Welcome to the Toronto Green Community’s garden blog and to the start of the 2010 gardening season! I’m Emily, TGC’s garden coordinator as of a little over two weeks, and I started this page to keep people up to date and connected to gardening and sustainability developments at TGC and throughout the city. The Eglinton Park Heritage Garden is located at North Toronto Memorial Community Centre, 200 Eglinton Avenue West in Toronto. It is not a community garden in the sense of participants each having responsibility for their own beds, but rather a garden where the community can come together to garden and learn about urban farming and food security. The garden has long focussed on native species and perennials,with an entire bed dedicated to these plants alone. In this year and the years to come we hope to expand the garden’s food-producing capacity, increasing the focus on finding sustainable and innovative ways to grow a variety food in the city through all seasons.
Today’s title refers not to the revolutionary ideals behind urban agriculture, but instead to the actual breaking of ground – we had our first workbee in the garden on Monday! Seven enthusiastic and driven volunteers came out between 4 and 7 pm to wake the garden up for spring. We cut back old growth, weeded and turned the beds, and added a mix of incredible black compost which had broken down through the winter into a rich worm filled humus. Talking of our hopes for expansion and our plans to construct brand new composters and a cold frame for starting seedlings, we worked through the beautiful afternoon and accomplished much more than I had anticipated. Now we enter into the planning stage of the garden! We’ve got strawberries and chives returning from last year, but beyond that the garden is a blank slate, and I’d love to hear from you what you’d like to see us grow!
down the garden path 