This is a story I wrote for Vancity in 2010. Part of a series of 18 stories about their grantees.
Vancity supports the work that Fraserside Community Services Society and the South Fraser Women Services Society do in promoting balcony gardens for low-income families in New Westminster and White Rock.
The Biggest Little Garden in Town just might well be one of the biggest little ideas in Canada.
In 2007, Diane Cairns, the Director of Living Well Programs at Fraserside Community Services Society had a vision: in ten years vegetables would be growing in every nook and cranny of New Westminster, and that the city would be renowned as the biggest urban garden in the world.
She imagined walking down streets and through parking lots lined with vegetable planters. She pictured fresh vegetables growing in every public space, from parks and alleys to courtyards and school yards. She breathed in the smell of the fruit trees that would surround every public building, from City Hall to hospitals to libraries.
“I came up with the idea of providing balcony, container gardens to people living on a low-income in apartments when the local food bank told me that they were having trouble getting donations of fresh fruit and vegetables,” recounts Diane.
So, Diane and Laurie Clarke, the Program Coordinator, built two prototype gardens themselves. They put the containers outside their office building, in a space, Diane says, where green can’t be seen for miles. As the seeds sprouted, people in the neighbourhood changed their walking routes so they could watch the gardens grow, help water them, keep them clean and, when needed, protect the bounty when it ripened.
Diane was amazed, “We thought we’d start with a pilot project of eight or ten gardens. We gave away 54 garden containers that first summer. In our second year, we didn’t need to promote the program at all since had a wait list. Last summer we distributed 80 balcony gardens and 62 more people had to wait until summer 2010 to get theirs.”
In New Westminster, a city where fully half of all residents live in apartment buildings, what difference can having 180 balcony gardens make? A great deal if you ask the elderly woman who, last summer during a two-week heat wave, was unable to manage the walk to the grocery store but still ate well, picking and eating her own fresh vegetables. Or the woman who had never introduced herself to anyone else living in her building, but, when her own garden produced more vegetables than she could eat, knocked on a neighbour’s door to share her harvest and made a new friend. Or the three seniors who, all living on different sides of the same building, became friends as they worked together to grow and share vegetables most appropriate to the sun and shade conditions on their respective balconies.
Of course, people could buy or build their own balcony garden containers but the Biggest Little Garden in Town provides much more than just a cedar box, some soil and seeds to members.
“Vancity’s support allows us to personally deliver and help set-up each and every garden. This personal connection between the new gardeners and Laurie, our experienced gardener, is key to everyone’s success. The relationships that have developed are creating a true community of gardeners – people who without even knowing it, are food security and climate change activists,” says Diane.
By supporting these neighbourhood projects, Vancity shows its commitment to food security and finding solutions to climate change. The Vancity Community Project Grants are focused on communities making a difference in protecting our environment and addressing issues of poverty. The Biggest Little Garden project is an example of the power of local action.
And the project has grown to other communities. At a Vancity event, Fraserside Community Services Society talked about their initiative with a group in White Rock. The South Fraser Women Services Society learned from the experience of the New Westminster group and has now launched their project with Vancity support.
With communities across British Columbia and around the world asking how they can create Biggest Little Gardens in their own town, Diane’s vision has expanded. She would like to see space on balconies, rooftops, parking lots – to be used for vegetable gardens.
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