On Saturday, April 18 I attended a workshop at the Garratt Wellness Center in Richmond to learn how to organize a community garden. The workshop was organized by Arzeena Hamir of the Richmond Food Security Society and featured a talk by David Tracey from VCAN in Vancouver and Peter Elson from Colony Farm Community Garden. Following a delicious lunch, we spent the afternoon spreading bark mulch for the pathways and filling the raised beds with topsoil.

David Tracey - Vancouver Community Agriculture Network

After Arzeena told us that the City of Richmond had 155 community garden plots for a population of 200,000, David told us of Vancouver's ambitious plans to have 2,010 by the year 2010. He said that after 30 to 40 years they only had about 1,000 plots for a population of 550.000 compared to Seattle where they had 1,900 plots for a population of 600,000. Montreal has 10,000 plots and Toronto has about 6,500, so we have a long way to go.

David's main involvement was with the Strathcona Community Garden, which is one of the oldest in the City having been founded in the 80's. The garden is located on Parks Board land but the community had to struggle for everything they had. He said most city employees and officials are good people but the have to balance different interest groups. He stressed that community is the most important aspect and that a community garden had to incorporate community effort and labour to be successful. Strathcona has a 3-year waiting list for plots.

Sometimes you can get a community garden located on a piece of privately owned land. This is advantageous for the landowner, as the province will then tax the land at a drastically reduced rate. David said to be very careful in drawing up the terms of the lease so you can at least have enough time to get your harvest off and also to negotiate a share of the tax savings.

He described the three most important things in locating a community garden is sun, soil and water. Make sure the site gets at least six hours of summer sunlight. Take note of trees and buildings that might shade the site.

Check out the history of the site to avoid issues of soil contamination and invest in having the soil tested. Soil can be built up. Strathcona brings in compost from yard trimmings composted by the City at their landfill in Delta. This doesn't have enough nutrients so they add organics such as manure.

Water is the biggest concern and can be the biggest cost to install. Strathcona pays $2,700 a year for the water they consume.

He finished by saying that a community garden starts with a simple idea but it is important to get others involved, do outreach and have meetings to decide what you want, simple allotments or a real community garden. Individual plots, group plots, how much community space, etc. are all questions that will have to be answered.

Peter Elson - Colony Farms Community Garden

Colony Farms Community Garden was originally part of the Riverview Hospital and inmates worked in the garden to grow food for themselves and other hospitals in the region. It was felt that this gave the patients a sense of self worth and pride in contributing to the community. This practice was discontinued as some people thought the patients were being exploited because they were not being paid.

The garden is located in a Metro Vancouver Regional Park and is 7 acres with 500 plots divided into 6 neighbourhoods. Peter thought this was twice as big as what could be reasonably managed.

He said their motto was "a community in the garden and a garden in the community". They are a non-profit society and are run solely by volunteers. All members must volunteer ten hours of group work a year, four of which is monitored. He stressed the importance of members volunteering and working on community projects.

They have a six-member executive, 2 reps from each neighbourhood. The members elect the executive at the annual general meeting. The neighbourhood reps are appointed and their ob is to monitor the situation in their neighbourhood, offer advice and sort out conflicts.

The advantages of this structure is that there are very low costs to the members, they can share work and responsibility, there is a large pool of experienced gardeners to draw on, there is the ability of for the group to help out individual members when needed.

Each plot is 10 x 26 feet and each member pays a $10 yearly membership, $1 park fee and a $15 rental fee per year. They also bring in manure every year and sell it to the members at cost. They also provide rototilling for members; water, which they must pay for, and they negotiate a license with Metro Vancouver.

Building Community

* Work Parties
- most of the work to maintain the garden is done during work parties
- they build a sense of ownership
- they meet with other gardeners
- they can share their experiences with one another

* Meetings

- get to meet other gardeners
- listen to outside speakers on various educational topics

* Newsletter

-keeps gardeners up to date on garden issues
- provide useful gardening information
- allows the executive to reach out to the membership

Members can be fined if they fail to meet their work party commitments. They can have up to 6 garden plots but they must work on the work parties for this privilege. During work parties people bring and share food. They can also have their number of plots reduced or even lose their plots the next year.

New gardeners are given an orientation session where they learn their roles and responsibilities in the garden. They are also introduced to the rule and by laws of the association

Peter stressed the importance of having a clear structure and guidelines right from the beginning.

Links

http://richmondfoodsecure.blogspot.com/
http://www.cityfarmer.org/strathconahistory.html
http://vcan.ca/
http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/kindergarden/child/com/commun.htm
http://www.urbanharvest.org/programs/cgardens/startguide.html
http://celosangeles.ucdavis.edu/garden/articles/startup_guide.html