“If children were unionized they would surely organize walkout and strikes against such atrocious working conditions…The fact that they are still prevalent in the majority of schools, where supposedly children should learn understanding and respect for their surrounding, it a measure of adults’ disregard for children’s basic right to a safe environment, and one that is life-enhancing and developmentally supportive.”
Robin C. Moore
Before and After Asphalt: Diversity as an Ecological Measure of Quality in Children’s Outdoor Environments.
Somehow this spring seemed to pass like a flash, perhaps due to the flurry of my activity, from moving to High Park to starting a brand new job with the City of Toronto, Parks Forestry & Recreation. In the role of Expansion Assistant, with the Children’s Garden & Exploring Toronto Programs, I have the great fortune of being able to support City of Toronto sites integrating children’s gardening and environmental education into their programming. The Program’s flagship location is the High Park Children’s Garden, a site I previously volunteered at in 2007. The site is exemplary with wheel chair accessibility and raised beds. In my role, I am seeking ways to include horticultural therapy practices into program delivery, in order to ensure that gardening can be fully enjoyed by all young people.
As part of this Program’s capacity building mandate, we offer City Staff Training and started the season with an interactive workshop, delivered by Jane Hayes, that provided many creative ideas for children’s garden programming.
A significant task, early on the job, was to pick the plant orders (vegetables and flowers) for a number of Expansion Sites across the City and to make deliveries. I was thrilled to find myself once again in a greenhouse setting, especially considering the energy and activity of the large scale operation at the High Park Greenhouses.
Last spring/summer I spent considerable time working at the Providence Farm Greenhouse and was now pleasantly surprised to discover how transferable the skills I had gained were in my new place of employment. My Horticultural Therapy Internship at Providence Farm was intended to develop my skills in working with people, yet it has become evident that I gained a considerable amount of horticulture knowledge simultaneously, including plant identification, watering, pest control, seeding, transplanting and picking.
Unfortunately, I am part of the on-going workers’ strike and haven’t been able to tend to the gardens and enthusiastic new gardeners. I hope it will be resolved quickly…
From CBC Radio, on Here and Now, hear Toronto urban gardener Zora Ignjatovic speaking with Sarah Elton about rooftop gardening and the amazing Living Food Box. These “blue bin” like boxes, with a simple hydroponic system, are now available in Toronto. Ideal for Horticultural Therapists looking to introduce the magic of food gardening in locations with restricted space.
To hear more, download the Here and Now MP3 segment.
For purchasing, contact Zora at artdecos@rogers.com
We celebrated Earth Day at the GET HONEST: Our Youth Matter event in York Region, which brought together decision makers, front line workers, educators, community groups, funders and youth, to explore local collaborations around youth initiatives.
We had an exciting kick-off to spring at the H.O.P.E. Community Garden in Parkdale with outdoor nature activities for kids during March Break. Children and parents biked, walked, took the TTC and in one case, drove all the way from Scarborough to join us on the blue tarp at Masaryk Park. We had beautiful spring weather, minus the rain. We stretched like seeds, matched animals with their marks, smelt, tasted and planted basil, built a magic forest and garden guardians, explored objects from nature blindfolded, filled musical bean shakers and created food art snacks. At the start, everyone wondered if there was really anything alive in the garden, but after investigating with magnifying glasses, signs of spring were discovered peeking through the soil.
Thank you to Greenest City for hosting and Garden Jane for supporting our learning in organizing and facilitating this programming. Special appreciation of Leah and Marilyn for working with the children in the garden.
“Recognizing the social and environmental value of community gardens, in 1999 City Council endorsed the Community Gardening Action Plan, which seeks to establish a community garden in every ward by 2003.” -City of Toronto, Community Gardens
This ambitious, yet still unrealized, strategic goal is supported by the “How to Start a Community Garden” two day workshop, presented by the Toronto Community Food Animators Project (The Stop, Afri-Can FoodBasket and FoodShare) with sponsorship from Toronto Community Garden Network and Toronto Community Housing. The program provides community members with accessible and practical training to undertake a community garden project. I would highly recommend this learning opportunity if you are already invested in a community garden and looking to take your site to a new level of community involvement or looking to organize a new garden initiative in the City (or beyond). Be sure to catch this training next spring.
