“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.