- Sandy and Stacey from Peace Portal Alliance Church

For 2 years, a few of us dreamed about a vegetable garden on our church’s campus—after the 2-day seminar hosted at A Rocha called ‘The Plot Thickens,” we felt equipped and inspired to break ground.

Supplied with a generous donation of plants and seeds from local nursery West Coast Gardens, Shaun Gaynor, Stacy Dryfhout, Kim Martin, and Sandy Colero, together with a handful of other young adults at Peace Portal Alliance, built three experimental garden beds on June 1st in order to grow food for the local food bank.

The combination of tending the garden and working together has turned out to be a highlight of the summer for many of us—as the vegetables have grown and flourished, so have our friendships. Thus far, the Sources Food Bank in South Surrey has also been very ecstatic about our lettuce, spinach, onions, radishes, and cucumbers, treating these organic veggies like gold. And there’s so much more to come!

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A GROWING MISSION:  THE SAANICH COMMUNITY FOOD BANK GARDEN

Established in 2007, the Saanich Community Food Bank Garden is a practical project that provides fresh, nutritious food to the Mustard Seed Food Bank in Victoria BC.  The idea to plant a garden arose from a desire to be good stewards of the Saanich Community (Mennonite Brethern) Churchproperty, to create a place to learn about sustainable food production, and to provide people with a practical way to help others in need.

Each year about 20 types of vegetables, fruits, and herbs are harvested, including carrots, beans, onions, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, asparagus, rhubarb, squashes, beets, turnips, oregano, parsley, chives, grapes and apples.

Relationships are nurtured as people labour together, caring for both people and plants.  The garden is tended entirely by volunteers who decide what, where, when and how to plant.  Volunteers come from our church and the broader community.  Consultant expertise comes from garden volunteers and ‘friends of the garden’.

Since its inception, the garden has produced thousands of pounds of produce that are delivered to the Mustard Seed Food Bank in Victoria weekly or biweekly from May to October.  Saanich Community Church is one of the few places that donates fresh produce to the food bank.  The nutritious produce goes into the hands of needy folks as soon as it is received at the food bank.

New volunteers are always welcome.  For more information, please contact the church office (250-479-0410) or email SaanichFoodBankGarden(at)gmail(dot)com.

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The GCG is a joint project between the PG Christian Reformed Church, and the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), and the Prince George Public Interest Research Group (PG PIRG). The vision of this project is to grow a strong community–a place where people depend upon each other and work together to build strong values, where all community members are appreciated and supported (particularly the poor and underprivileged), and where local environments are used carefully and thoughtfully to support long-term sustainability.

Strong communities are places where people depend upon each other and work together to build strong values, where all community members are appreciated and supported (particularly the poor and underprivileged, and where local environments are used carefully and thoughtfully to support long-term sustainability.  The Prince George “Growing Community” Gardens (GCG) seeks to promote the development of these community values through three primary outreaches:

The GCG seeks to bring together broad and diverse sectors of the Prince George community. Activities will be intentionally directed toward breaking down stereotypes among rich/poor, educated/less educated, aboriginal/non-aboriginal, faith based/non-faith based, young/old, and other cultural divides that hinder strong community from developing.  This outreach (through working, learning and celebrating together) will seek to create inter-dependencies through participation in the GCG based upon common interest of building strong community supporting sustainable local food production.

The GCG will be a place of community learning through research and education addressing questions of appropriate and sustainable food production, nutrition, and healthy living within a community context. Research will focus on “green”, low-tech, accessible gardening practices (for general application) and enhancing wellness through good nutrition, particularly for low-income and underprivileged residents.  Workshops and practical demonstrations can be conducted on nutrition, cold-climate gardening, composting, preparation of food, and preserving nutritious food.

The GCG will be a place of community outreach and support to low-income and underprivileged members of the Prince George community.  Harvests from the research / demonstration gardens will be donated to community food banks and local residents.  About 1⁄2 of the total garden plots will be given to community residents, with priority given to low-income and underprivileged residents.  GCG volunteers will come alongside low-income and underprivileged residents to help empower them to become more active and healthy members of the community through taking more control of their food supply.

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Kingfisher Farm’s Community Shared Agriculture program in South Surrey produces over 8,000 pounds of organically-grown vegetables annually, with a portion going to low income families. Local food production is not only essential in building balanced, sustainable communities, but is also crucial for ensuring local food security and helping to alleviate poverty.

 

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The Hill Street Community Garden was created in the spring of 2010 to create gardening  and community meeting space in south-central Hamilton, Ontario.  A small but determined group of garden organizers led the project and were able to secure the use of some empty green space owned by the City of Hamilton. Five local churches partner on the garden: First Hamilton Christian Reformed Church (lead partner), St. John the Evangelist Anglican Church, Central Presbyterian Church, First Unitarian Church, and New City Church. The garden is also endorsed by the area Kirkendall, Strathcona and Durand neighbourhood associations.