You may imagine that we spent the two days discussing soil safety, what to grow, how to grow, garden design and the likes, but instead the focus was people, the heart of a successful community garden. A community garden was defined as a place to grow food and community. The emphasis was on developing skills as community organizers, understanding the benefits of using gardens as sites for community building.
Shortly after attending this session, I watched The Garden, an Academy Award Nominated documentary by Scott Hamilton Kennedy on a community garden in L.A., that was the largest of its kind in the United States before greed and politics brought about its demise. It is an extreme case, with devastating consequences for the South Central Farmers, yet it reinforces many of the lessons gained from the “How to Start a Community Garden” training. The scale of the project, the benefits to the community presented and the ownership felt by the farmers is inspiring. The challenges to decision making, conflict resolution and conflicting land use claims are also presented in a very real way. It addresses a significant barrier to community gardening, and that is, that most community gardeners do not own the land in which they invest so much, the possibility of removal is always in the background.
As a new Home Farm Associate, I am pleased to announce that March marked the official launch of the Home Farm Horticultural Therapy Certificate Live On Line. We successfully offered the first module, “What is Horticultural Therapy” over three days with students from across Canada and even a southern neighbor participating. The program takes place in a virtual classroom through Elluminate where the instructors speak to the class and present on a whiteboard. Each day begins with students describing what they see outside their windows and current temperatures in their area, connecting our weather patterns cross country. Students are also able to interact by raising their hands and adding their perspectives to the discussion. There is also the opportunity for student led presentations, video showings, web tours, file sharing and a message board.
At first everyone is a bit tentative about the technology but due to the ease of the set-up, quickly students are sold and we see true personalities being expressed online. A true on-line learning community is established with a group of people who are interested in engaging on the same topic. Thank you to all the first timers who took the risk to join us with this new venture. We hope to see you in Module 2 (coming in April). Thank you to Christine Pollard for providing another accessible horticultural therapy education platform and for allowing me to take part in the instruction and development of this exciting advancement for horticultural therapy in Canada and beyond.
*Be sure to check out the Home Farm Alumni News Blog, a place for horticultural therapy learners to contribute experiences.
Lots of lively discussion at the Organic Garden and Permaculture Discussion Group offered by Garden Jane.
We continue to work through the Natural Farming ideas of Masanobu Fukuoka and consider practical applications for this knowledge in an urban area like Toronto.
From Fukuoka’s book, The One-Straw Revolution, I was able to glean the following quotes which I found to be particularly meaningful for my studies in horticultural therapy:
“Ultimately it is not the growing technique which is the most important factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer (46).”
“Food and medicine are not two different things: they are the front and back of one body. Chemically grown vegetables may be eaten for food, but they cannot be used as medicine (100).”
“If a sick person returns to a healthy environment often the disease will disappear (144).”
We have an “in the garden” session set-up for April and in the meantime an opportunity to consider how to unite the body, the heart and the mind through our garden practices.
Each year on my Birthday, I am retold the story of the day a large bouquet of pink roses unexpectedly arrived. My mother’s great friend Big Emma sent the fitting flowers to the hospital before receiving official news of my much anticipated birth. My parents had had to wait nine difficult years for a second child. The flowers marked my start in the world, surrounded me in a beautiful first environment and remind me still today that I am loved.
"A true garden is never apart from its landscape. It arises from it like Eve from Adam's rib; it makes love to the fields in the language of botany. What I am doing in the gardens of Stonyground speaks to the landscape what I have learned from it." -Douglas Chambers in Stonyground: The making of a Canadian Garden
