Growing your own in a new age

Through the front door of a lopsided old Riverdale home, past the sound system playing Schubert in the living room and the unimportant television, out the side door, beneath eaves dripping with rain, is a vegetable garden that takes up every square inch of what was once a neglected backyard.

Stephen Kerr, 39, grows most of his summer produce here. Heirloom tomatoes in containers, lettuce from seeds bought on holiday in Florence and spearmint for a Moroccan cucumber salad he loves, made with crushed pistachio nuts, oil, lemon and garlic. It's delicious with wine on a hot summer day.

"If only I could grow grapes here," says Kerr, only half-joking.

An urbanite and environmentalist – he sells solar-powered appliances for a living and travels around the city by bike – Kerr is at the forefront of an urban revolution – growing your own food in the city. It's happened more quickly than anyone had imagined. All over the city this summer, food is sprouting in unlikely places, on rooftops, balconies, in front yards and city planters. Vegetable seed sales are skyrocketing.

People want the tastes of their childhood back: fragrant tomatoes, sweet strawberries, tender lettuce.

"People have told me they cried the first time they tasted a tomato from one of our plants," says Colette Murphy, 61, owner of Urban Harvest, an organic seed and plant supplier that specializes in heritage seeds. She says her customers are tearing up their front lawns to put in vegetables.

Paul Zammit, director of horticulture at the Toronto Botanical Garden, says interest in gardening edibles is soaring.

"It's not just people who have space, it's people who have a balcony and want to be able to grow something. In the past, gardening was for more mature people. Now it's young people like my niece, who's 21. She wants to know what's in her food and she wants to make the fresh pesto," says Zammit.

There's an economic component to the trend: Food prices are up and employment is down.

Sales of vegetable seed staples such as beans, peas and tomatoes took off this year, says Angela Olson, senior marketing manager for McKenzie Seeds, which supplies Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire and Home Depot.

"People are staying home, they're not going on vacation as much, they're looking for something to do at home with their family," says Olson.

Plans are underway for a rooftop garden at the Carrot Common on Danforth Ave.

Ravenna Barker, community food program manager for FoodShare, which has promoted urban gardening for years, says a community garden will be sewn into the roof of their new location on Croatia St. next year.

At St. Joseph House, a resource centre for the homeless and indigent at Yonge and Wellesley Sts., Michael Sacco, founder of ChocoSol, is laying the groundwork for a 1,400-square-foot green roof that will include sweet grass, sacred tobacco, oregano, thyme, arugula, Swiss chard, kale and pea shoots. He hopes to have the first crop in by the end of July.

Sacco wants to transplant more than vegetables from the country. He wants to bring a farming sensibility into the city and make composting and recycling and thriftiness a part of urban culture.

"People think farming is something you do in a rural context. We want to bring the rural into the urban," says Sacco.

The City of Toronto has received 70 new requests for community gardens, according to co-ordinator Solomon Boyce. There are already 112 community gardens, farmed by an estimated 5,000 people, in parks and vacant lots around the city, such as the desolate swath on the west side of the turnoff from Victoria Park Ave. to Eglinton Ave.

Schools are jumping on the bandwagon, growing gardens to introduce children to the concepts of planting and harvesting, and to promote healthy eating. A program supported by the Toronto Heart Health Partnership, FoodShare and Toronto Public Health is in its second year at Ecole élémentaire Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau.

"The kids think the lettuce at Pierre-Elliott-Trudeau is the best in the world," says principal Michel Laverdière. The movement is made up of people like Maihyet Burton, 38, a business owner and mother of two children, ages 9 and 2. Burton grew up in a loft above a store at Queen and Church Sts., and as a child yearned for her own green space.

"The only greenery was the park across the street, but there were people peeing on it all the time," says Burton. Now she grows green beans, lima beans, radishes, collard greens, kale, cucumbers and more tomatoes and raspberries than her family of four can eat.

"If you can cut down on your grocery bills in the summer, why not? I also prefer to eat organically," says Burton, who owns Lilith, a clothing and accessories store in the Distillery District and lives near Bloor St. and Landsdowne Ave. "My kids eat greens. They've never had an issue. It's always been in their diet."

The rooftop garden at 401 Richmond St. W. was one of the pioneers in the movement to green the city. Fifteen years after building manager Mike Moody dragged a few potted flowers up to the gravel roof, it has become an oasis for people who work in the area, 6,000 square feet of annuals and perennials and tropicals.

"It's very peaceful to get away from the office," says Izak Korc, a sales executive with Strategy Institute, looking more relaxed than a working person has a right to be on a Monday morning.

Moody tried gardening edibles in a partnership with Ryerson University, but vegetables required too much care. Now, the building management is looking for a partnership to cultivate the veggies.

"I was hoping it would spread, the idea," says Moody.

It has. The concrete collars have been taken off the trees on Spadina Ave. north of Queen St., and local businesses are gardening in them.

From http://www.thestar.com/