The garden currently has more than 40 gardeners at work in the 30 raised beds.  The garden plots are large – each one is 200 square feet – and they provide lots of room for growing a wide range of vegetables and flowers.  Gardeners pay a small annual fee and also share in larger garden projects and work as needed.

A garden shed was also built by the gardeners with donated materials and has one of the first ‘green’ roofs in Hamilton.  A variety of events were held in the first season from weekly Art in the Garden nights and work days to a poetry reading by local poet, John Terpstra and a harvest party.

For more information, please visit the website at www.hillstreetgarden.org.

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Who is Involved?
This Garden Group is entirely volunteer-based. Participants include members from the existing Crossroads Community Garden, members from Église communautaire de la rivière-Rouge (ECRR:156, rue Marion), Holy Cross Church, and other interested community organizations/individuals. We are also working with a member from A Rocha Canada (www.arocha.org)

Who is it for?
The Community Garden is for anyone in St. Boniface!
The goals for this community garden are:
• To provide a place where people from the community can interact with each other and build community connections
• To provide fresh vegetables for the Holy Cross food bank, and provide an opportunity for clients of the food bank to be involved in growing food
• To provide public pick plots for people in the Traverse Park neighbourhood (ie: strawberries, herbs, rhubarb, tulips, other)
• To provide individual and group plots for neighbourhood people and organizations

Support and Supplies:
This is a very low-budget project. Soil, garden tools, water barrels, compost beds, and seeds and bedding plants for the public pick and foodbank plots, would all be solicited from St. Boniface businesses and individuals. We are hoping that several neighbours along the north side of the park would be willing to provide the garden with access to water for filling water barrels during the growing season.

Timeline:
With proper support from the community, we hope to have the garden up and running by the spring of this year, if that is not possible then perhaps to turn over the sod in the fall of 2010, and plant in spring 2011.

FAQ:

How much will it cost?
This is a non-profit project. We are hoping to make the initiative as cheap as possible. We may charge a small fee for supplies and maintenance. If there is a charge involved, low income families can apply to have the fee waived.

What about all the people who use the park field?
We don’t want to get in the way of anyone using the park. We are aware that the field is used for sports, play, and exercising pets. We are hoping that the proposed garden site won’t intrude too much into common recreation areas. The site is as far to the back as the field as possible. Please let us know if you feel this will interfere with your uses of the park!

Do I have to live in the community to have a garden plot?
People in the neighbourhood have first dibs on the plots. If you do not live in the community, feel free to apply for a plot anyway, and we can put you on the waiting list.

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JUST GROWING is a project linking people in the parish with food, community and creation.  This project will build on the strengths of previous years of St. Margaret’s community outreach and will develop direction for future ministry in the neighborhood.  A Rocha is a Christian conservation organization working to show God’s love for all creation.  Jen Kornelsen is on staff with A Rocha Canada as a Community Organizer for parish-based projects in Winnipeg.  The goal of Just Growing is to equip people with gardening experience, great food, stronger connections in the community, and an appreciation for environmental conservation.  The outcome is St. Margaret’s Church practicing faith in action: engaged in loving the neighborhood with veggies!

Young adults will be employed for four months to carry out this outreach which they will do collaboratively with low-income residents near the parish.  During the summer the staff will also lead two weeks of summer day camps for kids.  Other activities of Just Growing include a Lenten study group Food and Faith, involvement in the church’s centennial celebrations in June 2010 and a fall harvest festival for the neighborhood.  Jen Kornelsen will provide leadership for the project together with church staff.  The project will result in an extensive written guide for Just Growing so that it can be a repeated at St. Margaret’s and replicated by A Rocha in other parishes.

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The Crossroads Community Garden has been up and running since the spring of 2007. Run by a small group of energetic members of Crossroads MB Church, the garden provides individuals with fertile soil to grow delicious, healthy vegetables and beautiful flowers, as well as a chance to meet other people in the community.

The Location:
Crossroads MB Church, 231 Kitson Street

The Garden:
• There are twelve 10’ by 10’ plots, and six 10’ by 5’ plots.
• There is no limit to the number of people who can run a plot; do it by yourself, with a friend or family member, or with a dozen green-thumbed buddies! Plant vegetables, flowers, or whatever else your heart desires! Possibilities are endless!
• Don’t have time to maintain an entire plot? Why not do a little volunteer work in our Food Bank plot instead? Everything raised in this plot will go to those in need.

The Gardeners:
Anyone interested in gardening can apply! All are welcome! You need not be affiliated with Crossroads, or any other church, to be involved.

