Guerillas in our midst

Small garden allowed to remain on city land
Published September 3, 2009  by Julie Van Rosendaal in Food Julie Van Rosendaal

Sometimes, the spade is mightier than the pen.

This spring, Erlton residents Jacqulynn Mulyk and her husband Jon Walters were faced with a glut of rich compost and not much yard at their townhouse in which to cultivate it. Located steps from a chunk of rarely used public land — a small space at the top of Cemetery Hill — the couple went ahead and planted three raised beds rather than jumping through the required hoops to meet city policy (considering factors like parking, irrigation and insurance) for an approved community garden.

Henninger Park is a hilly chunk of grass with a lone bench placed at the top, overlooking Meals on Wheels and Macleod Trail. Its steep slope renders it unsuitable for a playground or much else in the way of recreational use; a narrow red gravel path allows pedestrians to cut through to get from the neighbourhood to the street below.

Unsure of the soil quality (the land was once a ravine, now filled and covered with scrub grass and a few bushes), Mulyk and Walters laid newspapers over the earth and filled each bed with soil. Then they planted seeds. Since June, they have been successfully growing carrots, tomatoes, potatoes, chard, arugula, radish, lettuces and what they think might be broccoli.

Irrigation has not been an issue; Mulyk and Walters maintain the garden, watering it from a hose attached with a small electric pump to the rain barrel outside their townhouse, about 30 metres from the raised beds, and they let rain do the rest of the work. Despite its public location, squirrels have been the only vandals. (They appear to love peas.)

“If homeless people want to help themselves to the food, I couldn’t care less, that’s not the point,” says Walters. “It was just something productive to do with this nice organic material. It’s a natural progression. In every other jurisdiction where people can grow things, they grow things.”

Throughout the summer, city workers mowed around the beds without comment. Then last week, representatives from the parks department called a meeting and paid a visit to the garden.

“I’m hoping I get the same latitude as someone guilty of visual pollution,” says Walters, referring to the commercial signs one so often sees on public property. “I’ve taken down 400 signs from public spaces. If bylaw doesn’t have the resources to do it, I don’t mind spending my Saturdays that way.”

The good news is, the city didn’t ask them to remove the planted beds. The city was unavailable for comment on the future of the tiny garden, but Ward 9 Alderman Joe Ceci’s office says that although it’s unsanctioned by the parks department, they have agreed to work around it for the remainder of the season and hope to work with the community to make the garden legit next year.

“If the city wants to do something, maybe it could start from this,” says Walters, hoping that officials might take notice that it has no impact on city resources. “We’re trying to be as basic and unchallenging as possible.”

“If you start with ‘No,’ you put the citizen in a position where they have to battle,” says Mulyk. “People give up. Better to open up the conversation — let us know where to begin, what we can do.”