Conveners: Karen Wristen, Emily McCullum
Whom to contact: Karen Wristen
Summary Objectives: to educate the community about the production of local, organic food; to promote community gardening by finding gardeners and matching them with suitable private or public lands; to facilitate the establishment and healthy maintenance of community gardens by providing advice and operating a demonstration garden; to work with other BAA initiatives, schools and community groups to develop programming in food security education.
Spring has sprung in Davies Orchard Heritage Demonstration Garden! It’s only just February, but you’d never know it to look at Davies Orchard. Roses in bud, garlic up 6 inches–and of course, weeds and blackberry coming on strong! This weekend, February 6/7 at 10:00 am, join us in the Garden for our first work party of the season. No experience is necessary and children and (restrained) pets welcome.
Cates Hill Community Garden UpdateThe Cates Hill Neighbourhood Association has made great strides in developing a garden plan with the assistance of BAA. Next steps involve a presentation to the Greenways Committee and then to Council, with a request for funding. Meantime, private funding is being sought to supplement the cost of fencing, building and supplying water to the site.
About the Community Garden Group
The Community Garden group began as an initiative of BAA at its November 1 meeting. It is open to anyone to join–follow this link and add your contact information
The detailed notes from our several meetings can be found at Bowen Community Garden. Below is a summary of our thoughts about starting new gardens on Bowen.
Why Community Gardens?
Most of those gathered were already committed to community gardening, so this question wasn’t actually asked or answered until we were well into our unstructured discussion! It turned out that we have different perceptions about why we would do this, and all of them are good reasons.
The idea that we’re all concerned about the future of our food security, in the face of peak oil and climate change, adverse economic trends and the potential for disruption of the existing food system by any or all of these, was unchallenged. It was also observed that there are Islanders who may need to grow food to make the family budget work. The concept that we might entirely ‘feed Bowen’ with a managed system of mini-gardens was floated, but attracted the concern that this might compete with small farm operators. It was observed that few community gardens have delivered food self-sufficiency to their members, most of whom also buy produce throughout the year. Social and community-building aspects of community gardens were touched on at several points in the conversation, with aspirations for skills exchanges and intergenerational programming expressed in this group and elsewhere among groups with different focus.
I don’t recall that we touched on nutrition, healthy exercise, re-connecting with our food sources, preserving rare and heritage types of fruit and vegetables, the endless learning opportunities provided by a garden or the incredible satisfaction to be gained by mucking about in the soil on a warm, sunny day, but maybe that’s because we didn’t need to say that to one another!
Community Garden Models
We have two very different models in operation at present:
1) Collins Farm offers the opportunity to work in a for-profit operation to volunteers, who contribute a sum of money and two hours’ work per week to gardens managed by a farm employee. In return, volunteers receive a box of produce each week. This model allows a landowner to maintain farm status for taxation purposes, while keeping labour costs down and sharing a wonderful resource with community volunteers. Volunteers who have worked on Collins Farm reported it to be a perfect fit with busy schedules.
2) Davies Orchard Community Demonstration Garden is operated by volunteers for Bowen Island Heritage Preservation Association (BIHPA) behind their cottage on Davies Orchard Lane. Originally established to showcase plants from many of Bowen’s oldest gardens, the garden now includes extensive perennial borders, six raised beds and sundry planter boxes. Raised beds are allotted to individual volunteers who are expected to pay an annual fee of $25 and maintain the perennial border and common areas in return. Rare and heritage vegetables are interplanted in the borders and boxes and available to all of the gardeners. The time commitment here is greater–about 5 hours per week–and gardeners have the opportunity to plant what they choose in their own raised beds. No sales of garden produce are permitted, except for fundraising purposes.
More Community Gardens!
It was the clear consensus of the group that more community gardens should be established, with some caution around choosing locations that do not conflict with neighbours, other land uses or the protection of water resources. Both of the models described above have the potential to be used and both private and public (BIM, Metro and Crown) lands could be considered as potential sites.
Site evaluation
The need for criteria to evaluate sites was agreed. Some criteria were proposed:
-water: must be available at reasonable cost. If rainwater harvesting is to provide for the garden, it was noted that storage capacity would have to be considerable and that the carbon footprint of small plastic rain barrels makes them a poor choice. Sites that minimize the need for water (bottomlands) or have the potential for wells or surface-water sources would be best. Sites near Cove Bay water system might be able to use it, but the need to enhance the resources of that system for dry years (like 2009!) was noted.
-location: several small gardens in various neighbourhoods were thought to be a better idea than one large one–if they’re close to home, they are more likely to be well-used and serve community-building purposes.
-soils: or, more to the point, the co-incidence of soils and sunlight, are in short supply here. The need to begin creating community compost was happily taken up by another group, who will hopefully broaden our prospects by providing an affordable source of organic material with which we can amend the sandy/stony stuff that Nature served up. Meantime, the purchase of soil remains a major budget item and sites that offer a good start at soil should be preferred.
Garden Management
It was observed that any garden requires a management plan and someone–either an employee connected with the public lands, a volunteer or a landowner–to ensure that it’s followed. Some requirements for management plans were proposed. The most strongly expressed was the need to use water responsibly, prescribing watering methods and times, building and maintaining the gardens according to ‘water-wise’ principles, mulching and building proper soil structure. Strictly organic gardening methods were proposed. Control of potential run-off was also noted as a concern where the garden might affect the quality of surrounding water.
Outreach and Education
Regardless what model or where located, gardens need gardeners. Some work to reach out to community members who might like to garden, to connect them with lands available to garden, is clearly needed. Among the proposals for dealing with this included use of the baa! website and a separate community forum dedicated to community gardens. It was observed that we need to build an “agriculture culture” on Bowen, so perhaps these efforts should be co-ordinated with other groups forming under the baa! umbrella. Educating and supporting community gardeners with skills possessed by our farmers and experienced gardeners, for example, would be a way of building this culture.
