New growth
North Sydney Food Bank expands garden project
North Sydney Food Bank expands its garden program.
The North Sydney Food Bank is expanding on a project that officials say has been successful in recent years.
The local food bank is expanding its garden project, which offers the organization an option of growing its own vegetables and distributing those items to its clients.
“We thought it worked well, so we thought we would try to expand it,” said Lawrence Shebib, co-chair of the North Sydney Food Bank.
The project started two years ago when students from Memorial High School in Sydney Mines approached the food back with the idea of having an outdoor garden.
“A group of the students came and cleaned the property, cleaned all the weeds away and it went from there,” said Shebib. “They built the garden boxes at Memorial High School and brought them here and put soil in them and planted the vegetables.”
The project began with three garden boxes and quickly became popular with food bank clients.
As a result of the overall success, the food bank added 25 additional boxes for this year’s garden season.
“I’m not sure what the volume will be, but we should find out soon and see how it goes,” said Shebib. “We expect to be able to provide healthier food to our clients and the fact we are doing it ourselves is positive
as well.”
The garden will feature many different vegetables including lettuce, beets, string beans and tomatoes.
“It costs more money to eat healthier, so we are aware of that and we try to give our clients food that’s going to at least maintain some healthy diets,” said Shebib.
The food bank received money through a grant and it was used to buy material to build the additional boxes as well as to purchase the soil. The grant money also helped the organization hire a professional gardener to assist with the upkeep and maintenance of the garden.
Shebib said the North Sydney Girl Guides will also help with the garden by clearing weeds and picking the vegetables.
Since the project began, Shebib has received positive feedback from those who use the food bank.
“I think they came away with the idea that this place cares about them and that we
are trying to help them with healthy foods,” said Shebib. “They couldn’t believe we were doing that for them.”
Currently, the North Sydney Food Bank serves 800 family units in the North Sydney area.
On average, the food bank provides 170 grocery orders per month.
The food bank receives items in bulk through Sobeys, Atlantic Superstore, Shoppers Drug Mart, Walmart and Foodland. Any surplus is shared with other food banks in the area.
The additional garden boxes were recently put in place and gardening started in mid-May.
Shebib hopes to start providing clients with the freshly grown products sometime in August.
For more information on the North Sydney Food Bank or to make a donation, phone 902794-1104.