The Junction Triangle Community Garden Association - Starting a New Community Garden

• planed meeting: April 21 6:30
• Location: Perth Dupont Community Garden in the Symington Avenue Playground

Agenda:

• A tour of the Perth Dupont Community Garden, and talk about the different styles of community gardening.
• Talk about the positive aspects of a community garden - how it will benefit the neighbourhood in general, and for the children, especially from the local schools and the Girls and Boys Club.
• Guest Speakers talking about their experiences in other community gardens

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In the 1880s, when downtown industrial growth meant soot and smoke, Toronto’s parks were celebrated as “the lungs of the city”. Parks were places where people could retreat from the hustle of daily life to find peace and quiet in nature. At the turn of the century, parks and open spaces came to be appreciated as places where youth could develop their physical and moral strength. Parks were health outlets for Toronto young people’s boundless energy.

More recently, as hours of work gradually dropped and family time came to be more valued, parks and open spaces became places where the entire family could enjoy an outing and where children’s playgrounds were available. That’s when the once-separate terms “parks” and “recreation” came to be linked together and spoken about in the same breath, as we do today.

At the beginning of a new millenium, a new generation of Toronto citizens see community gardening as an important function of city parks. Citizen tended gardens help keep parks attractive and safe. They also provide recreational opportunities for young and old. They are places where families can grow together, where children can learn with their parents about where food comes from and the caring that goes into growing it.

Our green spaces continue to serve as lungs for our city by reducing carbon and nitrogen from the atmosphere, pumping out fresh oxygen and water vapour, and cutting down the need to import as much produce. With the Community Gardens Program, Torontonians can grow and eat fresh produce from their own local neighbourhoods. Community gardens provide new ways for parks to link with the world around them. They enhance fresh food production and stimulating community development.

So, community gardens honour the traditions that have made Toronto’s parks and open spaces so important among our public as well as sow the seeds for new traditions. Our generation of Parks and Recreation staff are privileged to be able to play a role in promoting these new traditions. We hope to makes community gardens even more accessible and popular than they are now.

What is a community garden?

Any group of people that come together to garden is a community garden. Every community garden is different and is determined by what the gardeners themselves want. Community gardens come in many different shapes and sizes. They can be large or small, on the ground or on rooftops, in plots or in planters. And they can be a mix of all of these things. Some are communal, where everyone shares the work and the harvest. Many more have separate, individual plots for each gardener, and some encourage gardeners to join together to grow some crops communally, either to donate to a food bank or to maximize space for plants that need lots of room.

There is a need for another community garden in the Junction Triangle. There are many people on the waiting list for a plot at the Perth Dupont Community Garden, as well as many other interested people, including the local Girls and Boys Club.

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• For more information E-mail Susan perth-dupontcg@frogstar.com
• Website: www.perth-dupont.parkcommons.ca

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Content last modified on April 16, 2010, at 08:45 PM EST