Walking home from a shopping trip earlier this week I crossed paths with the UNA’s current chair, Richard Watson as he was finishing his morning jog. Our conversation turned to a familiar theme, community building. A lot of people want entities like the UNA, UBC, a boss, or the government to get things going for us. In the UBC’s UNA one of the big ideas is building community. This rapidly growing urban space is filled with people who come from all around the globe. Finding ways to connect across difference is important. There’s a lot of pressure for the UNA to get going on building community.
Not one to skip a chance to share a thought, I reflected on the UNA’s Children’s garden over by the Old Barn Community Centre. Since 2009 the Garden has done a lot to grow community connections. It wasn’t however, a top down project, it was a grassroots idea that took hold and then took off. It’s been my experience that community building activities work best when driven from the bottom up. So here’s a story about one such project that has persisted for a decade and a half.
Take a read of the first UNA article about the start of the garden. Then read on as I share some background to how we got the garden and then some of the things that have emerged from our grassroots community of practice. To be clear I am an interested party to the garden. I won’t claim a big role (in fact, its merely a constant small role), but I’ve been there with shovel or clippers when called upon. I’ve been a witness to the garden and a somewhat energetic participant since the start.
From the Ground Up
It takes a lot of work to garden. Both my mother and grandmother were avid gardeners. My grandmother ran a full acre vegetable garden plus another acre or so of ornamental gardens on her property near Marysville, Washington. Few people today do what she did, though in her time it wasn’t that uncommon. My mother’s gardens tended more toward the ornamental. Both women had big ideas and enough space to work them out. As a child ‘participant’ in my mother’s and grandmother’s plans I have a pretty good idea of the lots of work, digging, dragging, weeding, and planting involved in any garden long before picking or eating is a possibility. So when I heard about the idea to do a community garden I knew a bit of what might be involved.
While my mother and grandmother had a lot of ground to work with, the UNA Children’s Garden has to contend with less ground and way more people! It takes a special kind of creativity and innovativeness to build an effective, productive garden in a small space for many people.
We were among the first residents along Hawthorn Lane in the early 2000s. We all had children of similar ages. They would play together along the back lane adjoining what was to become a small park and new housing developments - but at that time (circa 2001) there were only a handful of housing units in the middle of what had been UBC Parking’s B Lot. Our small and growing neighbourhood of the early 2000s included a lot of creative people willing to dig in and create meaningful connections.
One of my neighbours, and UBC colleague, Pat Moore was a gardener of the same ilk as my grandmother. All the time that I have known Pat he has been involved in some kind of garden - from guerrilla gardens squeezed along landscape margins to back yard gardens to community gardens. Pat is no fly by night gardener, he is a fully committed all in kind of gardener. These days, in addition to his own neighbourhood garden, Pat is involved in a big community garden in the downtown eastside (linked to an urban fieldschool he teaches).
Under Pat’s stewardship the garden produced fruits (strawberries, blueberries, currents, and apples) and vegetables (corn, carrots, lettuce, tomatoes, and herbs). Pat was almost always at the garden early in the morning. The big community events were the Saturday work parties where families came and worked together under Pat’s guidance. When it became time to harvest, weekly sales were held which were managed by the children (with adult assistance).
A garden is most apparent when the fruit is sitting on the bushes, tantalizing and beckoning to passersby to taste it. Most of the real work of a garden happens long before a blueberry or apple is ready to be picked. This is an area in which building a strong committed core group was important.
Keeping it Growing
Pat wasn’t alone in this endeavour. Three others played a critical role in growing and maintaining the garden alongside of Pat and then, after Pat relocated off campus, as the coordination team: Mankee Mah, Linda Quamme, and Veronica Ignas. They were ably assisted by a host of other adults and children. But for about five years they were what made the garden grow.
Through out this process the UNA has been supportive (providing a core budget), but the direction, leadership, and heart of the garden has been the grassroots community folks who want to garden. Building community has been facilitated by the UNA, but what makes the garden a ‘thing’ is its ad hoc organic nature. Gardens have their own rhythm and expectations that structure necessary actions by people. This is what lies at the heart of a community of practice; doing things together. It’s a simple formula. Out of this shared work comes community. No staff person appointed to the garden by the UNA can actually replace this fact. They might supplement it, but they won’t be able to create it. Only by working together in a common task with a shared objective do build that a thing called community emerges.
There is another aspect of the garden that merits mention - the garden is a collective space. There are no individual plots, no private places or plants. Each garden steward gives their labours as best they can. For some it has been an interesting learning experience to work their imagination around a garden that isn’t individualized. After a time working with this idea people come to enjoy and appreciate the sense of solidarity and connection that is built by working together for a common purpose. It’s one of the strongest attributes of the garden; the collective community oriented practice.
Pandemic Gardening and the Future
The garden was right on the brink of transition when the pandemic hit. Three new garden stewards stepped in. Olivia Fermie, Andrea Bunton, Henriette Windt joined with Veronica Ignas to form a new coordination team. This refreshed team laid down the foundation for our post pandemic garden 'recovery!
As we all know the pandemic interrupted a lot of things. In the garden, group activities came to a halt. The decades long Saturday sales stopped. But the gardeners persisted, keeping things ready for a post pandemic future.
Recently it has again become possible to organize garden work parties. People are coming back, families are gathering and community is built though the mundane acts of digging, weeding, planting, and picking.
If you are intersted in getting involved in the garden email Olivia Fermi catalyst @ fermi.ca, garden volunteer coordinator.