New Stuff 5 – Gardens
My mother seemed to extract a season’s worth of fresh food from the modest garden in the backyard of our Victoria home. I have no idea how she did it.
As Jane Jacobs noted in her last book, it’s quite possible for knowledge to be lost when one generation decides not to pass on their experience, or the next one is disinterested, because it seems obsolete or irrelevant. Could most baby boomers now grow their own food to, um, save their lives?
But what with food security and localism moving up the sustainability agenda, it looks like some of those skills may be on the rebound. There are signs – like here, underneath Burrard Bridge:
Not a food garden (though apparently it’s possible), this recent reclamation of a neglected space will soon be planted with wildflowers set to bloom in the summer. At the moment, the site is being prepared:
It’s all so … public. A garden in this place assumes someone cares enough to try to beautify neglected ground, and that their efforts will be respected. Fortunately, someone does:
This is Jason, a local resident, who had previously his own plot just uphill, on the site occupied by a day-care before it was moved and the property sold for development. Not to be discouraged, he’s taken on the challenge of a shaded and more vulnerable site. And we get to enjoy the result.
Another example of good gardening intentions can be found less than a kilometre away, at the corner of Seymour and Pacific, previously home to the Carlos and Bud’s restaurant in what seemed to be an old gas station. (Are there only three gas stations left on the downtown peninsula?)
The land will eventually sprout another condo tower. But in the meantime, the developer Onni has turned it into an ambitious community garden:
It’s a fine idea – but I’m skeptical. Will there be enough interested people to make a commitment for only a season or two? Will it survive the regrettable but inevitable poachers? Can actual food be grown, or is it only for non-edibles?
But so what? Truly a learning experience for a generation that’s forgotten how to do it, preparing for times when gardening isn’t just an amusement.
Basically, it’s a shit-load of work to grow your own food, as your mother would probably tell you — if, that is, she also had to juggle a gazillion other jobs at the same time. If you’re modern-day born-again “Martha Stewart” type, and it has become your lifestyle choice (which means you’ve given up a bunch of other things), then you find a way to make room and time for it. But if it’s something you’re squeezing in between picking up the toddler(s) from daycare/ preschool and running home from your paid job to make dinner, then shopping at Safeway starts to look …well, SANE.
I, too, remember a time when mothers spent untold hours (apparently happy …or maybe not?) in autumn kitchens, canning untold quantities of fruits and vegetables for the winter. But as it stands, I can barely stick to a regular schedule of cleaning the bathroom, much less growing my own food. It’s a real problem, but it is a problem because it’s a real job, a total piece of work — and no one wants to do it for free/ not get paid for it anymore.
All the more reason to have a community garden where you pitch in what time you can. Sepp Holzer’s permaculture farm leaves nature to its own devices: he sows seeds and 12 weeks later gathers up the veggies. It looks like once he established his (terraced, mountainside) farm, nature virtually took care of itself.
We don’t have space for a proper garden, but we try to grow food that either tastes better or is cheaper than store bought, like tomatoes and herbs. We also “cheat” by growing from starter plants and not from seed.
FYI – The on-the-ground coordination of the plots at the Pacific and Seymour site is being handled by the Vancouver Public Space Network… and we’re pleased to report that community interest was OVERWHELMING. We set aside 25% of the sites for community groups working on food security issues, and allocated the rest on a first-come first-served basis. They all went in a flash, and we continue to receive emails from folks who want to garden there.
There is a tremendous demand for these sorts of plots in the city – particularly in the downtown peninsula.
We grow a significant amount of our own food, never mind “catch” a significant amount of our own fish and meat. For the fish, it must be a hobby as it takes time and costs a bit. For the garden, the same, however it is no where near as dramatic as the first poster states. You can easily grow more food for others without an proportional increase in time spent (if you have the land….but even in a south facing condo you can grow fair amount of potatoes on a deck using a sack of soil). At the end of the day it comes down to priorities. In the big city you are often lost with distraction, from TV to the ever so enjoyable distractions that make Vancouver a beautiful city for the “creative class.” For the most part urbanized cultures have chosen to move away from being connected with the land and part of the natural process. For our children being a part of the outdoors, including instilling the sense of accomplishment that they will feel after they produce their own food, is as important…no make that more important than is the constant drama, of lessons for this, activities to improve that, montessori schools…etc. That is our choice.
Robin Kelley
I recommend the French intensive system or biodynamic gardening system. Using natural techniques you can boost your yields to 10-20x while using far less water than traditional systems. Its not that hard to grow things well.
Books by John Jeavons (How to grow more vegetables) and Mel Bartholomew (All New Square Foot Gardening: Grow More in Less Space) offer highly detailed overviews on what to do.
I would prefer a community garden with card access controlled fencing etc – its possible to use an attractive system that would help keep things intact.
Carlos and Buds was indeed a “Home” gas station; I have a map of Vancouver circa 1962 that pinpoints all their locations.
I think you’re correct about there being only three stations remaining, four if you include the floating station in Coal Harbour, there is one left where once there were five. I can even remember a Chevron station at Georgia and Burrard, where Royal Centre is now.