending a great deal more time outside now that the weather has changed, for gardeners it's largely a period of anticipation.

But the gardens that have been built in years past serve as a release not only for those renting space within them, but for those who watch them change the public landscape. The Alex Wilson Community Garden, for instance, gives those using its walkway a change from the industrial buildings surrounding it, said Ms. Conde. "It is the only greenery for an awfully long way," she pointed out. And that's what makes urban gardens so great.