Garden-loving teacher helps councillors see the light
The backyard behind Larry Zacharko’s row house on Annette Street doesn’t look like much. At this time of year, it’s just dirt with some scattered gardening implements on it, wedged between a parking lot on the lane and the narrow house. Not much dirt, at that, “a small patch of land approximately eight feet by 15 feet,” Zacharko said at City Hall on Tuesday.
Doesn’t look like much. But, oh, the things that grow out of it.
“I have grown, among other things, sugar, snow and Lincoln peas; numerous varieties of beans; jalapeno, bell, devil’s tongue peppers; carrots, broccoli, cauliflowers, Swiss chard, raspberry, and, especially, heirloom tomatoes,” he said. Yellow, green, striped tomatoes, black ones with red inside, shades of red and “my favourite peach-coloured one.”
This was at the Toronto and East York Community Council meeting — the place where city councillors deal with small-ball concerns. This is where often monotonous or petty items such as speed bumps and potholes are discussed, where tree removals and garbage bin complaints are heard. Not exactly a venue where you’d expect vivid storytelling, or beauty, or despite the committee’s name, the more inspiring elements of community, to reveal themselves.
But here, on a seemingly mundane item called “TE23.26 Application for Fence Exemption” was Zacharko.
Like his backyard, the item he was speaking to didn’t look like much.
But a story grew out of it.
He’s been growing these plants for decades, using seed varieties that have been traded and preserved for as long as 100 years. “I grow these plants and save the best and take their seeds and dry them for the next year,” he said. He’s an English and drama teacher at St. Basil’s up near 401and Weston Rd. where, he tells me later, he teaches kids from both Willowdale and Jane and Finch.
“In the first part of February, I work with my students at a school and plant them in batches.”
This is a project he’s been working on with students for 25 years. The school tries to get as many kids involved as possible.
Special education students water the plants. English classes document their growth.
The students transfer the plants, up to 1,000 of them, into cups. “I have the students look through the neighbourhood and find someone they think deserves these plants, and they write me and explain the reasoning. Then they write a letter to the person they’ve chosen, explaining why they’re getting the plant on the May long weekend. And they give that person the plant and the letter.”
He said there have been all sorts of reasons students have cited over the years, “From ‘I’m the kid who stole the pears from your trees,’ to ‘You’re always such a cheerful bus driver.’ ”
One report back came from a girl from a Vietnamese family who gave her plant to a friendly single woman who lived next door.
“She was giving the woman the plant because she had the most beautiful garden in the neighbourhood.”
When she delivered the plant, the woman seemed taken aback, and retreated into the house.
The student was sure she’d somehow offended her. When the woman re-emerged, she said she’d moved three years earlier from Hong Kong, leaving her daughter behind temporarily. She’d been growing the gar- den since moving here in anticipation of her daughter joining her in Toronto. But her daughter had died. And no one had ever said anything to her about her garden before.
“There was a bit of an emotional moment and, from then on, the woman and the girl’s family became more than neighbours. Visiting each other’s houses like newly discovered relatives,” he said.
“I have all sorts of stories that have moved me and built community,” he said.
The school gives plants to all kinds of neighbours, building ties between the teen students and their community.
And they also use them to raise money to build community elsewhere.
Sales of plants on holidays such as Mother’s Day raise money for the Hope for Rwanda Children’s Fund.
“The Hope for Rwanda Children’s Fund was started by a Toronto teacher, Shyrna Gilbert, who was so stunned by the genocide in the community she’d visited for years,” he said. The fund sends children to school in Rwanda, where tuition is often equivalent to a local annual salary — $250 a year. “Our school has allowed at least 60 students to attend school over the years,” Zacharko said.
All of this grew out of the plants from his backyard garden. His nextdoor neighbour, last year, citing security concerns, erected an extension of 0.4 metres to his already 1.8-metre-high wooden fence.
Now, 0.4 metres — a foot and a third — doesn’t seem like much. But the neighbour feels it’s enough to block the view of shady characters in the lane. And it’s also enough, Zacharko says, to block about 200 hours’ worth of sunlight from his backyard garden. Tomatoes are thirsty for sunshine, he says. “This fence will effectively eliminate my garden’s ability to grow tomatoes.”
One person’s ability to grow tomatoes doesn’t seem like much. Until you hear him talk about it — the seeds, and the hundreds of students using them to grow their plants and using those to seed relationships in their neighbourhoods, or to raise money for other young people across the globe.
When Zacharko was done, and after his neighbour who built the fence had made his own case, local Councillor Gord Perks spoke briefly.
“There’s a reason that we establish some standards,” he said. “You don’t accomplish a safer neighbourhood by adding 0.4 metres to a fence . . . what you do accomplish when you add that height, though, is you deprive your neighbour of an awful lot of sunshine.”
He moved that the fence exemption not be allowed, and the city should force the extension to be taken down.
His fellow councillors passed his motion unanimously.
That backyard patch of dirt doesn’t look like much right now. But just wait until summer, after the plants are in the ground soaking up the sunlight. Edward Keenan writes on city issues.