Hurrying hard for togetherness
Sheet Seven Community Garden aims to keep curling club members united year-round
Seeds are being planted to bring Peterborough Curling Club members together year-round.
Emilie Metcalfe, a PCC member since age eight and assistant ice technician, planted the first seeds Wednesday in the Sheet Seven Community Garden building upon the facility’s six ice sheets.
She and a group of volunteers spent the past two weeks building a garden that mimics a sheet of curling ice.
“When we were taking the ice out after we had to stop because of COVID-19 on March 14,” said Metcalfe, who turns 28 on Saturday, “I was walking out the back and realized how much space we had out back that was pretty much wasted space.”
Inspired by the community gardens prevalent in Sweden, where she spent two years completing her master’s studies in biology, specializing in ecology and conservation at Uppsala University, Metcalfe came up with an idea.
“One of my favourite things was to walk around the gardens and see what people were growing. It was such a community thing that brought people together,” she said. “When our curling season ends in the spring, everyone goes their separate ways in the summer and we really don’t see each other again until October. I thought we could use the underutilized space and continue that community we enjoy throughout the curling season throughout the summer as well as making something beautiful.”
The plan is to build a garden in three stages over three years on about five acres (two hectares) of land behind the Lansdowne Street West facility. The first garden will take up an acre. She has nine helpers but she hopes others will join in future years.
“We’re going to see what the interest is like in the first year and build it from there through word of mouth. Once the members see it, maybe they’ll get super interested and want to join, too,” Metcalfe said.
The garden is designed to look like a sheet of curling ice.
“There is a round garden that is split up into rings like a curling house. The button and the inner most ring will be a pollinated herb garden. The two outside rings are going to be split into two allotment plots. I have a wide path down the middle of the whole garden and allotment plots set up on each side.”
The hope is to attract bees to pollinate flowers and butterflies. Club members can rent plots.
The first garden will feature tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, kale, lettuce, spinach, peas, carrots, purple cone flowers, black-eyed Susan, sunflowers, annuals and chives.
“A good mix,” she said.
They have a GoFundMe page called “Help Us Start Our Community Garden” to offset startup costs. It can be linked to from a Facebook page Metcalfe set up to show members the garden’s progress.
As of Friday afternoon, 14 donors had raised $475 toward a $4,000 goal.
The rental fee for plots will help cover the cost of additional gardens. Eventually, those fees can be returned to the club as a fundraiser.
“The idea is to have it be a positive impact upon the club and give back to the club in a different way,” she said. “We’ve had good response so far.”
Metcalfe was born in Sweden where her mother, Carin Gustafsson-Metcalfe, was raised. Her father, Tim Metcalfe, is Canadian but met Carin while backpacking in Venice. After they married, he worked for Ikea in Sweden before the family moved to Canada and settled in Peterborough when Emilie was four.
She earned her Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Guelph and did one year of study in Fleming College’s fish and wildlife program at the Frost Campus in Lindsay before heading to Sweden where her tuition was covered by the government since she is a Swedish native.
Metcalfe has worked for the Ministry of Natural Resources for eight summers.