Push is on for more community gardens
A community garden project, like the one started last year at the Medicine Hat and District Food Bank, could be coming to a park near you, according to a former and a current city councillor.
Monday’s meeting of the public services committee heard a summary of the project that two years ago saw the city lease out a difficult-to-use piece of hillside reserve land so a teaching garden could be set up on food bank site.
Adding more sites to become community-tended gardens could boost community spirit, as well as cut down on the cost of maintaining public greenspaces, said former city councillor Celina Symmonds.
The bulk of the work was completed at no charge by LMT Landscaping, a company partly owned by Coun. Brian Varga, who says he is working on the idea as a corporate citizen, not in an official council capacity.
“We’ve identified a number of parks in the city that are underused,” he said. “It would be a great opportunity for people to grow a garden, and the city would have to cut the grass.”
The city’s long-term budget plan outlines the need to cut down on operating expenses, and one area highlighted in the Financially Fit plan was to reduce the cost of maintaining parks.
Committee member Coun. Jim Turner, a one-time general manager of the food bank, said the steep bank near the food bank location was typically overgrown and often became a “tug of war” with the city to maintain.
“That weed patch is now producing food,” he said.
Monday’s issue was only brought forward as a matter of discussion, meaning no formal action is required, though the existing garden lease with the city will need to be reviewed this council term.
Jim Taylor of LMT also said the plots could be a community builder.
“There are people who would like to garden, but can’t, and people who won’t know their neighbours as well as they would like to,” he said. “The gardens would be an opportunity.
Last year, the food bank program was expanded to use two city flower beds for food production as a way to advertise the issue of food security.
Symmonds, the food bank’s executive co-director, told the committee that the project has been valuable, and while relatively little food is produced, the educational aspect is very important.
Now, during summer and fall months, a worker now takes children of clientele to the garden to gather the ingredients for a salad.
A separate group, Community Food Connections, operates three community gardens in Medicine Hat and Redcliff, including locations on Dunmore Road and on Kipling Street, offering plots on a first-come basis each year for $30 per season.