RedwoodAge.com
No matter how tough it might seem to get a community garden started in your area, it’s tougher for the dedicated gardeners at Inuvik Greenhouse in Canada’s Northwest Territories in the Arctic Circle.
The community of 3,000 near the Beaufort Sea fashioned 80 garden plots for its 90 members from an old Quonset hut-style hockey arena, according to Kristen Wenghofer, the garden coordinator.
The building belonged to Aurora College, which provides it rent-free. The upstairs spectator section is used as a commercial nursery to grow bedding plants and pay for staff, she said.
“I start the commercial part of the greenhouse in a seedling room in March when temperatures outside are still –20 Celsius (–4 Fahrenheit) or colder. I move my crop upstairs to take advantage of the near 24-hour sunlight in mid-April.
"The temperature outside then is between –10 and –25 Celsius (14 to –13 Fahrenheit),” she said.
Fresh vegetables are expensive and hard to find in the far north, so the gardens provide fresh vegetables at least for a short period of time, she said. Wenghofer said she believes that the diabetes problem in their community is a result of easy access to cheap junk food and so few fresh vegetables.
She sends organic vegetables home with children in the gardening club who helped to grow them. In part it is to teach people about the value of good food and nutrition, she said.
Garden members begin in earnest in May, watering, turning soil and planting, even with snow still outside, she said. The season is over by the end of August in the unheated building, but with 24-hour sun the short growing season is intense, she said.
“People grow peas, beans, carrots, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, zucchini and rhubarb,” she said.
A Friendlier Clime
In warmer Northern California, the Larkspur Community Garden, 10 miles north of San Francisco, celebrated its 25th anniversary this year on land originally provided by the city. The garden is sandwiched between soccer fields, a dog park and open marshland. It has 73 individual plots, each roughly 8x12 feet, and a common orchard with 23 fruit trees, including apples, peaches, pears, plums, oranges and lemons.
Stephen Connor, a landscaper who also organizes the garden, said, “I have a passion about gardening. I can’t help it, it’s a sickness.” He calls himself a benevolent dictator who calls workdays, prods members to weed and helps teach newcomers how to tend their plants.
Members range from children to seniors in their 80s, he said, and includes whole families.
“About five years ago we decided we had so much abundance, we did not even harvest it all so we began giving some to the food bank,” he said. Now it is a regular part of the gardening for members to drop off an armload of zucchini or tomatoes to another member who drops them off at the food bank.
Another gardener organizes compost by getting volunteers to collect the produce waste from a local supermarket.
Connor described the garden’s growth as a slow evolution from what began as a city truck-parking yard. The changes included adding fencing to keep deer out, and dumping more than 70 cubic yards of mulch over the years to soften up the turf.
“Basically, gardening is satisfying, like an old victory garden in World War II,” Connor said.
Other unique programs in the San Francisco Bay Area include the Edible Schoolyard, started in Berkeley with the support of chef Alice Waters, to teach children about good organic food and bring healthier food into school cafeterias.
