The Lotherton Community Garden flourishes at Lotherton Pathway and Caledonia Road in North York. Beans climb wooden stakes, tomatoes plump, and peppers ripen in rows of raised garden beds. Onions grow beneath the soil, chives grow tall, and callaloo (a Caribbean leafy green) grows in every plot. The gardeners also grow okra, cucumber, lettuce, kale, garlic, corn, eggplant, zucchini, bitter melon, thyme, basil, and sage. They recently harvested the last strawberries of the season.
With ongoing support from North York Community House (NYCH), the Lotherton Community Garden gives residents a space to grow vegetables and herbs.
“Growing has a huge impact on their immediate economics but it’s not just about growing the food. A lot of it has to do with building a sense of community and reducing social isolation and loneliness, especially among seniors. For many, it’s about coming together and spending time with other people.” — Beatriz Alas, Community Engagement Coordinator, NYCH
For almost fifteen years, Beatriz has been working with NYCH on projects related to outreach, food security, and civic awareness and education. “I inherited the coordination of the garden in 2009,” she says, in time for its second season.
As the Community Engagement Coordinator, Beatriz oversees the garden; the community orchard with 75 fruit trees; the community composting club; and Green Champions—an outreach program that provides residents with education and awareness about climate change and strategies for conserving energy and water, as well as reducing waste.
“I’ve done a lot of grant writing too, because these projects don’t have a stable source of funding. So, usually if we want something—the raised garden beds, the trees, the composting bins, the rain barrels, or even the fence, for example—we have to apply for a grant.”
Throughout the year, Beatriz facilitates training sessions, one-time workshops, and workshop series focused on democracy and how the government works in Canada, both within NYCH programs and in collaboration with other organizations. “Oh yeah! And around election time we do a whole Get-Out-the-Vote thing.” She smiles.
Since the garden’s opening on June 4th, the Lotherton gardeners have been harvesting vegetables that had regrown from last spring. Edible perennials are part of Beatriz’s dream of having a garden that is easy to sustain with minimal labour.
“My ideal is for us to do this kind of work using the least amount of physical effort as possible. I’m kind of a lazy gardener,” she jokes.
Focusing on plants that come back on their own each spring allows the gardeners to spend less time and money replanting every year. Beatriz takes interest in plants that “tend to do really well on their own”—like self-sowing plants and “plants that do well no matter what the weather or climate throws at us.”
She tells me about the garden’s self-sowing tomato plants. She says they’re annuals, meaning they typically have to be replanted each gardening season, unlike perennials.
“Tomatoes you have to plant every year, but we got a whole bunch of them that actually started up on their own this year. I guess because we had a pretty warm winter,” she says.
Today, Beatriz works on clearing a walkway to match the mulch path on the other side of the garden which will help with physical distancing requirements. To prepare for the season each year, the garden welcomes groups of corporate sector volunteers organized through United Way’s Days of Caring Program to help with mulching and pruning the trees, preparing the raised garden beds, cleaning the space, and building the path through the garden. The groups usually bring donations, like coffee grounds for compost, tools, or gardening gloves. But this year, to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, the volunteer groups were cancelled, and without them, the garden hadn’t seen these kinds of donations. They also missed out on a delivery of the City of Toronto’s Green Bin compost that’s organized through the local City Councillor’s office. The pandemic also means they have fewer gardeners participating this year—which might hurt production but has been helping with physical distancing.
“In regular years, gardeners bring in their children, grandchildren, spouses, or even a roommate or a friend, to garden with them, but this year we had to limit it to just the gardeners,” Beatriz tells me.
Traditionally, the garden is open every day, all hours of the day, but in order to comply with Public Health requirements, such as keeping track of who is visiting the garden and when, they developed a schedule, implemented a sign-in system, and reduced their hours. The garden is now only open four hours, three days a week, but from talking to the gardeners, I get the sense they’re just happy that it’s open.
“You see, we live in condos with no backyards,” gardener Alice tells me, gesturing to the four high-rise buildings that cluster behind us. “It’s not a big garden but we can plant a lot and have fresh, organic vegetables. And we have fun!”
“The garden helps us keep good neighbourhood relationships. Everyone helps each other. And I love gardening, so even having this small space to watch my vegetables grow makes me happy.” — Eliza, Gardener, Lotherton Community Garden
I meet Sandy, who used the callaloo that she and her fellow gardeners grew to make a dish for a hundred people at her place of worship. And I meet Nadine, who Beatriz introduces as the “Mayor of Lotherton.” Nadine tells me this is where she raised her children. She has been doing outreach work with NYCH in the Lotherton community for twenty-three years.
“We do a lot of reaping from our garden,” she says. “Everybody pitches in, and everybody teaches you about their culture.”
Of the gardeners I speak to today, most of them tell me they struggle with the garden’s limited access to water, something echoed by Beatriz. “The biggest issue we have is the lack of access to water on the site,” she says.
They use large barrels to catch rainwater and they also have a thousand-litre food-grade water tank just outside the garden, but without a faucet, water access will remain one of their greatest challenges. Long stretches without rain are hard on the garden—and the gardeners, who have to carry heavy jugs of water from surrounding homes to water their plants. Beatriz and the Lotherton gardeners have been lobbying the Condominium Board of Directors for permission to install a tap for several years now. With a recent addition to the Board, she hopes there may be good news soon. Despite the drawbacks they face as urban growers—the quality of soil, for instance—Beatriz says there are also some advantages.
“When you’re growing in the city it’s kind of good news, in some ways. It’s novel and it’s different so there’s always this spirit of wanting to support it.”
She’s also noticed some pleasing developments over the years.
“In the last decade or two there’s been a lot more support for urban growing, including the development of the Black Creek Community Farm, and organic seed companies like Urban Harvest that have popped up within the city.”
She tells me that larger organizations with their own greenhouses, like The Stop Community Food Centre and FoodShare, donate seedlings to their garden every year. A tree care company called Cohen & Master Tree & Shrub Services has also been giving them truckloads of free wood chips for years.
“There’s more access to resources and that works to our advantage!”
Beatriz and the gardeners aim to plant more berries in the coming years. They hope to install a tap, to expand the gardening space in order to involve the residents on the wait list, and to continue to support the food security and social needs of residents in the community. From their continued efforts, with ever-mounting support from NYCH and others, the Lotherton Community Garden can expect growth.