**Note: Members of the Saint Boniface community get priority status when applying for plots. However, people outside of the community can also apply.

Community Website

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The garden at West Point was a fairly small project in terms of the people involved, and was basically managed by one lone gardener. However, many more people benefitted from the vegetables and fruits harvested. The church hopes to get more people participating this year, and, hopefully make it more of a church and community garden.

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For several years, Grandview Calvary Baptist Church in East Vancouver owned a small rental house adjacent to the church parking lot. The house had fallen into disrepair and was eventually demolished to make way for new social housing. Because the social housing project would take several years to develop, the church asked church member and gardener Ute Warkentin in the summer of 2006 to turn the lot into an interim garden. Along with a group of interns from a local ministry, Ute transformed the abandoned lot into a delightful garden. Soil was donated from the city and from a construction contractor. Railroad ties were scavenged from the renovation of a neighborhood park to make beds and terraces. A gardening non-profit donated a cedar tool shed. A rusty bed frame and abandoned door were turned into a picnic table. The initial vision was to grow food in this lot for Out of the Cold, the church’s Thursday night meal for homeless neighbors.

As the group of ministry interns ended their term, Ute invited other gardeners from the church to take over the care of the garden. The neighbors living nearest to the garden were the first to tend the plots, with interest rippling out beyond the immediate locale. Interested neighbors (both within and without the church community) were given a plot to grow food for their own households. The organization of the community garden evolved slowly and relationally: the only business meeting being an early spring seed-swap and workdays were voluntarily well attended. During the seed-swap in the spring of 2009, someone suggested a weekly garden picnic as a good form of involving more folks in the garden and of building community. Through the summer, we met in the garden on Wednesday evenings to share meals, often prepared with produce from our plots. Robert would bring a salad. Carina and Jess would often bake bread. Carsten would bring a few bottles of his home-brewed beer. Several of our homeless friends would occasionally stop by to join us for the meal.

While the community garden is more directed towards small-scale produce for home consumption, we haven’t lost the initial vision to share the gifts of the land with others. Robert Lockridge spent many hours transforming garden areas surrounding the church parking lot into vegetable beds. As part of our Good Friday Stations of the Cross walk, the church community participated in a litany concerning our care for creation which culminated in our planting of potatoes in Robert’s vegetable patches. These potatoes were later harvested by children and adults, washed, roasted, and served for one of the Out of the Cold meals. Robert was also able to grow enough lettuce to provide the salad for the 150 meals served on Thursday nights, for 5 weeks in a row.

The garden has provided the groundwork for good relationships to be built with our neighbors. An older Italian couple who live next to the garden have participated in tending the land, contributing invaluable horticulture advice along with the occasional pan of lasagna. Of the 21 people who have plots in the garden, over 1/3 are not part of the church community and the gardeners range in age from 3 to 70 years old. Many pedestrians stop by to ask about the garden or just to admire the beauty of the transformed lot.

A Few Critical Reflections:

Structure: Our informal organizational structure is an asset in many ways, allowing for more enjoyment of the garden than business meetings. However, this relation-based organization often makes it difficult for new-comers to find out about the garden or how to get involved.

Money: It hasn’t cost us much money to run the community garden. Most of the initial start-up costs were negligible because of the high number of donations Ute was able to procur. We have received a small grants from the Frog Hollow Neighborhood House two years in a row ($500/yr.) which has allowed us to buy a new hose, build an entry trellis, and provide new tools. Our neighbors have donated access to water. Through sharing and searching for freebies, most gardeners can tend their plots for less than $20/yr.

Neighbors: It is important to maintain good relationships with the immediate neighbors of a community garden. Community gardens can attract extra traffic, pests, and debris which can be irritating for neighbors. Our garden has provide for some conflict, but also much goodness in our ongoing attempts to build relationships with our neighbors.

Faith: The Good Friday liturgy and potato planting was very meaningful. Many individuals also make use of the garden for quiet reflection and prayer. Gardening is part of our Christian faith for many reasons: stewardship of Creation, food security for the least, joining in Creation’s praise, living in a rhythm that is prophetically counter to the efficiency-driven pace of society, hospitality to neighbors, providing points of inter-generational connection, etc. I’ve been thinking lately about how growing a garden in the city might be evangelistic. We don’t have any Gospel tracts or church advertisements posted at the garden. I’ve noticed, nonetheless, that people walking by our garden are impressed by a sense of good news. I think they find good news in the fact that people are caring for and making beautiful the plot of land given them (be it ever so small a plot, and so small an effort). And, I think our neighbors find good news in watching a group of people work for the sheer joy of it.

I, at least, sure feel joy as I sit in the garden and sip a cup of coffee after an early morning of planting peas and carrots.

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